When I lived in Chicago, I used to go to the Field Museum regularly (one day a week is free admission) and they have a pretty cool Egypt room with some of the technology of the day and several real mummies, under glass.
I always felt a little wrong a voyeuristic looking at those mummies. It felt somehow inappropriate and even a little obscene for all of us to go gawk at the corpses. I don't feel the same way when a trained scientist studies them. It's kind of like how I feel just fine about an M.E. doing an autopsy but I would feel wrong about even just going to the morgue and opening the drawers to have a look for any reason other than being brought in by the police to officially identify the body. There's just something in me that feels a dead body ought to be a private thing and not for strangers to stare at. And this is even though I don't believe the person who lived in that body has anything to do with it anymore. I guess it's just a deeply ingrained social taboo for me.
_________________
"In the end, we decide if we're remembered for what happened to us or for what we did with it."
-- Randy K. Milholland
Avatar=WWI propaganda poster promoting victory gardens.
30 May 2010, 6:59 pm
