If we consider post-mortem rights to matter morally, then something like necrophilia or defiling someone’s body after their death would be immoral even if they don’t experience it (obviously) and even if they don’t have any family or loved ones around to witness it or know that it happened. As an extension of themself, their dead body has intrinsic moral value as far as an obligation to treat it respectfully in accordance with what the person would have wanted or been okay with, not merely instrumental value that it serves to loved ones or the environment. And since we consider a person to have more moral value than the environment (otherwise it could be ethical to kill people to remove their environmental impact), even if it was more harmful to the environment to dispose of a body in a certain way (e.g. standard burial or cremation) over other methods, it would then still be ethical to dispose of it in a way the person either opted for or was likely aware would be done, rather than a less commonly known/practised and more invasive yet eco friendly method such as sky burial (putting their body on a mountain top and letting vultures tear it apart).
In other words someone’s bodily autonomy extends into death because they lived in their body their whole life, have a personal attachment to it as part of their identity, and just as they likely wouldn’t want it violated while alive (even if they were asleep for example), also likely wouldn’t want their body used for something disrespectful or really anything other than a standard form of interment (process of disposing of a body or putting it in a final resting place) that they would probably be aware would happen when they died, or is as generally uninvasive/dignified as possible, unless they specifically consented to something different or made a particular request for what would happen to their body.
IF all of the above is considered true, then (or just in general) wouldn’t it be unethical/disrespectful or a rights violation to preserve a human’s shrunken head for hundreds of years and then have it in an oddity collector’s shop to sell it to people to display in their houses?
Where are you finding all of these shrunken heads?
They’re not.
The vast majority were fakes because demand was so high and supply was so low.
It was a lot less effort to make it out of a sloth or monkey, and back then there was literally no way someone could know, even if they had one they 100% knew was authentic right next to it.
So while some authentic ones were out there, no one could tell the difference. So it was way more likely any that made it into a museum or large collection was fake.
I don’t really agree that people should have post-mortem rights. The only reason such things matter at all is how the still living feel about it.
People might be upset by the existence or display of such artifacts, and it might be better to respect those feelings. But the former head owner is gone and I don’t think their wishes matter anymore.
So is necrophilia acceptable if the person doesn’t experience it and no one is around to see it?
If not I don’t really see why necrophilia is unacceptable but using a person’s distorted and preserved body as a display item is acceptable.
Doesn’t the consideration of what a person would have wanted/not wanted to happen to their body after their death matter? While someone is alive, even when unconscious (asleep), it is a violation to exploit or violate their body in some way without their consent. Why is it that as soon as someone dies and loses physical control of their body, we should no longer respect their bodily autonomy and it’s now fair game to do what we want with it? That’s still their body that they may have felt uncomfortable with people doing things to.
the former head owner is gone
Do you think we should be able to do the same with people who suffer with Alzheimer’s disease or senility since they are technically “gone”? What about Down syndrome since their wishes are not on the same level as ours? Where do you draw the line?
Being literally dead, as in no brain or heart activity, is a pretty good place to draw a line… totally fixes your slippery slope.
Uh no lol I don’t agree with those cases at all. They’re still people with feelings that should be respected. Once they’re dead that ceases to be the case. It’s not really that gray of an issue.
IF you define taking and shrinking a corpse’s. head as a violation of the rights of that corpse’s human rights, then yes. Of course, I disagree with most of what you asserted. I guess my first two questions are “Why does a corpse get rights?” and really just… generally… with the moral system thing. If one feels “the environment” is more important than a human, then they should be pro-kill-all-humans?? I’m not sure that tracks. Most societies have a moral system that’s a little more complicated than “destroy everything that’s not the most morally significant to protect it from being hurt by less moral things.”
Anyway, interesting question! Maybe we should talk about corpse rights as a new category of rights? Less important, perhaps, than living humans, but more important than nothing?
By extension of this philosophy, we shouldn’t bury people, since worms will desecrate their deceased flesh. It seems to me then that shrunken heads might be a good way to save space.
I’m okay with it. Unless we start putting them on keychains. That might be taking it too far.
Shrunken heads don’t save space.
I can get 8 shrunken heads on my mantle or just 5 regular heads. Seems like a no brainier.
Well I hope you’ve taken the brains out at this point, or else things would start to get a little stinky.
I was gonna hang one off my rearview mirror.
Yeah but it’s less brutal, violent and visceral than vultures tearing your body apart and leaving a skeleton. I agree cremation seems nicer actually but the fact remains that burying and cremation are the 2 most common ways of disposing a body, which the person (usually) had an opportunity to object to in their life if they preferred a different option, and generally seen as the most respectful & least invasive. So it can’t be perfect but not violating/desecrating/defiling or exploiting/using a body for something or disposing of it in an unconventional and gnarly way seems like a reasonable thing to do.
And keeping someone’s head preserved and distorted and using it for display purposes for all time seems way more disrespectful and exploitative of their bodily autonomy than really any form of just disposing of the body/laying it to rest normally.
This is a very modern attitude regarding human rights- like only a couple of hundred years modern, and still not universally applied. I don’t know but I suspect that there are not too many shrunken heads made lately.
For a bit of a look at some previous attitudes, I can recommend Dan Carlin’s Hardcore history podcast.
I would consider trophies derived from human bodies to be immoral in the same way that child pornography is. The act of transmitting a digital file does not directly cause harm to anyone, but by creating a demand for it, you are in turn driving an industry that violates the rights of people in order to keep supplying it.
For many years after western contact with Aotearoa, people were deliberately killed for the sake of producing preserved heads which would be purchased by collectors in Europe.
If there were to be a resurgence in demand for such objects, there is no shortage of people either desperate enough or cruel enough to revive the practice of killing people to produce them.
