(Thanks to Phoebe for the news tip.)
Today, fertilizer… tomorrow… lunch?
For untold thousands of years, people have been trying to decide what to do with dead bodies. Eight thousand years ago at Catal Huyuk, they kept the dear departed under the clay floors of their homes. Today we’ve got embalming and burial, or cremation–
And the Urban Death Project. Does that name give you the creeps? It gives me the creeps. Anyway, they’re experimenting with the feasibility of turning human bodies into compost (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/a-project-to-turn-corpses-into-compost.html). Saving the planet, don’t you know.
Decent people in all times and places show respect for the dead. They may have many different ways of doing it, some of them radically and unnervingly different, but the motivation is the same. I’m just not sure of the motivation of this bunch of Urban Death Project characters out in Seattle.
Flash! Just In!
Inspired by the work of the Urban Death Project, and virtually overnight, Fimbo University has created a Compost Studies degree program. After a mere eight years in the program, graduates will be fully qualified to serve as compost. “They’ll be able to fertilize anything!” exclaims the first chair of the new Department of Death Studies (who really is a chair, by the way: an actual piece of furniture). “At one fell swoop, the whole looming problem of perpetual unemployment is wiped from the board!”
Higher education marches on!
I was creeped out enough when I first read about it. Now, each time I read another article about it, I come across a new detail that creeps me out even more. Here’s the one from the NYSlimes that got to me this time: “As with cremation, heavy metal contamination could be a concern; perhaps dental fillings would have to be removed from bodies.” Auschwitz, anyone?
Yeah, that was one of the details that made my flesh creep.
One thing about humanism–it has no respect whatever for human beings. Let alone affection!
Respect for the sanctity of life and caution for the health of the living are hallmarks of civilization. A corpse unburied was a health hazard and an insult to whoever died without a burial. It amazes me, how consistently the most basic tenets of civilization are challenged in the name of environmentalism.
Had a whole discussion about this news and movie on my blog a few hours ago
I’d love to read that, but your blog isn’t showing up on my WordPress Reader yet. Can you send me a link, or should I just wait?
Sorry I saw you found it; I actually took a nap today hence my delay
OK, I found it.
Thanks brother Lee for the search
The way modern entertainment glorifies violence we may be close to human compost. Communists in the 20th century just dug mass graves – instant compost. Whenever i watch a show where there is collateral damage (the hotel attendant is shot in cold blood because he is in the wrong place at the wrong time) I wonder what his family and friends will feel about it. Modern life is cold and alienating. The solution is Spirit-filled Christians shining their light of love and care for all of God’s creation.