No, I don’t want to buy one. This came out of a discussion about my brother, who is so much weirder than me if you can believe it, who owns a real human skull.
I don’t know how he got it. I don’t know where he got it from, maybe this company, more importantly, I don’t know why he would want such a thing. He is not a scientist, he works in IT. He did get an MFA in theater, wanted to be a professional theater director and loves Shakespeare, I can’t believe the reason was because he wanted Hamlet to be super authentic.
We’re not all that close, so it really hasn’t come up in conversation. I only know about it because he posted elsewhere a while back that he was on a Zoom meeting at work and he showed it off and couldn’t understand why everyone stopped laughing and got silent. So obviously he thinks it’s cool to own it.
It used to be a person. I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in an afterlife, but that’s just basic disrespect.
Anyway… how can you ethically source a skull and then sell it on the open market?
This is where I disagree with the rest of society. Dead people are dead and don’t have rights, so I don’t see how most skulls would be unethical.
So the real question is will it upset the living and how much do you want to accommodate those people’s feelings? I’m not sure there’s a clear and unambiguous answer to this question.
It’s always about the living and their feelings. The dead don’t care about nothin’ because they lack the ability
I think it’s a murkier area than you’re thinking. What if the skull was of a slave or of a Holocaust victim? I think selling such skulls would be highly unethical.
I agree with you but I don’t think it’s intrinsically unethical because they are skulls, but because there might be humans emotionally attached to the remains of the diseased. Those skulls belong to someone (not the dead person anymore), and it is up to that person like with the rest of their property. In this regard, selling the remains of a loved one so you can feed the living, sounds exploitative to me, but I could say the same thing about any other economic injustice. All of with fall under unethical consumption under capitalism.
If no one has a connection to said skull, then I’d agree that it is just a piece of bone, and dealing with it is no more ethical or unethical than with a piece of bone your dog finds outside.
Does it matter? I understand this could be emotionally sensitive for some people but the only reason I could see this being relevant is if my purchase somehow induced more slavery or genocide. That seems very unlikely—in fact I can think of a number of common purchases people make all the time without a second thought that are far more likely to encourage such crimes.
I would be concerned that a market would take place, where money could be made selling them, creating more incentives to acquire skulls… you see where this is going?
I think it does matter, yes. I think it’s exploiting a horrific tragedy. You don’t know why the person is buying it. Maybe the person is buying the Holocaust victim skull because they’re a Neo-Nazi and they intend to stomp on it at a party.
The possible future actions of a morally corrupt bigot have nothing to do with whether or not this collection of bones ought to be sold. I don’t think they should be sold just because I think it’s weird to purchase a person, even after death. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with donating said bones to a research lab. The person who died is gone. They no longer exist. Only their loved ones matter in that they may be upset by the use of their remains.
Bones are relics and relics only have the value we ascribe to them.
Would you say the same about an executed person’s organs if they had no next of kin? China should be free to harvest them like they do now? The person who died is gone.
The problem there isn’t the use of the organs, but that they’re murdering someone to harvest the organs.
Sure, if someone died of natural causes. Use them to save someone who is otherwise dying.
just wanted to note that the fundamental basic of civilization is burying your dead. at least according to archeologists. without honoring those who came before you, we are beasts.
We are beasts. The separation between humans and animals is pure mythology. This idea is part of that myth.
Making it a commercial business makes it unethical. Who’s to say they won’t be exploiting the poor, desperate people and twisting the legality, cross country loopholes to profit?
Do you think diamonds, lithium, rare metals are ethically sourced too, just because the retailer/marketing says so?
Does exploiting people for profits upset you? How many of the “most” need to be unethical to upset you?
Post like these confirm to people saying only the most lunatic fringe, out of touch with reality left reddit during/after the reddit controversy.
I’m opposed to capitalist exploitation but don’t you think that’s a bit tangential here? Like we don’t see this sort of hand-wringing about buying a video game console.
Personally I try not to participate in capitalist consumption more than necessary, so I wouldn’t buy a skull for that reason. But that’s not why this upsets people. Otherwise they wouldn’t be constantly buying new clothes, gadgets, etc. to amuse them. Those industries are if anything more likely to exploit and harm people, so focus your scrutiny there if you are so concerned with the global workers.
This reminds me of the fake concern for sex workers that is used to shun and exile them from polite society. Yes, sex-workers are exploited, but when you’re using that exploitation as a shield for your real agenda, that needs to be examined critically.