11-20-2024, 05:43 PM
(11-19-2024, 07:44 PM)Acitta Wrote: I am an atheist and not originally from the Region, but if I had ancestors buried there, I would still object to them being arbitrarily dug up.
I think most people would feel the same at first. The burial of a human body has been part of human civilization for thousands of years. It's just what we do and we now have an ingrained idea of not disturbing one's remains. But we also do lots of other things with them. People are cremated, sometimes buried at sea (and even "turned into" reefs) and there are newer, rather unique methods such as what some call a living urn in which the ashes of a cremated body are put in a biodegradable urn with a plant/tree sprout or seed, then planted and in a manner of speaking, get reborn as a new form of life. The prospect of digging up hundreds of bodies and reburying them elsewhere is a hard thing to accept.
But at the same time, a reasonable person should ideally be able to come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to do if it was to benefit society at large and future generations to come, though seeing it that way requires not thinking emotionally (a challenge for most) and thinking rationally. If people are able to collectively agree that huge parking lots, industrial parks, highways, suburban subdivisions are a bad thing for everyone and everything, then they should also be able to see that a cemetery in the middle of a large urban centre is one of the worst uses of land imaginable when space in urban places is finite. As another post mentioned, San Francisco once banned cemeteries in the 20th century and moved many remains outside the city (and I think, to this day, it's still illegal to bury anyone within the city). Would anyone who is sensible these days argue that it was a horrible idea to do that? Probably not, because that land was able to be reutilized to build one of the greatest cities on this continent. It was just a matter of good vision, planning and land use.