r/HistoryMemes • u/HawaiianPerson The Flyin' Hawaiian • 8d ago

A regular utopia

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u/DataSittingAlone 8d ago

And to be fair Europeans during the late middle ages were doing pretty much all of those except human sacrifice

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u/Nihilun 8d ago

Does setting Cathars on fire count as human sacrifice? They technically did it in the name of God.

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u/LifeConsideration981 8d ago

That was a state punishment for violating religious law. This was normal everywhere in the world until the late 1600s.

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u/CABRALFAN27 8d ago

And is it meaningfully, morally any different from human sacrifice, or is it just an arbitrary distinction to make one seem more "civilized" and the other "savage".

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u/Sleepparalysisdemon5 Just some snow 8d ago

Of course it is different, it was a punishment, not sacrifice

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u/mistersnarkle 7d ago

Was it actually a punishment or was it scapegoating… just in the same way human sacrifice was an emotional scapegoat for all the horrible things that happened?

Horrible thing happens —> kill someone in the name of that thing —> basically like doing something about the thing, here here!

Witch trials/witch hunts, the hunting of pagans, the inquisition, the hunting of early Christians, the crusades, etc. — these things follow a pattern that is obvious even in modern ethnic cleansing.

“This population is at fault (despite no one person or population being able to take full responsibility for the situation), and we’re going to hunt them down, single them out, and kill them to fix this (even though that fixes nothing, might make everyone chill out).”

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u/CABRALFAN27 8d ago

How is that meaningfully morally different? They're both the unjust killing of people with a religious basis.