Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Casey
No offense, but I don't see any real moral logic behind any of this. Morality is, for the most part, guidelines to avoid bringing harm to, or taking away from, other people. If the dead lingering on for a while longer doesn't bring any harm to anyone, then what's the moral reasoning for condemning them for doing so? "When your time has come, your time has come" and "Once dead it is not acceptable to continue living" aren't self-explanatory statements; they amount basically to "It's wrong because it's wrong."
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First your reasoning of "it's fine as long as it doesn't bring any harm to anyone" is a also fallacy.
Suppose a husband loses his wife, but he wishes to keep her corpse within their home because he does not wish to part with her. He dresses her body, bathes with her, and even sleeps with her to relive those golden days. Do you think it's right? After all, he's not hurting anyone!
Second, there are these religious ideas called salvation and the afterlife. If you're so insistent on justifying something with a negative (the lack of harm), then the harm from leaving them alone is that you are
preventing them from moving on. If Julie had not buried his daughter and let her "live", she would have been unable to grow physically or mentally either way. Her body would continue to rot, and her mind would continue to degenerate. All that is gained from leaving her be is a fleeting existence.
Finally, the point behind the show is not whether
you believe dying without passing on is wrong, but that the
characters do. Even in the case of the villagers who
did live long past their deaths for Ai's sake, it's hinted from Yoki and Anna's conversations that they do feel guilt and know what they're doing is wrong. If the characters legitimately believed they were doing nothing wrong, then they would have had no need to hide the fact that they were dead from Ai. Likewise, if Julie didn't believe in the importance of passing on, he wouldn't have had his daughter buried.