Respecting the Dead

Hmm...did I mention Government-by-Superstition? I don't like to get in the middle of people's private little wars, but removing a military memorial to exhume the graves of soldiers who fought in WWII is NEVER going to meet with parades and accolades...as was recently shown in Estonia.

News24 Story
ABC News Story

One of the things westerners often forget is that people from MANY nations were united against Nazi oppression in the 1930s and -40s. The fact that some of those men went on to build the Soviet infrastructure that swallowed so many countries devastated by Adolf Hitler's war-machine is even now a matter with which the world has not yet come to terms.

Who is right and who is deluded? I don't know.

All I know is that burial is one of the most sacred matters of human consciousness...and people who think otherwise have obviously never done field-archeology.

The dead can NEVER be treated with perceived disrespect without serious social consequences ensuing--it's just a historical fact.

But disavowing this truth is more a form of insanity than an exposition of higher reasoning, IMHO.

I don't share all of the beliefs my ancestors held. But I know I had to be properly blessed before digging up human remains.

Maybe there are people who think they mitigate the deepest areas of human consciousness with permits?

Author's Addendum: I genuinely struggled with the wording of the last paragraph...because mitigate is not really the term I intended to use...I just can't think of a better phrase (or at least one that hasn't been thoroughly abused by one faction or another with whom I have little interest associating myself.)