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by Erik816 1833 days ago
Treating our dead with respect is probably one of the oldest signs of human culture. People care a lot about the bodies of their deceased loved ones. See Antigone by Sophocles. You're welcome to your views, but most people have strong, deeply felt emotions and opinions on how dead bodies should be properly handled.
3 comments

If this seems disrespectful, then I encourage you to look into what the embalming process actually entails, as (IMO) it's worse: https://youtu.be/B5-NtLmKUDE?t=201
Mummification is even worse than that, but it had a perceived benefit for its proponents.
Things like this, though, show that those attitudes are changing. Not rapidly, and certainly not in a majority of people, but they are indeed changing.
I respect the bodies, and the land, water, air, and other bodies that made them, which is why I prefer my remnants be digested by microbes with minimal resource-cost so long as it is safe enough for the land. We’re so spoiled with luxuries like embalming and fancy boxes. Abstraction layers may still feel like respect, but they distance us from the core of survival, which is the health of the other living things here. How can we shift our strong, deeply-felt emotions around dead bodies?