New interment practices and carbon molecules (nihilism)

The manner in which we treat our dead probably reflects how we view ourselves, and current trends reflect poorly on this. An article:  

(There is now) news that the Washington legislature is on the verge of legalizing human composting as a means of final disposition. From the Daily News story:

In the process — also called “recomposition,” — bodies are placed in a vessel which speeds up decomposition and turned into a soil which can be returned to families.

The family could then use the soil that was once their loved one in which to plant a tree or to use as dirt in a flower pot, whatever.

Washington will also permit our remains to be liquified.

The proposed Washington bill would also allow alkaline hydrolysis — where bodies are dissolved in water and potassium hydroxide in a pressurized chamber until only bone and a sterilized liquid remains…

If passed, the bill would make Washington the 17th state to allow alkaline hydrolysis.

Liquid human remains are not flushed down toilets exactly, but they are poured into sewers.

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There is.... increasing use of “anonymous death,” a European innovation now beginning to appear in America, where the dead are abandoned without ceremony in deliberately unmarked graves, or their corpses are cremated with the ashes spread across large and indifferent spaces.

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We bury our loved ones, sometimes with great pomp and at great expense. Cremation too is usually carried out with great respect. People place the urns of loved ones in cemetery niches, in home shrines, or as another example, respectfully scattered at sea or in rose gardens. (Some also cremate beloved pets and keep the ashes, but that doesn’t change the essential point.)

These acts are only logical if we believe that the lives of humans matter and that importance continues after they cease. In contrast, it seems to me that having ourselves turned into dirt — or worse — reflects at least an implied philosophical view that it doesn’t ultimately matter that we ever existed.

All We Are Is Carbon Molecules?
These new means of disposition also reflect a profoundly anti-metaphysical impetus that unhealthily (in my view) increasingly permeates society. Religionists believe that there is more to come after death, and that how we live has a direct impact on that future existence. This is reflected in their funerals and other death memorials.

Materialists insist that, in the end, all we are is carbon molecules, which implies that how we lived has no ultimate meaning once we are dead. Turning human bodies into so much sewage certainly would seem to reflect that view.

I know that some of this is a reaction against the high cost of funerals. And for some, it is a means of making a political statement about the environment. But I worry: If we ever get to the point that our remains are just so much waste material, if our disposition practices reflect a widespread belief that we are merely carbon in animated form, if we really see ourselves as unworthy of anything greater than being composted once that animation ceases, we will treat one another accordingly even before our ends actually come.

Personally I’m far far more concerned with how we treat each other whilst we’re alive, (and perhaps shortly after death because I also have concerns about some organ transplant issues).

I think the article writer's closing remarks address this quite well:

" I worry: If we ever get to the point that our remains are just so much waste material, if our disposition practices reflect a widespread belief that we are merely carbon in animated form, if we really see ourselves as unworthy of anything greater than being composted once that animation ceases, we will treat one another accordingly even before our ends actually come."

I'd have thought the opposite really. I don't understand why non-materialists should be overly concerned with what happens to material remains.

I think all of this is largely symbolic. Earlier traditions may have honoured the dead in different ways, for example by placing them upon a burning boat, or on raised platforms where birds may scavenge the remains.

What seems still relevant, regardless of what happens to the physical, is the honour which is accorded to the deceased. There was a recent case of an old person, so old that all friends and family had likely already gone ahead on their own paths, and so there was a call for mourners to attend the funeral.
Sixty strangers attend man's funeral in Redruth

Similarly in the USA:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-c...-s-funeral

It seems the marking of a passing is still significant. What happens to the atoms and molecules, nor so much.

This too is echoed in some current ceremonies where women are paid to weep and wail at a funeral, a service which somehow is helpful even though they are strangers.
Meet African professional mourners who get paid to cry at funerals

Speaking from a purely personal perspective - I don't give a shit (probably literally). My body can be composted - seems like a good use of discarded material to me. I still remember seeing my father in his coffin when I was a teenager and thinking: that's not him, he's gone and that's a lump of dead meat

Speaking from an afterlife perspective - meaning things I have read regarding the feelings of those who pass over - I get the impression that they too are pretty much unconcerned about their mortal remains and are eager to shed the encumbrance of the physical form.

The manner in which we treat our dead probably reflects how we view ourselves, and current trends reflect poorly on this. An article:  


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The Universe Seems No More Meaningful to me if We Survive Death

This thread is right up your alley and it surprised me you had nothing to say.

I would think the wishes of the dead and their families should dictate what constitutes a respectful treatment of their remains. My own father wants to be used in soil to grow a tree, so that my brothers and I can tell any kids we might have "here's Grandpa." When the day comes, I expect to comply with his wishes, though I don't think he should get his hopes up about any grandchildren.

Where I think the article would have a point is when/if any such wishes are deliberately ignored, or when those not able to leave any record of their wishes would be subject to indifference in the way their remains are handled. There's something to be said for using our remains for environmental good, but the author's point about marking humanity as special in the way we handle our dead, and in connecting to the dead through tangible markers, is valid too.

(There is now) news that the Washington legislature is on the verge of legalizing human composting as a means of final disposition. From the Daily News story:

In the process — also called “recomposition,” — bodies are placed in a vessel which speeds up decomposition and turned into a soil which can be returned to families.

Or what will actually happen. Families will get a vase of dirt while their loved one is sold on to medical schools, collectors or journalists such as these Reuters reporters https://www.reuters.com/investigates/spe...dies-cody/ or literally anyone else who could possibly want a corpse in a completely unregulated market worth 10's of millions of dollars. (A single broker in a few years made over 12 million dollars.)

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/sec...sa-bodies/ - part of a large series where it is revealed that from public data from just 4 states, 50,000 bodies were sold by private brokers to whoever wants them over the course of just a few years.
collectors - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9km38...an-remains - here you can see the "friendly" and "warm hearted" Satanist engraving a pentagram on someones skull, possibly from an Indian slave or Chinese political prisoner.