In the long history of mankind, a rich and colorful funeral culture and Xi have been formed, and in ancient societies, it was generally believed that the soul was immortal, and if people were not properly disposed of after death, it could have a bad impact on the living.
Therefore, after death, the family or friends of the deceased will choose to bury the deceased, which can not only comfort the soul of the deceased, but also avoid negative effects on the living.
There are many forms of burial of the deceased, such as burial, cremation, sky burial, etc., and the specific choice depends on factors such as human culture, religion, region, and personal preferences. However, under the influence of the concept of sustainable development, a more environmentally friendly burial method has emerged, and that is "water burial".
In 2007, the United Kingdom introduced "water burial", boiling water for 4 hours to completely melt the body, reportedly, this is more environmentally friendly, what is going on?
Environmental Awareness Derives Green "Water Burial"
On August 4, 2007, the well-known British media "Daily Post" published such a report, which announced that a British funeral company launched a new environmentally friendly funeral method, which is called "life cycle", which is a new type of water burial.
The report describes in detail the principle of this "water burial", that is, after death, the body is placed in a silk bag, and then sent together into a special dissolving chamber. Once the body is inside the cabin, the system automatically calculates the weight of the body and then pours water and alkaline potassium hydroxide into it.
After the mixed solution is submerged in the corpse, the dissolution chamber will automatically heat the temperature in the cabin to 150 °C, and under the action of early high temperature, this solution will quickly decompose the corpse, accelerate the decomposition of human tissues and bones, so that the tissue becomes liquid and the bone becomes calcium powder.
After the decomposition is complete, the funeral company will hand over the separately separated calcium powder to the family of the deceased, who can choose to bury the deceased in a cemetery or choose another way to bury the deceased.
In terms of cost, the cost of this "water burial" is about the same as the cost of local cremation, which makes people have more choices for the burial of the deceased.
What's more, this method of disposing of corpses is the same principle as the decomposition of substances in nature, and the funeral company only accelerates the decomposition of the human body through chemical reactions, so in the process of decomposing the corpse, this method produces much less greenhouse gases than cremation.
This means that this kind of "water burial" is more environmentally friendly, and in the face of global warming, this method seems to be more in line with people's implementation of the concept of sustainable development.
However, the deceased are different from ordinary creatures, and as the rulers of the earth, will people accept this form of burial?
A new type of consciousness strikes traditional ideas
In fact, as soon as this report came out, it immediately attracted a lot of discussion.
About 20% of people agree with this method and are willing to return to nature after their death, but the vast majority of people believe that this is contrary to the original concept of "let the deceased rest in peace", and it is really unacceptable to use this kind of funeral method of "boiling" after death.
In fact, it is no wonder that people can't accept it, after all, in people's traditional concepts, most people believe that the human body is the carrier of life and should be properly disposed of after death, and burial is a way for the living to express their awe for life.
Through the burial ceremony, people can express their nostalgia and remembrance for the deceased, and can also help the living face the grief caused by death.
And this new funeral method is more like simply disposing of the corpse, which is not only a kind of torture for the deceased, but also violates the original intention of people's funeral.
What's more, in the long history of mankind, there have long been many more decent funeral methods to choose from, and there is no need to choose this way.
So, what are the traditional burial methods of human beings?
Traditional funerals embrace humanity at the bottom
Of all the funeral methods, the most traditional is burial. Burial is usually the burial of the body of the deceased in the ground, covered with soil.
The reason why people use this method is that in agrarian societies, people generally believe that the gestation and growth of all life are inseparable from the soil, and after death, they also pursue the life law of "entering the soil for peace" and "dust returning to dust", so burial is regarded as the best way for human beings to return to nature.
The countries that use burial are mainly concentrated in Asian countries, such as China, Japan, South Korea, etc.
However, with the development of society and the process of urbanization, people have also begun to accept other funeral methods such as cremation.
Cremation refers to the burial of a person's body after death, and then the ashes left from the burning are placed in an urn and buried in the earth, or the ashes are scattered in water or other places.
This funeral method was originally born because the Buddhist Shakyamuni was cremated and incarnated as a relic after his death, so Buddhism and other religions believe that cremation is a sacred way, which can release and sublimate the soul of the deceased, so this funeral method has been handed down.
In addition to the factors of personal religious beliefs, most of the reasons why modern people choose cremation as a funeral method are more space-saving and environmentally friendly than burial.
As the global population base grows, available land resources are becoming increasingly limited. Cremation can cremate the body of the deceased into ashes and then place it in an urn, which not only saves a lot of space in the cemetery, but also reduces the consumption of natural resources.
However, due to the fact that the integrity of the body will be destroyed during the cremation process, many people think that this funeral method is not respectful enough for the deceased, so there are also a large number of people who do not accept this method. At present, the countries with a relatively high degree of acceptance of cremation mainly include the United Kingdom, Japan and other countries.
In addition to these two most common funeral methods, there are also some less commonly used methods, such as sky burial, cliff burial, tower burial, water burial, etc., which are basically only used by some ethnic minorities, mainly related to the other party's ethnic culture and religious beliefs.
However, it should be distinguished that the water burial here is not the kind of "water burial" proposed by the British, it is a burial method in which the body of the deceased is thrown into rivers, lakes and seas. The advantage of this method is that it does not occupy land, but the disadvantage is that it will affect the ecology of the water, so it is generally not recommended.
Compared with this traditional water burial, the "green water burial" proposed by the British funeral company can actually be said to be the most environmentally friendly. It not only has the advantages of traditional water burial, but also does not pollute the environment, which can not only reduce the occupation of land, but also prevent the occurrence of diseases.
If you put aside the shackles of traditional ideas, but start from the global promotion of environmental awareness, this approach is indeed worth choosing.
However, as mentioned above, the funeral culture of human beings at the beginning was mainly generated around "human nature", so the evaluation of the quality of this funeral method is also the opinion of the benevolent and the wise.