[MarkPNeyer]

> That's not something done because zombie mothers will rise up to enforce anything.

This was done in cultures where people really believed their deceased ancestors were watching them and judging their every move, and that in the future they’d either see their ancestors in paradise, or they wouldn’t.

We just kept doing it long after those beliefs became uncool, like a lot of other vestiges of our religious past.

[solarkraft]

I wouldn't mind Carl Sagan judging my every move. Maybe I'll imagine this from now on.