Funerals are rarely for the dead, despite what we tell ourselves they are mostly for the living.
The benefit of the program, as I see it, is the reassurance that even if they lost everything tomorrow they will at least have a kind stranger show up to their funeral. I admit it’s not a lot to offer, but I find it to be a small consolation.
When we are alive, we want to be acknowledged, at the very least. We might think about making arrangements for our stuff after we are gone, or trying to reconnect with someone to say goodbye before it's too late, etc. Knowing that we will die tends to inform some of our behavior when we're alive.
Now, we die, and that's that. Maybe we experience something after, maybe we don't. We don't know. There's lots of good guesses out there, some more coherent than others, but even if we lean toward oblivion, we cannot conceive of it, of non-existence.
So, we don't focus on that part. It's not a useful thing to examine and results in crisis for some. Instead, we focus on life, because that is knowable to a degree. Funerals are as much for the living as they are for the dead who were previously alive. We die knowing, or hoping maybe, that we will get acknowledgement that yes, we existed, after we pass, even if we do not directly experience it.
It's an awkward concept, probably because you have to draw a line somewhere or else we'd be faced with extrapolating the wishes of millennia of dead people into the future, and crippled by trying to be respectful to what it seems they would have wanted but what they shouldn't really have any say over. They shouldn't have any say over stuff they're not involved in and don't understand (because they're dead). But being involved in stuff and understanding stuff doesn't have to cease exactly when you die and cease to function, it can be extrapolated beyond that a bit, based on what the person said back when they existed. Hence, last wills. Which largely get ignored and revised, and mostly only serve to distribute property, but a dead person's last wishes still do get respected, a bit, sometimes, and should be, because people are basically a bunch of ideas and their last wishes after death are ideas too.
That's an assumption, not a fact, and there are very rigorous philosophical arguments for personal immortality. But even given personal survival of death, and given that the remains are not technically a body anymore as a body is part of a living person (a severed hand, as long as it remains severed, it not a bona fide hand), it is still a show of respect for each person and the memory of them, of the fact of their existence. It isn't a matter of what they would or would not have wanted, or do or do not want, but our own relationship toward people. How we treat remains has enormous importance and consequences for our sense of human dignity; it both reflects and shapes that sense of dignity. Treating a corpse like trash translates into a devaluation of human life and the life of the person who has died. The implication is entailed. But treating it with respect also entails a conclusion: this was a person, and that we treat their remains with respect must mean that respect is due, and it is due because they are the remains of a human person. We consider attacks on statues and other images of the dead hateful and disrespectful. How much worse is it to attack and disrespect someone's remains! Religious images, also clearly not remains, are likewise disposed of in a respectful manner according to religious law and custom because of what they depict.
The Greeks felt you pass twice, first when you die and then when no one who said your name is still alive. So this might extend that second phase a little for this cohort.
Knowing that someone will remember them, at least in a fashion, after they're gone is an important component of present-day [alive] mental wellbeing for many people.
I don't remember seeing this the first time around, however it cropped up and I found it very touching.
But: if you die, and nobody is around to eulogize you, would you rather be completely forgotten, or have a total stranger think about what happened to you and make a short-and-ultimately-meaningless speech accordingly?
For me, it's the latter, but then, I'm biased :)
If i die and there is nobody around to eulogize me then I am already forgotten.
> or have a total stranger think about what happened to you and make a short-and-ultimately-meaningless speech accordingly
I would prefer that not to happen. It feels fake.
Of course your time is your time, you spend it as you see it best fit, but haven’t you thought about reaching out to someone old and lonely before they die? That would feel to me much more likely to be meaningfull.
Somewhat a little harsh, but at least I'd rather people worry about the living then fretting about my remains. By the point, I would be beyond caring.
Every human culture ever, afaik, has burial and death rituals. I don't suppose they are useless.
It's too late for the person to receive any benefit. They won't know or care.
If it's not accurate and you're making stuff up, this feels like a creative writing exercise to make the eulogizers feel good. Like getting a dopamine kick off of someone's macabre death.
I don't think I'd like if I knew people would do this to me.
Whatever the case, death sucks. Loneliness sucks. We have a lot of problems to solve.