Dignity In Death

Death is not to be feared. In fact, if there’s anything people should fear, it’s the indignities other people will put their bodies through after they’re dead. I mean, just dying and rotting on the pavement is pretty much the most dignified way for the body to be treated.

While this may sound unusual, consider the myriad other undignified ways for people be treated post-mortem. In many modern countries, there's embalming. Maybe being spiced and wrapped up in bandages like a sausage is out of fashion today. Instead, they'd rather flush the innards and replace the blood with preservative (much like a sausage), then burn (like a sausage) or bury the lot. Let's consider the bbq they call cremation: It's basically a grill that overdoes the bodies to the extent that they're quite unusable for anything but fertilizer. It's not even edible anymore.

Then we have burial. With or without embalming, they basically toss dirt over the body because it's too shameful to be shown in public for extended periods of time. Of course, exceptions occur when the embalmed body is displayed like a choice buy otherwise inedible sausage. Burial without embalming? The body becomes worm food, then perhaps dug up to be bbq'ed when they find that the cemetery is really sitting on a bit of choice land. Talk about a double whammy.

A marginally more dignified treatment would be for the body to be eaten. After all, it's slightly better to be non-worm food than worm food. One becomes poo, after all. But at least the body goes directly towards nourishing stuff without turning to mush that stinks the place up, and, in some cases, this act is done with some degree of reverence. Worm food ultimately becomes worm poo anyway.

Now, how about being left where one died? Granted, it's not dignified either, but at least the body is not subjected to weird treatments. Of course, given this logic, I can only conclude that those who sensibly fear death do not really fear what comes after in the sense of the afterlife, but what others would do with the inert body afterwards.