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I would encourage everyone to visit here or one of the similar places mentioned in this thread. I visited the Sedlec Ossuary a couple of years ago and it was t

I would encourage everyone to visit here or one of the similar places mentioned in this thread. I visited the Sedlec Ossuary a couple of years ago and it was the most visceral personal emotional reaction I have ever had to seeing something. There is something mind-shifting about seeing thousands of human skulls in a pile ala Terminator that I cannot describe with words. I can only relate it to visiting the Vietnam War Memorial and realizing how those overwhelming 60,000ish names are a mere footnote in the casualty record of human conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary

sitkack 4y ago
The Sedlec Ossuary is, or probably should be a great VR experience if you can't go in person (I have). The shock wears off and then you realize how human the place is. We whisk our dead out of sight, having the bones of your dead relatives be so visible, would be like having a time compass directing the path of the rest of your life.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  It’d be kind of weird to bring someone there, count down the eleventh skull from the top right and then say “this here is grandpa”.
- DubiousPusher 4y ago
  Agreed. I wanted to keep my post brief so I didn't elucidate. Once that feeling had passed, I didn't posses the sombre semse of mortality that others expressed in this thread. My thoughts were not carpe diem. I didn't update my bucket list. Rather it gave me a stronger awareness of human connectedness. These are the bones of relatively few people in the grand scheme collected over several hundred years. This is just the tip of an iceberg of all human remains, most chucked into the ground and eventually forgotten but at the same time not without consequence. Because every moment of today is stamped indelibly by these peoples' existence. The crops they grew and things they built and lessons they taught marked the generations after them. It is a permanent mark in the continuity of human culture. For lack of a better term, it brought me a deep sense of solidarity as a human. It was somewhat radicalizing.

sitkack 4y ago

The Sedlec Ossuary is, or probably should be a great VR experience if you can't go in person (I have). The shock wears off and then you realize how human the place is. We whisk our dead out of sight, having the bones of your dead relatives be so visible, would be like having a time compass directing the path of the rest of your life.

Aeolun 4y ago
It’d be kind of weird to bring someone there, count down the eleventh skull from the top right and then say “this here is grandpa”.
DubiousPusher 4y ago
Agreed. I wanted to keep my post brief so I didn't elucidate. Once that feeling had passed, I didn't posses the sombre semse of mortality that others expressed in this thread. My thoughts were not carpe diem. I didn't update my bucket list. Rather it gave me a stronger awareness of human connectedness. These are the bones of relatively few people in the grand scheme collected over several hundred years. This is just the tip of an iceberg of all human remains, most chucked into the ground and eventually forgotten but at the same time not without consequence. Because every moment of today is stamped indelibly by these peoples' existence. The crops they grew and things they built and lessons they taught marked the generations after them. It is a permanent mark in the continuity of human culture. For lack of a better term, it brought me a deep sense of solidarity as a human. It was somewhat radicalizing.