😂 Okay, I am laughing for all the wrong reasons, but before I dive into a couple hours of novel-writing, please enjoy this document from Massachusetts Bay, 1697 with me.
Yeah, yeah, it's a list of brutal punishments outlined for anyone who denies, curses, or reproaches god/Christianity...
But look at that last part. How can you *not* laugh at the attempt to show restraint?
"We'll do all of these terrible things to atheists, but only two at most for the same offence! What are we, monsters?!" 😂
Oh, and for anyone struggling with image quality and/or the older text - in which a long curly "f" is actually an "s" - here's the text transcribed on the Wikipage:
This is the grief of brief lifespans: how little time we have to absorb the past before we repeat its errors.
I remember watching Bush talk about going to war - his enthusiasm ill-befitting a world that claimed to honour the horror of war every Veteran's and Memorial Day. But as a teen then, it dawned on me that *of course* he could be excited. He hadn't lived out those mistakes himself.
So long as we need firsthand experience to believe, we will heap horror upon horror ad aeternum.
@MLClark
Language is the mediator between our passed follies, and our current dilemmas. Keep writing. It's kinda important.