Get
Rid Of Cemeteries
by Rob Cottignies
by Rob Cottignies
Imagine you're homeless because you lost your job and
can no longer afford housing. You're walking the streets, eating fast food
wrappers, when you spot an open area of land which looks unused except for
stones scattered all over the place. You worked in construction, so you go to
the office and suggest building some kind of housing on the property. You say
that you’re able to get a crew together, plan everything, and would work for
free as long as a living unit would be yours at the end.
The person in charge of the property would have to
tell you- with a serious face- that breathing people cannot live on the land
because it's reserved for the dead. You’d then have to do everything in your
power to not add that person to the underground community.
…
Upon the cease of bodily
life, many people pay many dollars for many loved ones to be inserted into
expensive boxes which will be lowered into the ground and covered with dirt so body
and box can both rot, never to be seen again. What an archaic, depressing, ugly
ritual that renders the land useless.
A bunch of years ago in
Africa, some pyramids were erected. These massive structures were each built
for one dead ruler, who was wrapped up and shut into a secret room filled with
riches. How was the room secret? Slaves were mainly responsible for building
the Pyramids, burying the pharaoh within, then booby-trapping the rooms and
halls on their way out to prevent thieves from entering the tomb. To keep the
secrets intact, these slaves and other unlucky workers were then violently
murdered and thrown into mass graves, which were a fraction of the size of the
Pyramids yet held hundreds of bodies.
It was eventually decided
that neither of these methods- hundreds in a mass grave or a giant tomb for one
person- was acceptable. Thus, an odd combination of the two came to be.
…
Why do people go to cemeteries? Driven by faith or
not, most want to 'visit' their deceased relatives and friends. Some talk out
loud, assuming the person's spirit can hear them.
Isn't it weird to think of your loved ones' spirits
just hanging around their former Earthly bodies, waiting for someone to drop
by? And if you believe people can hear you in the afterlife, why couldn't you
just speak to them from any location? What a curious vision of the next world
some people have.
Some of these visitors even purchase blankets for the
graves when the weather gets cold. I can’t even pretend to understand that idea,
but kudos to whoever makes money off it.
…
My suggestion is to
eliminate at least 99% of all cemeteries. This is a fairly simple
(if expensive and time-consuming) idea which could benefit a large portion of
people.
Some ideas for how to replace cemeteries are affordable
housing, agriculture, parks, and gardens. Even a golf course has more value
than a cemetery, and better pants. Just use the land for something instead of nothing.
Regarding housing, some people would have a problem
living on a former cemetery because the buildings might be “haunted” by the
previous “residents”. As comedian Jimmy Carr once said, “It's actually easy to
tell if your house is haunted. It isn't.” Besides, if a person with no home
refuses to live somewhere because of superstition, that person deserves to
sleep in terrible places and eat fast food wrappers.
…
Critics of my idea might say things such as, ‘But what
about the jobs cemeteries provide?’ or ‘People who believe in cemeteries would
be upset’ or ‘What would we do with the bodies?’
In order: Plenty of other jobs exist, tell them it’s
time to act like adults, and utilize them! Bones could be fashioned into
hunting gear or art, hair could be given to those without any, and the meat
could be eaten. Yes, by humans. Humanity has a starvation problem and one
solution would be cooking the dead. Cannibalism may be taboo according to many
cultures but I don't think a starving person would turn down a bowl of human
soup.
…
Here are some alternative ideas of what to do with
your body once your brain deems it useless:
1) Get ground up and planted as a tree! Can you sit under
a tombstone and read? Can you fall out of a plot marker? Does a mausoleum go
through photosynthesis, thus creating life-giving oxygen for live people to
breathe?
To get started, go
to this website.
2)
Have a Viking
funeral! The body in question is placed on a wooden craft and tastefully
decorated by loved ones and adoring fans. Craft and body are then set ablaze
and pushed off to sea, to be observed until all are consumed. Then, hopefully,
there is a wild beach party in the deceased's honor. Wood, air, fire, water- wonderfully
elemental.
3)
Volunteer for your
body to be eaten by something! (I actually wrote that as another option but as
an insult it's a great suggestion if you'd like to go do that right now.)
...
Cemeteries also give florists a lot of business. A
suggestion for them would be to petition
Hallmark to invent another holiday (like they did with Valentine’s Day) to
boost their flower sales.
How much death must
cemeteries consume, anyway? Weeping people lay flowers six feet above their person's
rotting corpse, but what happens to the flowers? They become rotting
flora-corpses. The same thing happens to all the arrangements delivered to
funeral homes. The death of one human causes other humans to kill hundreds or thousands
of plants. Zennists believe in balance. This is a great example of the
opposite.
…
The biggest question I have about cemeteries is: ‘What
happens when they're all full?’ It's mathematically inevitable. And really,
what then? Earth's population is only increasing and more living bodies means
more dead bodies. Will the world be overrun with cemeteries? Will people be dug
up and removed according to burial date or importance? If the latter, who
decides?
This topic can be disturbing to think about but I
think it's important. If humanity can agree on nothing else, let’s value living
people more than the dead.
Stop the tired practice of cemeteries and simply honor
those who’ve passed with pictures and memories. Yes, in your brains. Don’t be
afraid to use them.