本期TED演讲者Caitlin Doughty女士从事殡葬业多年，她指出现行殡葬业内的“美化，消毒和保护”体系存在诸多弊端，我们需要一套新的体系让人死后回归本质，相融于土地，而不要成为土地的敌人。

演说者：Caitlin Doughty

演说题目：A burial practice that nourishes the planet Caitlin Doughty

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When I die, I would like for my body to be laid out to be eaten by animals. Having your body laid out to be eaten by animals is not for everyone.

Maybe you have already had the end-of-life talk with your family and decided on, I don't know, cremation. And in the interest of full disclosure, what I am proposing for my dead body is not strictly legal at the moment, but it's not without precedent.

We've been laying out our dead for all of human history; it's call exposure burial. In fact, it's likely happening right now as we speak. In the mountainous regions of Tibet, they practice "sky burial," a ritual where the body is left to be consumed by vultures. In Mumbai, in India, those who follow the Parsi religion put their dead in structures called "Towers of Silence." These are interesting cultural tidbits, but they just haven't really been that popular in the Western world -- they're not what you'd expect.

In America, our death traditions have come to be chemical embalming, followed by burial at your local cemetery, or, more recently, cremation. I myself, am a recent vegetarian, which means I spent the first 30 years or so of my life frantically inhaling animals -- as many as I could get my hands on.Why, when I die, should they not have their turn with me?

Am I not an animal? Biologically speaking, are we not all, in this room, animals? Accepting the fact that we are animals has some potentially terrifying consequences. It means accepting that we are doomed to decay and die, just like any other creature on earth.

For the last nine years, I've worked in the funeral industry, first as a crematory operator, then as a mortician and most recently, as the owner of my own funeral home. And I have some good news: if you're looking to avoid the whole "doomed to decay and die" thing: you will have all the help in the world in that avoidance from the funeral industry.

It's a multi-billion-dollar industry, and its economic model is based on the principle of protection, sanitation and beautification of the corpse. Whether they mean to or not, the funeral industry promotes this idea of human exceptionalism. It doesn't matter what it takes, how much it costs, how bad it is for the environment, we're going to do it because humans are worth it! It ignores the fact that death can be an emotionally messy and complex affair, and that there is beauty in decay -- beauty in the natural return to the earth from whence we came. Now, I don't want you to get me wrong -- I absolutely understand the importance of ritual, especially when it comes to the people that we love.But we have to be able to create and practice this ritual without harming the environment, which is why we need new options.

So let's return to the idea of protection, sanitation and beautification. We'll start with a dead body. The funeral industry will protect your dead body by offering to sell your family a casket made of hardwood or metal with a rubber sealant. At the cemetery, on the day of burial, that casket will be lowered into a large concrete or metal vault. We're wasting all of these resources -- concretes, metal, hardwoods --hiding them in vast underground fortresses. When you choose burial at the cemetery, your dead body is not coming anywhere near the dirt that surrounds it. Food for worms you are not.

Next, the industry will sanitize your body through embalming: the chemical preservation of the dead.This procedure drains your blood and replaces it with a toxic, cancer-causing formaldehyde. They say they do this for the public health because the dead body can be dangerous, but the doctors in this room will tell you that that claim would only apply if the person had died of some wildly infectious disease, like Ebola. Even human decomposition, which, let's be honest, is a little stinky and unpleasant, is perfectly safe. The bacteria that causes disease is not the same bacteria that causes decomposition.

Finally, the industry will beautify the corpse. They'll tell you that the natural dead body of your mother or father is not good enough as it is. They'll put it in makeup. They'll put it in a suit. They'll inject dyes so the person looks a little more alive -- just resting. Embalming is a cheat code, providing the illusion that death and then decay are not the natural end for all organic life on this planet.

Now, if this system of beautification, sanitation, protection doesn't appeal to you, you are not alone.There is a whole wave of people -- funeral directors, designers, environmentalists -- trying to come up with a more eco-friendly way of death. For these people, death is not necessarily a pristine, makeup, powder-blue tuxedo kind of affair. There's no question that our current methods of death are not particularly sustainable, what with the waste of resources and our reliance on chemicals. Even cremation, which is usually considered the environmentally friendly option, uses, per cremation, the natural gas equivalent of a 500-mile car trip.

So where do we go from here? Last summer, I was in the mountains of North Carolina, hauling buckets of wood chips in the summer sun. I was at Western Carolina University at their "Body Farm,"more accurately called a "human decomposition facility." Bodies donated to science are brought here, and their decay is studied to benefit the future of forensics. On this particular day, there were 12 bodies laid out in various stages of decomposition. Some were skeletonized, one was wearing purple pajamas, one still had blonde facial hair visible. The forensic aspect is really fascinating, but not actually why I was there. I was there because a colleague of mine named Katrina Spade is attempting to create a system, not of cremating the dead, but composting the dead.

