Burials

Landfills and videos.

Why not? And some may specialize in selfies and sexting.Or printed text from the Archaic Age.

Thank you for your fascinating post--I particularly appreciate the interlocking stories: my personal belief is that human understanding requires narrative. Your essay is a brilliant example.But I have to disagree with the quote above. Nothing our children do is absolutely their fault "and nobody else's."We can't have civilization without individual responsibility, but that doesn't mean we should accept the fiction that we are completely self-determined creatures. We are not. We are products of contingent, random and arbitrary causes--some of which are the faults in others.Understanding comes dearly. The more we understand our origins, the more responsible for ourselves we become, and the more compassion we must grant our fellow flawed creatures.The alternative is bitter isolation.

quote:

---

This Be The Verse
--Philip Larkin

​

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

​

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

​

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

---

One of my exes wants to be a drawing/anatomy class skeleton.Makes sense: she has great bones and a delicate exhibitionist blush.I've encountered both true and fictional accounts of body farms. I love mysteries.I'd make a great murder corpse, innocent but meaty.

As far as I can recall, the Bible offers no instructions on the treatment of dead bodies (well, burial in Egypt is bad). Yet you offer your judgmental commentary as though it were scripture. I think your pride could give mine a good head-start and still lap it before the first turn. I only speak for myself; you speak for God.

Faith, you linked your views to reverence for the body, and linked others' views to atheism and "evolutionism".True, you didn't claim scriptural authority--but you did draw distinctions between the burial practices of the reverent and the unbelieving.Still, perhaps I overreacted in my belligerent pagan way.I'm just an excitable boy.

Pig Pen contains actual atoms from "Solomon or Nebuchadnezzar or Genghis Khan!"Jesus, too.

Perhaps.