Do the dead deserve respect?

Discuss

Disclaimer: Do not bring in topics that can get this locked, if your belief governs your stance then state that it is your belief and nothing more.

Respect the dead, because one day... you'll join them.

Depends on whether the person deserved any to begin with.

The dead deserve whatever respect they earned in life...and in my opinion lifeless remains aren't the dead, they are just lifeless remains. What happens to those remains is not of great concern to me.

As to cemeteries and the like they should be treated appropriately out of respect for the living who value them as the resting place of their people's remains...personal opinion on lifeless remains is not really a consideration there.

Largely depends on a persons beliefs and morality regarding it, but it's generally been accepted that they do deserve it. What you're asking however is, do their bodies deserve it.

As humans, whether you're spiritual/religious or not, the closest or only known or tangible connection we have with the dead are the places we've left their bodies to rest (and rot) for eternity. Someone or the other would have loved or cared for the dead person, so they'd naturally want to treat the only thing left of them - their shell - with respect. And of course they're sad about them passing because they'll never get to see them again, so they do so quietly and in a somber, dignified manner.

Do they deserve it? Depends on who you ask and who the person even is.

As for graveyards/cemeteries, they are quiet, morose places because of everyone's mutual understanding that they're sad about their deceased loved one. You wouldn't like them partying around your grandfather's grave, so you don't do it around theirs, and so on.

Good point...amended my answer.

Amazingly, this is a shade of grey area. The dead do not deserve respect because they're dead, and they cannot care if they're given respect or not.

On the other hand, for the sake of the people that cared about them, they ought to be shown at least a modicum of respect, if only for respect for the friends and families themselves

They're dead. What's to respect anymore

*Soylent Green

That said, I don't see why not. Burn them at a funeral pyre or bury them, makes no defense. No matter how good or evil the man is or was, once they're dead, mistreating their corpse will do nothing for you. Just bury or burn the dead and be done with it. The famous and liked will remain loved by common history, the infamous and reviled will be scorned by common history, there's no need to mistreat a corpse, it's a husk. You wouldn't kick a fast food box hoping it'll fill with food would you? Same principle applies here. Good or bad, their sins and troubles are paid for when they're dead.

As my roommate says, it is more about affording respect to those who loved those people and are still here, than it is about the actual dead person. Those who are still in mourning deserve respect and one way of doing that is respecting the dead and the places where they are laid to rest.

Well said.

Personally whether I'm respected or not doesn't matter to my dead body, I'm no longer in it and really don't care what happens with it after I've left. Ideally I'd love to have a Viking funeral because they're awesome but just cremate me, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk61MeDmk2M

I couldn't really care less what happens to my remains(because im not using it anymore)

I think we should mulch our bodies and make some fertilizer and use it to help grow things or medical research, or maybe more body/rot farms for scientific study.

You might ask whether it's worth it not to provide a dignified disposal. Since you'll have to get rid of the corpse anyway, public health funerals are no-frills affairs, but it's not like anybody's going to mistreat them in the time between transportation and cremation.

As for whether cemeteries should be solemn places, that really depends on the culture. Many older churches have adjoining graveyards, and it nobody would expect a wedding procession that passes through to maintain a glum countenance until they get out the gate. And for all I know, there might be cultures out there that expect you to be cheerful in graveyards. The general rule in these places is to just try not to do anything that's going to upset anyone.

Look, just so long as a cemetary looks a bit like https://www.flickr.com/groups/highgatecemetery/ and preferably a tad overgrown (lots of ivy everywhere) then I'm happy. Ossuaries are a nice plus.

What better respect is there than some peace and quite. Damn all if you can find any when you're still kicking

This right here.

Doesn't matter to me what your name is/was, or how famous/infamous while still alive. When we're dead, we're all worm food anyway. Might as well let them rest in peace...even if you were the scum of the Earth while you were still alive.

This is not to condone anything the scum may have done in life, just stating that in death, they should be allowed to rest in peace. Their actions should never be forgotten or in some cases, never repeated.

I respect the dead simply because I respect everyone.

Showing respect for other human beings is what makes all of us human.

Only a year ago, I used to work as transport in a graveyard shift. So, I was assigned to transporting the dead to the morgue. I've brought different kinds of bodies: Small, large, obese, newborn. At times, I felt the need to just dump the body in the fridge. Other times, I gave them the proper shroud they deserve even if they're in a body bag. Most of the time, it's hard to feel anything for a body when you've never met the patient when was alive. But, I gave the body respect. Why? I don't really know, but I don't really need to intellectualize my contempt for or objectify the human body as a mere corpse. It just feels obligatory.

Yeah, respect their remains. It's healthier. There shouldn't be any revisionism just because someone died though.

You can throw me in a cardboard box and bury me in the garden for all I care, but the dead do deserve respect.

I would think that in that field, if you let your feelings take control, you would wind up driving yourself insane from all the death you see on a daily basis. Seems a pretty wise to put up wall of a sort to keep you from losing it.

I didn't see death in a nightly basis, but I saw death a lot. The body bag masks the identity of the deceased, and after a while, you stop caring. However, if I'm the one constantly carrying newborns to the morgue, I might go insane. Newborn corpses are small, and they feel almost not human. Yet, you know what you carry used to be a couple's pride and joy only to turn into a nightmare.

Death isn't easy in any setting. In a hospital, medical interventions objectify the body with chemical or mechanical support. In hospice, they bring dignity to the dying process. But hospice nurses suffer emotional fatigue when they regularly see the transformation a patient undergoes. The hospice nurse may receive a patient who was admitted to hospice conversant and ambulatory. Then months later she's breathing irregularly and is completely bed-ridden. It takes a toll on you.

No.

The following explanation covers all sides of the story to avoid causing disallowed discussions, so please don't cause them about this. If this is still dangerous territory, someone let me know and I'll delete it.

Either...

-They're in some sort of pleasurable place, in which case I hope they don't care.

-They're in some sort of punishing place, in which case they didn't deserve respect either alive or dead.

-They're in some other afterlife in which they either shouldn't care, don't deserve respect or don't remember and hence can't care.

-Or they're gone and therefore can't care.

I don't want a funeral for the above reasons. Just do whatever the hell you feel like with my dead body. I either can't care or don't care, so why should you? (This being just an example of the above reasoning)

But for some that respect is what makes it easier to face death. If we remove the possibility of showing respect to those that have died, people will be far more afraid of dying than they already are.

Besides, it isn't that difficult to show respect for the sake of showing respect.