She calls the system "Recomposition," and we've been doing it with cattle and other livestock for years. She imagines a facility where the family could come and lay their dead loved one in a nutrient-rich mixture that would, in four-to-six weeks, reduce the body -- bones and all -- to soil. In those four-to-six weeks, your molecules become other molecules; you literally transform.

How would this fit in with the very recent desire a lot of people seem to have to be buried under a tree,or to become a tree when they die? In a traditional cremation, the ashes that are left over -- inorganic bone fragments -- form a thick, chalky layer that, unless distributed in the soil just right, can actually hurt or kill the tree. But if you're recomposed, if you actually become the soil, you can nourish the tree,and become the post-mortem contributor you've always wanted to be -- that you deserve to be.

So that's one option for the future of cremation. But what about the future of cemeteries? There are a lot of people who think we shouldn't even have cemeteries anymore because we're running out of land. But what if we reframed it, and the corpse wasn't the land's enemy, but its potential savior? I'm talking about conservation burial, where large swaths of land are purchased by a land trust. The beauty of this is that once you plant a few dead bodies in that land, it can't be touched, it can't be developed on -- hence the term, "conservation burial." It's the equivalent of chaining yourself to a tree post-mortem -- "Hell no, I won't go! No, really -- I can't. I'm decomposing under here."

Any money that the family gives to the cemetery would go back into protecting and managing the land. There are no headstones and no graves in the typical sense. The graves are scattered about the property under elegant mounds, marked only by a rock or a small metal disk, or sometimes only locatable by GPS. There's no embalming, no heavy, metal caskets. My funeral home sells a few caskets made out of things like woven willow and bamboo, but honestly, most of our families just choose a simple shroud. There are none of the big vaults that most cemeteries require just because it makes it easier for them to landscape. Families can come here; they can luxuriate in nature; they can even plant a tree or a shrub, though only native plants to the area are allowed. The dead then blend seamlessly in with the landscape.

There's hope in conservation cemeteries. They offer dedicated green space in both urban and rural areas. They offer a chance to reintroduce native plants and animals to a region. They offer public trails, places for spiritual practice, places for classes and events -- places where nature and mourning meet. Most importantly, they offer us, once again, a chance to just decompose in a hole in the ground. The soil, let me tell you, has missed us.

I think for a lot of people, they're starting to get the sense that our current funeral industry isn't really working for them. For many of us, being sanitized and beautified just doesn't reflect us. It doesn't reflect what we stood for during our lives. Will changing the way we bury our dead solve climate change? No. But it will make bold moves in how we see ourselves as citizens of this planet. If we can die in a way that is more humble and self-aware, I believe that we stand a chance.

Thank you.(Applause)

我希望死后把遗体留给动物果腹。并非人人都能接受留遗体给动物果腹。

也许你已经与家人谈妥后事，也许选择的是火葬。说实话，我的遗体处理计划目前尚未完全合法，但并非首例。

这种处理尸体的方式 一向存在人类的历史里，称为曝葬。事实上，也许此刻某处 正在进行曝葬。西藏高原的人们「天葬」，把尸体留给秃鹰进食。在印度孟买，拜火教徒将死者遗体置入「寂静之塔」。这些有趣的文化花絮 在西方世界并不风行，因为不符合大众的预期。

传统上，美国人先化学防腐处理遗体，然后下葬在墓园，或者近期火化较为流行。我最近开始吃素，换言之，我曾大啖肉食，约三十年之久，不放过任何触手可及的肉食。难道我死后不应该轮到动物吃我吗？

我不也是动物吗？从生物的角度来讲，在座每一位不都是动物吗？接受我们是动物这个事实可能有可怕的后果。意味着我们得接受必然会衰老和死亡，如同地球上其他所有的生物一般。

过去九年我从事殡葬行业，一开始是火化操作员，后来承揽丧事，最近我开了自己的葬仪社。我有好个消息： 如果你想避开命定的衰老和死亡，世上既有的殡葬业会帮你避开这结局。

这个数十亿美元产业，经济模式建立在 保护、卫生与美化遗体的准则上。有意或无意，殡葬业者鼓吹人类是特例，不计代价、不管花多少钱、不管危害环境的程度，我们硬要如此，因为人类享有特权！ 如此做忽略了 死亡有着情绪混乱和复杂的本质，也忽略了腐朽有着腐朽的美，美在它自然回归大地，我们的起源地。别误会我的意思，我完全理解仪式的重要性，尤其是为了心爱之人所举行的仪式。但前提是我们必须在不伤害环境的基础上 创造并施行这类仪式。这是为何我们需要新的丧葬选项。

