On Creativity, Death, and Trends

I am afraid that, as of late, my life has seen a bit more death than I would have liked, but these misfortunes have encouraged the contemplation of a subject which is actually quite fascinating.  I am particularly interested in how creative people have become with human remains.  For example, I recently read a Fast Company piece about small sculptures made with 3-D printers using peoples’ ashes.  I myself have written about the relatively new option we have to turn our ashes into diamonds.  Furthermore, when traveling through Germany, I encountered yet another cool way to bury loved ones the traditional way- graveyard plots that I ran across had been customized with little gardens:

All of this creativity gave me the urge to list our contemporary options (from the most technologically advanced to least):

• 3-D printing with human ashes
• Plastination
• Converting human ashes into diamonds
• Space burial
• Cryonics
• Chemical embalming for permanent display
• Casket burial- but with embalming or use of dry ice first
• Having ashes preserved in jewelery
• Having ashes preserved in an urn
• Having ashes buried
• Having ashes scattered
• Burying an entire body in a casket

NOTE: In the Comments section of this post, Lela shares some REALLY fascinating additional practices- some that are more systematic, and others which are more isolated in occurrence.  Do check them out!

After having created this list, I felt quite impressed and proud of our modern age.  Look, after all, at all of the supremely creative options we have given ourselves!  Who knew you could do such a wide variety of things with dead bodies!

…. and then I slapped my forehead.  Because we have ALWAYS been creative with dead bodies!!! Silly, silly me.  The technology has been upgraded, but our creativity has ran strong for thousands of years.  Below are only some of the creative things humans have historically done with bodies (some of which are still in practice).  I have listed them from what I see as most advanced to least:

• Egyptian mummification & burial
• Chinchorro mummification
• Embalming from the Han dynasty in China
• Viking-style send-offs
• Mound burial
• Vault burial
• Sky burial (an interesting counterpart to space burial… perhaps mostly in name though)
• Having ashes preserved in an urn (still in practice)
• Having ashes buried  (still in practice)
• Having ashes scattered (still in practice)
• Burying an entire body in a casket  (still in practice)
• Cave burial

This exercise made me realize, once again, that trends are never really about something new- they simply involve a novel way of going about something we have been doing for thousands and thousands of years.  This is why, boys and girls, the good trend spotter can gain as much insight and inspiration from the past as he can from the present!

So open up those history books…. you’re in for a wild, futuristic ride!

P.S. If I missed out on something creative we do or have done with human bodies (I’m not a huge fan of the topic, so I can’t say I know all that much), let me know and I’ll add it to the post!