TIL that in 1563, Johann Weyer argued against Witch hunts and instead that the accused should be treated as having a mental illness.

maquise , 2 hours ago

I remember this guy. I cut off his friend’s head and stuck it through a mystic portal.

Scio , 3 hours ago

I’m told ADHD also comes with magic powers. But so far, I’ve not awakened to my birthright.

Moonlit skies are never clear enough these nights, you know.

PhlubbaDubba , 3 hours ago

I mean that sounds pretty cruel but a lot of the time people accused of witchcraft were genuinely neuro divergent folks.

Might not have been perfect but being placed in a committed care facility is definitely a step up from being drowned because the peasants decided only drowning could prove your innocence.

Quill7513 , 3 hours ago

Neorodivergents and people what weren’t heterosexual/cisgender. Our current moral panic is the same moral panic as every moral panic there’s ever been. They’re all the same moral panic. And yeah. Johann Weyer’s solution by modern standards sounds barbaric, but when you compare it in context to “Drown the autistic kid” / “Drown the trans lesbians”, he’s downright a radical progressive when it comes to seeing the humanity in others

PhlubbaDubba , 2 hours ago

This is why I struggle with moral relativism, because there’s traditions that just seem gross from my perspective, and then there’s genuine awful that definitely deserves being condemned regardless of how sacred it is to the people doing it.

Quill7513 , 2 hours ago

My ethical training in college was largely around that moral relativism is fucking terrible and will let anyone justify anything under the right conditions. It is one of my core beliefs that morality and ethics demand us to talk about what is right and wrong and where we root these views. Cards all out on the table, my foundation are the ethics of care (Look into Carol Gilligan) which emphasizes that what defines us is the relationships between each other as being the roots of where what right and wrong is comes from