Sure, there could be systems put in place to verify that a head was procured humanely after natural death, but it would never be foolproof, and there would always be some degree of black market causing harm on the fringes in order to meet demand.
We already know that people are killed in order to feed the black market for transplantable organs, so why would we allow an industry with all of the same risks to exist purely for the sake of art?
Given the nature of the discussion… I really have to ask about that user name.
Very true, I agree with your points. Just like procuring a file of CSAM, procuring a shrunken head or even something like an elephant’s tusk would be imo contributing to a demand for more to be made, as well as perpetuating a culture where those things are desired or even accepted to a degree, which could in turn lead to even more morally unsound methods of producing/acquiring them.
However I would also add that I think even in the hypothetical where accessing or even storing/viewing some CSAM files somehow didn’t contribute to any more being produced or shared by anyone, it would still be fundamentally unethical to access it/store it/view it, because while the most clearly abusive component has already happened, continuing to view or use the product of those actions is further violating the child’s right to not have themselves commodified or exploited like that, and disrespecting their right to privacy… for the same reason that a peeping tom is violating someone’s right by spying on them in their privacy, even if the person doesn’t know it happened (except in this case, it’s a violation on top of another violation - the child has been exploited, and then people are further violating the child’s rights by viewing it).
This aspect of something being fundamentally unethical even if it doesn’t contribute to more bad things happening in a measurable/utilitarian sense but in more of a deontological way where the action itself is violating certain moral duties by disrespecting their bodily autonomy, is where I’m coming from by thinking that using/displaying the dismembered body part of a person is unethical regardless of whether doing so contributes to more of that product being created.
The act of transmitting a digital file does not directly cause harm to anyone, but by creating a demand for it, you are in turn driving an industry that violates the rights of people in order to keep supplying it.
We already know that people are killed in order to feed the black market for transplantable organs, so why would we allow an industry with all of the same risks to exist purely for the sake of art?
I think you may be making a logical error here. Wanting or needing a transplant, or buying sneakers, or any other consumer product for which there is a legitimate and legal supply chain, does not make you responsible for any parallel illegal/unethical/immoral supply chain. There are black market supply chains for everything from food and basic necessities to luxury goods. There is no fool-proof way to ensure that ANY product you purchase didn’t derive at least partially from an immoral supply chain. It is impossible to track all products that closely. The fault is not with the consumer but rather with the immoral supply chain participants. Don’t take away the agency of those who participate in such things.
I agree with you somewhat, but I think in the case of body parts, which require the death of a person to procure, the risk of encouraging such bad actors is significant enough that we ought not to enable any market at all except where lives may be saved by their procurement.
You talked a lot about what the person would want, how do you know that the people who’ve had their heads shrunken didn’t want that? It seems just as strange as wanting to get embalmed and preserved inside a reinforced and padded wooden box below the earth, yet people choose this daily in most western cultures.
If we consider post-mortem rights to matter morally
They don’t.
In other words someone’s bodily autonomy extends into death
They don’t. Once you are dead your body is no longer yours. It’s just a large lump of decaying and rotting meat. It has less value than a dead deer because we can actually eat the deer.
Pretty sure possession of the body is supposed to pass to family. Honestly I don’t see much of a difference here between shinking heads and something more traditional like cremation, but the big factor at play here is consent. Obvs trophies and shit are bad juujuu but the actual practice isn’t really the issue imo.
Another question would be: What to do with the head now that it’s been that way for hundreds of years? Burn it? Bury it? Would any of that help and align with what the person who originally ‘owned’ that head wanted?
Yes, I think so. Lay it to rest and stop f***ing with it, finally.
Fair enough. I, too, think parts of dead bodies aren’t collector items or to be used for random purposes. Maybe for education and science. And with consent. But that’s it.
I really don’t think so, unless it’s part of someone’s explicit wishes/religion etc. It’s important tor respect what they want rather than assume. Otherwise I view dead bodies the same as poop. They need to be disposed of properly and all that. Also who’s to say a traditional burial is ethical? I’d feel claustrophobic.
I think when it comes to consent, we usually do assume that someone’s not okay with something (or err on the side of caution that they might not be) rather than assume it’s okay to do something to a person unless they’ve explicitly requested that it not happen. It works the other way round, where we only do something to them if they’ve said it’s okay. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as helping someone when they can’t help themselves if it’s extremely critical or if it doesn’t violate them at all (like putting a warm garment over someone who’s fallen asleep in the cold), or what might be argued as necessary to do for a child’s development so that they can live a functional/healthy life. And then there are cases where it’d be ideal if we could not do anything, but the situation forces us to choose an option of what to do, such as dealing with someone’s dead body. In those cases I think the safest thing to do would be to choose one of the most common methods of interment, since 1. The person was likely aware (though not necessarily) of the main methods of disposing of someone’s body that are usually practiced by humans when someone dies, and probably had the opportunity during their life to object to them and request something different if they didn’t like it. 2. Those methods are generally regarded as the most respectful options available, and so statistically someone would be likely to also agree with that sentiment. 3. They’re also arguably some of the least invasive/violent/brutal ways of dealing with someone’s body, though of course none of them are completely nice since you’re disposing of a dead body after all.
I think in life we struggle so much to survive and to care for those we love, and when people we love die it is very difficult. I think most people probably have a natural sense of right and wrong in regards to treatment of the dead. I don’t know that this is a continuation of a person’s right to governance over their body, I think it’s more of a general reverence for life and death that we all experience. I’m surprised to learn that in California where I live human remains are treated like any other property.
Depends on the religion, I’d say…
to me, though, it’d be a mental-illness to want one.
