Ritual and ceremony are deeply important aspects of the human experience. What cultures do with their dead is way, way up there with foodways and adornment when it comes to cultural significance.
The increasingly common view in the West that elaborate death rites are unimportant is really new when compared to the rest of human history. It’s probably a postmodern thing? If I’m right about that, that would mean the less reverential attitude towards traditional deatg ceremony is like 110ish years old.
Compared to the 200,000-300,000 years Homo Sapiens have been around (or 45,000 years ago if we only want to discuss the length of time that Northern European-style deathways have most likely been practiced), 100 years isn’t a lot to change that cultural inertia.
Sorry, I know this is a Wendy’s. Just a frosty, thanks.
Why the fuck have you been downvoted, that’s just a reasonable comment.
May I also point out, your funeral isn’t for you. You might not care what happens to your body but your close ones do. A funeral is a place for them to find closure, to grief and mourn your loss. The mere fact that people who cannot retrieve their lost one’s body feel awfully about it and still tend to create empty graves should show how much this is a very old desire of importance. The way we perform these death rituals can change and maybe it is not about how a body is being get rid off per se, and surely we could change this. That we as a species are aware of what death means and have found ways to cope with it (i.e. rituals as a coping way to deal with the knowledge) is incredible.
Whenever people say something along these lines of “just throw me in the trash” it feels to me like they didn’t get that point. It’s not about you. It’s about everyone else.
Quark: I think I figured out why Humans don’t like Ferengi.
Sisko: Not now, Quark.
Quark: The way I see it, Humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We’re a constant reminder of a part of your past you’d like to forget.
Sisko: Quark, we don’t have time for this.
Quark: You’re overlooking something. Humans used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi: slavery, concentration camps, interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We’re nothing like you… we’re better.
. I’d rather be harvested for any useful organs if I have any left healthy enough to save someone, then the rest of me thrown in some kind of corpse compost or bio reactor or something.
Yes, it’s also called Natural Organic Reduction or terramation. This would be my dream.
When I die compost my body and use the compost on a tree in the garden or spread it in a natural reserve. This way if my relative want to visit my grave they go in nature rather than going in a gray cemetery full of concrete.
Yes, but the whole thing isn’t about you but about the people you leave behind. It helps me a lot that I can visit the place where I buried my father’s ashes and tell him about what is going on and how live is currently. I miss him a lot.
For every person like you there may be a person like me that couldn’t care less to visit a grave. I can remember my fallen ones from anywhere.
Don’t want to sound callous but if you’re dead you’re dead to me too, like it’s a part of life. Just accept it and move on. I’m gonna die one day whoop whoop.
Something I think I’ve seen in movies (mostly ones implied to be ancient japan) is a family grave. A single pillar driven into the ground with the family name and then everyone is cremated or something. Notable individuals for the family get a pillar next to it, but this could be a solution as first world countries reach the point where space is a premium. This allows families to mourn recently, and not-so-recently deceased.
Cyberpunk has the Columbariums - huge columns of thousands of cremated individuals, with a digital display for your Epitaph and name
The uk had 3500 cemeteries in 1914 and more have been built since. A a report in 2013 said that nearly half would be out of space by 2033.
I wouldn’t like to say how much land this accounts for but just in my small town you could build hundreds of houses or even more apartments on all the land.
My dream is to die with absolutely nothing but massive bank debt. I have no living relatives, so there is no one to get the money from. I mean, “Hello Mr. Twat you have terminal cancer” next stop is the bank to take out the biggest loan my excellent credit will let me get. Tom Selleck the house go to Vegas bet it all on black until it’s gone return home and burn the house down around me fuck the bank…a boy can dream lol
What can you invest with $22 per month (or $264 per year) that’s actually turned a noticable profit? Even at 10% return you’d be looking at $26.4 gain per year.
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