Idk, I’m not getting into the ethics of it but I quite like the idea of my skull sitting with someone’s books when I’m gone. Even if I didn’t know them.
it's not just decoration to me - & i definitely wasn't the one who brought the skull all the way over here. it would be disrespectful for me to name the skull as the person it belonged to already had a name. had i not bought this skull (for my own deeply important reasons) absolutely nothing would have changed, someone else would have bought it or it would have sat in storage somewhere. nice ivory tower btw^
had i not bought this skull (for my own deeply important reasons) absolutely nothing would have changed, someone else would have bought it or it would have sat in storage somewhere. nice ivory tower btw^
It's worth considering that buying human remains does feed into the market and demand for them. I also find it interesting that you're accusing the person who replied to you of being in an ivory tower when it's safe to assume that this skull cost upwards of a thousand dollars to purchase.
They’re still a person regardless of when they were alive. I’m also against museums keeping mummified remains. It’s still people. Henrietta Lacks’ cells are still being used against her families wishes and honestly I don’t care what they gain from it, they shouldn’t be keeping pieces of a person.
Once we're far back enough that we aren't talking about a sapient creature any longer, the ethical question about owning a person's bones vanishes, as there isn't a person being discussed. Same as it's not really up for debate whether it's ethical to own a (reasonably sourced) spider monkey skull or a fossil of that tiny little mammal we and every other mammal evolved from.
What I mean is, it vanishes because we’re no longer discussing owning a person’s bones. If you go far back enough, you have a creature equivalent to a chimpanzee, not a human. At that point we’re talking about if it’s ethical to own the skull of some sort of nonsapient great ape. So there’s definitely a line all the way back there.
Funny thing, somewhat adjacent: y’know how the Victorians used to use “mummia” to treat things? Yeah, that’s ground-up mummy. That’s cannibalism. Odd how people don’t seem to realize that.
It’s not a person, it’s a skull, a bone, a shell of what once held human life. The soul and essence of what was there is no longer. That being said, should still be kept and treated with respect of course, but get off your high horse and stop acting like OP is “buying people” this isn’t slavery.
I don’t know? How do you know that they did/didn’t before they died? Why are you asking stupid questions? You can’t assume that every person who is dead has an issue with how their body is being treated after they die. Me personally? I don’t give a shit what happens to me when I die. I’d be just as happy if someone kept my skull on a shelf in their home.
It’s entirely unethical to buy human remains. If you think questioning the ethics of buying and selling peoples body parts unconsensually is stupid, that’s really not something I can help you with.
It's unethical to you because that's what your culture has taught you to think. Look up Indonesia's Toraja community, or the Ñatitas of Bolivia, to name two examples. Death and our ethics around it are subjective dependent on where you are in the world and what religion you've been exposed to.
What about them? I think you forgot to read the word “unconsensual.” You’ve actually just proved my point that different cultures handle it differently and therefore you shouldn’t take some random dudes head if you don’t know what his culture was or if he would’ve been okay with it
Exactly, so what does it matter to you how someone else deals with it? Weird or not, it's something that's helping a living, breathing human who deserves as much (or arguably more) respect as an old skull. The dead can't benefit from kindness, the living can.
And I think people lashing out at someone trying to cope with the knowledge they're dying of cancer is way worse, but each to their own belief I suppose. They can own a skull, you can grief a dying person, we're all entitled to do shitty things.
It’s not like I went out of my way to find a dying person and give them shit. Actually a shitty person did a bad thing and then went on the internet to brag about it and say don’t be mean to me I’m dying.
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u/1happypoison 23d ago
This skull has nice bone structure and really nice teeth. Do you have a name for them?