Guys please, stop fighting over corpses

Just because we live in a fucked up society that doesn't have laws that give rights to deceased people that doesn't mean you can do whatever the fuck you want to a corpse.

I was just following his line of thought: he said that corpses have no rights but they have value. If they have value and you can't mutilate them/have intercourse with them/etc you can't use them for financial gain or take degrading pictures of them either. I was just adhering to his logic and saying it doesn't make any sense.

I understand where you're coming from, and I appreciate the civil conversation. My major point of contention was with people speaking about corpses as though they have feelings. Your "naked ex-partner" example is different, because that person is living and can be hurt by the album cover. But a corpse isn't going to be hurt if it discovers an image of itself on an album cover, if you get my meaning. This stuff only effects the living. And when it comes to these medical/autopsy type photos, how do they become public in the first place? And what if, in some cases, a family doesn't even exist to be hurt by the photos?

But, like I said earlier, it's low on my list of things to be worried about. I can't bring myself to care all that much. Just being honest about it. But I understand that some people are gonna feel more strongly about it, and that's fine. I decided to throw in my two cents 'cause some posts were reading like parody.

But is it the potential harm or is it the action itself that is immoral?

I mean what if the nude of the ex-partner is an extreme close-up and there's no way of anyone ever identifying who it is? I'd say it's still immoral even if there is no potential for harm. But I guess that's the difference between utilitarianism and moral philosophy. To me, it's the fact that someone is taking a private photograph of someone else, without their consent, and is profiting off of it. So even if it's a medical autopsy photo, the use is supposed to be for medical purposes only, not to sell somebody's music. That's what makes it exploitative in my mind.

I don't think I ever expected to see someone so outraged that most people aren't okay with a band making money off of a random person's dead body.

If the ex-partner can identify that it's a picture of themself, even if no one else can, it might still feel like a violation. But a corpse is never going to feel violated because it discovered an image of itself on an album cover. Its loved ones might feel like it's a violation. But that's why some amount of context is needed. For example, if the picture is really old, or if it's a john doe situation, I doubt we need to worry much about the family. And the corpse certainly isn't going to care. It's the difference between caring about the living and attributing feelings to a corpse. The latter is a bit absurd. And some people are equating grave desecration and necrophilia with photographs of a corpse, which is also a bit absurd.

Please. You are acting like these bands are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. That isn't and never will be the case.

In this thread: people questioning the respectfulness and taste of a band called Pissgrave.

I think it's just a matter of ethical perspective. If you're coming at it from moral philosophy instead of utilitarianism, it's not question of potential harm, but the ethics of the action itself. Why is it that most countries will not harvest a corpse's organs for donation if they opt out (or fail to opt in) for an organ donation program? No one is harmed and some people actually benefit. I don't think it's just some religious choice or people ascribing feelings to a corpse. I think it has something to do with consent and some concept of ownership of one's body in perpetuity. And that in itself is an interesting ethical question to think about.

And I don't know about the other posters, but my examples of necrophilia and desecration were extreme examples where moral stances are a little clearer. I did not intend to imply that a photo of a corpse is comparable. I do get where you're coming from. It is definitely a rather minor but still unethical action--misuse of a photo of a corpse. So yeah, I think we agree, we were just coming at the point from very different perspectives.

No. And there was a black metal band that released back in '17 or '18 (maybe earlier) and the cover was a dead child - a girl, like 6 years old. I think she'd been found murdered in the woods somewhere. Just despicable if you ask me.

brutally naked

You raise some interesting questions. Definitely food for thought. But if the argument boils down to, "It's unethical because it's unethical," then I don't know what to do with that. I need to hear some sort of reasoning.

I recall seeing an album cover by a band called Last Days of Humanity. It was an image of a mutilated/rotting slab of meat. There was no face in the image, and the slab of meat was barely identifiable as a human body. Now, I'm not saying that this particular album cover is representative of all album covers of its type. And I'm not saying that the band took ethics into consideration when they selected such an image for their album cover. But, in this specific example, who is it really hurting? Is it distasteful? Upleasant? Nasty? Yes. Absolutely. But is it some outrageous breach of ethics and morals? I don't know. I don't think so. But my point is that I'm not willing to paint every album cover with the same brush, or make any black and white judgements.

Using actual dead people on the cover that could have living family members who knew them that could possibly come across it is just childish. I mean yeah, if you want to be looked at as a 12 year old edgelord..... sure. Go ahead. Be as "offensive and shocking" as you possibly can. There are no rules. However lines of taste regarding stuff like that are something I personally won't support. What if that was your mother or sister on the cover of that album? I have very, very loose standards for death depiction and dark humor, but, even for me this is crossing the line. It's whatever though. You aren't going to stop it. Edgelords gonna edgelord.

desecration of corpses in any way is a taboo regardless of religion, faith or culture

Wrong.

Don't just go "wrong" on people. Elaborate. Which part of the post do you take issue with?

