[kragen]

As a counterpoint to the various people arguing that we shouldn't see this, that you shouldn't watch the video, etc., I want to argue that the modern US aversion to contemplating death has become pathological. Death is the one unavoidable fact about life, the only thing you are guaranteed to do, and the sooner and more deeply a person understands that, the better. It's difficult, it's unpleasant, but it's necessary.

Ten of the traditional forty subjects of Buddhist meditation are the asubha, the "repulsive subjects", corpses in different states. Meditating on these is intended to help you come to terms with your own mortal nature, and to prevent you from coming to worship things of the body as if they deserved it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamma%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADh%C4%81n...

In many Buddhist areas of the world, you can buy sets of cards with images of all forty, to be used as a meditation aid. (It's easier to hold your attention on a subject when you're looking at a picture of it.) Imagine the righteous indignation of the preserve-your-ignorance squad here if such a thing were to be displayed.