I apologize in advance if sounds a little morbid; it's not meant to be.
I like to do things in a way that makes sense to me, even if that means going against traditional wisdom. One thing that has never made too much sense to me, and I don't know why I think of this now, is Western death rituals. It's not that we have them that bothers me - every culture in every time and place has had some kind of death ritual, as every person in every time and place experiences this event - but it is the particular practices we have chosen to surround and commemorate this event that baffle me. I am not familiar enough with Christian or Jewish scripture and tradition to determine the exact origin of our various practices, but can say with a fair amount of certainty that death rituals are almost always tied to religious belief. That alone is enough to make me take a step back from them and analyze more closely, but even the surface of funeral rites makes no sense to me. The whole eulogy and scripture reading and even the wake I get because those things have both a scriptural and emotional/psychological basis and serve a purpose to the living. What I'm talking about is the actual physical burial ritual we use. Let's take the coffin for example. We put the guy in a box, underground, with a pillow, in a business suit. Now let's at least make up our minds where we think he's going. I mean do we think he's taking a nap or going to a meeting or what? What's going on there? And cemetaries. Those seem like an awful waste of space and resources to me. Call me an insensitive pragmatist, but I don't get it.
Now let me tell you about a funeral ritual I can sink my teeth into (no pun intended, you'll see what I'm talking about). The Yanomamo people of the Amazon have a much simpler, though no less meaningful practice to celebrate the life of a deceased person. So as to prevent you from throwing your laptop aside in disgust, I'll do the bit first where I explain why, then I'll say what it is they do. The philosophy is that the soul of the deceased has its resting place within the bodies of the living. The soul, and therefore the powers, abilities, and physical appearance are passed down through members of the same family in this way, as only close family members are allowed to participate in the ceremony, though others may be present. Not only does this ritual provide peace of mind for survivers through its explaination of the fate of the deceased's soul, but also serves to explain family resemblance and other things that are explained by genetics in scientific societies. It is thought that because of this, every person has a part of all their anscestors actually in them, and anscestors and therefore the spirit of the Yanomamo people as a whole, will live on forever as long as this ritual is practiced. Now, do you know what it is? They cremate the body and stir up the remains into a watery soup, about the consistency and texture of thin grits. Then the closest living relatives consume it in a highly ritualized ceremony. Note: this is not cannibalism. They don't do this for nourishment, nor do they particularly enjoy having to do it any more than we enjoy burying our relatives. It is done for the reasons I already explained and it makes sense to them to do this because of they way they understand the afterlife and such. I like the idea personally, not that I like it like it, like I would like to do it, but I like it in that it has a mentality to it and a philosophy I can understand, obviously not from a scientific perspective, but emotionally it sounds like something that makes sense to attach yourself to. It's also very practical and more efficient than our cemetaries, especially since they don't have that kind of space in the rainforest. Better than a box underground next to a bunch of other boxes anyway. Thoughts?
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