I think the reason why people claim that it's unethical because it's unethical is because the answers cannot be found on the plain of reason. They simply pertain to feelings,

I gotta tell ya's.... I sort of tried to stay away from message boards for a long time. Insidious fucking shit, I says. Gets in the way of my life flow, the things that matter, the here and now.
I lurked this board for years before finally deciding to be a part of it....

Man.... I fucking regret it. Aside from learning of one band Im happy to know, I dont think anyone has ever really connected back with me. Thats cool, Im a big boy.
It's just that between that lack of connection and the obvious fucking sociopaths on display very often, I just dont know why I keep coming back.

Seriously have to consider repurposing my time away from this site.

Using a picture of my corpse as your album cover I require 1% of the album's revenue to be dropped on my grave in cent coins.

Edgelords this, edgelords that. Metal was built by edgelords, the trailblazers of most genres were edgelords. In the 70s you would consider Black Sabbath edgelords. Then you would consider Maiden's Sanctuary to be crossing the line and so on. Simply brushing them off as edgelords is really not an argument.

Cannibalism is still present, albeit scarcely.

I would rather say that we share death anxiety and/or will to live. I'm not sure absolutely everyone is afraid of death (unless you take subconsciousness), it has personal and temporal dimension. I remember reading about surprising death anxiety decline in people as they become increasingly old, which means most of them find the way to cope with approaching death. We probably use coping mechanisms, and it's a nice hypothesis about emergence of religion, namely, that it came from our fear of the unknown; in the past that included unexplained natural phenomena like earthquakes, and now it mostly applies to our fear of/difficulty to comprehend the magnitude of time, past and future, and to come to peace with the fact that this world existed long before us and that it will last long after we turn into dust. Sometimes I feel what I call death anxiety moment or existential angst when I briefly feel the absurdity and horror of the fact that my mind is forever gone after I die (I'm an atheist). I've said briefly because my coping mechanism quickly turns on and I loose the feeling. I even consciously rely on reason by comparing death to an eternal sleep: we shut down our (self-)consciousness every night when we fall asleep.

Fear of spiders is one of those adaptationist/panglossian explanations in sociobiology which sounds nice at first, but actually lacks evidence. There are even counterexamples of cultures who eat spiders and aren't afraid of them, apart from people who keep them as pets. Fear most probably evolved as an adaptation in our phylogenetic ancestors, but the objects of fear (like snakes and spiders) probably did not. I think it's the safest to assume animals learn to be afraid of something, rather than having images of predators imprinted in their genes.

I could bet that if you could make an experiment, take 100 human babes and raise them in an environment in which people are necrophiliacs, they wouldn't consider it taboo. There are people who kill their mothers and rape corpses, like you said, and some of them think it's right, regardless of what we think. Some of those people have mental health issues, but that doesn't deny the fact their morals are different and valid/complete (assuming their ability to empathise isn't pathologically damaged). If you want to find the most widespread taboo, that would be incest - the majority of us think it's wrong.

Moral values are based on cognitive, emotional and voluntary components - we think about moral subjects and process information related to them, we have some feelings directed to them and we have the need to act certain way (or not).
I highly recommend the book The Emotional Construction of Morals by Jesse Prinz, which I have quoted on this forum 3 times. I haven't read the first part yet; I'm sure it's good, judging by the second part.

This all boils down to whether you are moral relativist or not. I think those supposedly universal morals are deception of mass cultural values which work as global trends. There are a lot of people who think universal moral facts exist (and are always true) and they cannot comprehend the existence of another person who thinks differently because their moral feelings are making them blind. I think we can all agree that morality is context dependent, which has been elaborated in previous posts dealing with corpses. The point is, you decide for yourself what's wrong and right depending on facts and feelings you have, but beware, it's true only for you. It can be frustrating because in society we need to agree upon some stuff in order to make laws and be able to punish the ones who don't follow the herd. Sad, but functional - saves us from murderers, thieves etc.

There are a lot of people who think universal moral facts exist (and are always true) and they cannot comprehend the existence of another person who thinks differently because their moral feelings are making them blind.

Fear most probably evolved as an adaptation in our phylogenetic ancestors, but the objects of fear (like snakes and spiders) probably did not. I think it's the safest to assume animals learn to be afraid of something, rather than having images of predators imprinted in their genes.

There are people who kill their mothers and rape corpses, like you said, and some of them think it's right, regardless of what we think. Some of those people have mental health issues, but that doesn't deny the fact their morals are different and valid/complete (assuming their ability to empathise isn't pathologically damaged).

Don't just go "wrong" on people. Elaborate. Which part of the post do you take issue with?

My personal favorite example of corpse desecration being widely accepted is the civilian population of Milan stoning, dragging, then hanging upside down the corpses of Mussolini and his mistress after the partisans that executed them dumped them on the street.

As for my opinion on the original topic, It's basically the same as my opinion on A Serbian Film - shocking or grotesque imagery with no emotional weight behind it is artistically lazy and bankrupt and it can easily descend into unwitting self-parody. It's a cheap way of getting notoriety.

How about using photos of dead nazis as album covers?