让我们回到保护、 卫生与美化的概念上。从遗体谈起。殡葬业处理遗体的现行方式是 向家属兜售用硬木或金属制成，用橡胶密封的棺材。下葬那天，棺材会被垂降置入墓园里的大混凝土 或金属墓室里。我们浪费混凝土、 金属、硬木等资源，把它们埋藏到宽阔的地下堡垒里。葬在墓园里的遗体 根本碰不到任何周遭的泥土，不会成为虫子的食物。

其次，殡葬业防腐处理遗体，用化学药物保存。过程是排干全身的血液，改为注入有毒、致癌的甲醛。他们的说法是为了公众的健康着想，因为死尸相当危险；但是在这现场的医生会说，只在那人死于传染病，例如伊波拉感染之类的情形才危险。老实说，即使发臭、不愉快的腐烂尸体 仍绝对安全。致病的细菌 和分解腐尸的细菌全然不同。

最后，殡葬业会美化尸体。他们说让令尊或令堂的遗体 留在的自然状态不好，而会用化妆和衣装来美化，会注射染料 好让死者看起来像是活着，只是在休息而已。防腐是造成错觉的欺骗，它遮掩地球上所有生命的自然终结乃是死亡和腐朽。

如果这样的美化、卫生和保护方式 没打动你，你并不孤单。有一大群人，包括丧葬执行者、 设计者、环保主义者，正尝试找出友善 生态环境的丧葬方式。这些人不认为死亡就得用化妆和浅蓝全新的燕尾服等等来妆点。毫无疑问 现行处理死亡的方式并不永续，尤其很浪费资源和依赖化学用品。即使火葬 通常被认为是种环保的选择，每次火葬消耗掉的天然气 可以让汽车行驶五百英里远。

接下来怎么做呢？上个夏天我在北卡罗莱纳州的山上，顶着烈日搬运一桶桶的碎木，西卡罗莱纳州立大学的 「人体农场」，更精准的名称是「人体分解设施」。捐给科学的大体被运到这里腐烂分解，帮助于将来的法医学研究。那一天 有十二具腐烂程度不一的大体，有的只剩骨骼，有一具穿着紫色的睡衣，有一具还看得见脸上的金色毛发。法医学那方面很吸引人，但不是我去那里参与的理由，我因同事卡翠娜·史培德而去那里，她正在创建一个不火化，而是用遗体做堆肥的殡葬系统。

她取的名字是「重组」，已经在牛和其他牲口上 试验了好几年。她擘画的设施，能让遗属把死去的亲人 安置在一个富含养分的混合物里，四到六周后，遗体连同骨头全都分解成土壤。在四到六周里，遗体原先的分子转化成其他的分子，真正是字面上的转化。

这符合和近来很多人 想要死后树葬 或幻化为树的希望吗？传统火化后的骨灰，无机的骨灰，形成厚厚一层白垩层，如果没被妥善埋入土里，其实会伤害树或使树枯死。但是如果你的遗体重组变成真的土壤，能滋养树木，达到你死后贡献的目标，货真价实达到目标。

那是火葬之外的另一种选项。未来的墓园是什么样子？很多人认为未来不应该再有墓园，因为土地已快被我们耗尽了。但如果我们重新定义，遗体不再与土地为敌，反而具有拯救土地的潜力呢？我说的是养护性埋葬，由土地信托购下大片的土地。妙在一旦那块地里埋下了几具遗体，就不允许或被开发或被更动，因此称为「养护性埋葬」。相当于你让遗体和一棵树绑到一起：「不，我不离开。」 「真的，我离不开。我正在树下分解。」

家属给墓地的每一分钱 都会被用来保护和管理这块土地。这里不会有传统形式的坟墓或墓碑。坟墓被适当地散布在 优雅的小丘下，只用小小的石头或金属片标记着，或是仅用 GPS 定位。遗体不经防腐处理，不用厚重的金属棺椁。我的葬仪社卖一些 杨柳和竹子编织成的棺柩，但老实说，大多数家庭只选用简单的裹尸布。没有大型墓穴，不像那些墓园造大墓穴只为了容易造景。家人能来这里享受大自然； 甚至能种棵树或灌木，仅限当地的原生种植栽。这样死者就完全融入景观里。

养护性墓地的前景看好。它们为城市和乡间提供专属绿地，提供再度引入当地动植物的机会，提供公共小径、 灵修场所，提供可上课和聚会的场地，提供大自然和哀思互相融合的地方。最重要的是再次给了我们在地底下腐烂分解的机会。让我重申，土壤思念我们。

我认为许多人 开始觉得当前的殡葬 并不适合他们。被消毒和美化 并不能反映我们当中的许多人，不真实反映我们代表 和拥护的生命价值。改变我们下葬的方式能解决气候变迁吗？不能，但它将会是 我们自诩为地球公民的魄力行动。如果我们以更简约、 更自觉的方式下葬，相信我们有机会解决气候变迁问题。

谢谢。（掌声）

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