Books bound in leather or books bound in Human skin which is worse?

Question

Are leather bound books or books bound in Human skin worse?

Ethically how do you make the distinction?

How does this knowledge relate to your beliefs about the environment?

http://www.hlrecord.org/media/paper609/news/2005/11/10/Opinion/Books.Bound.In.Human.Skin.Lampshade.Myth-1054759.shtml

Answer 1

Any dead skin, in general, wrapped around an object is repulsive.

Answer 2

~Shivers~  Gruesome question!  

I'll have to go with the books in human skin being worse, and I'll explain why.

As many people who read my replies know, I raise meat goats, and meat rabbits.  I could take a tanned hide of any goat outside, and show it to its mother.  The doe might sniff the hide, even nibble on it, to see if it was good to eat.  Then she would try to stick her nose in my pockets, or to eat my hair....she wouldn't understand that was her dead, skinned kid.

If I took a tanned hide of any human child, and showed it to its human mother, the human mother would probably be completely destroyed mentally, for the rest of her life.  She would understand, and her grief, and horror would be beyond mortal words.

If humans were stuck in a corral, and herded toward the narrow end (the killing end), the humans would completely understand that they were going to die.

I've seen cattle and sheep in a properly designed system.  The shutes curve, so the livestock cannot see strait ahead, and become afraid.  They don't understand that they are lining up for death.

For me personally (and my family) we choose to consume meat.  We view this as the natural order and balance of nature.  Plants do well, because herbivores come and eat them, and help distribute their seeds, and consume competing plants, as well as leave their manure behind.  Herbivores do well, because carnivores come and eat the young, old, weak, slow, injured, and ill.  

On our permaculture farm, we try to keep this natural cycle balanced and healthy.  On our farm, the humans, and our working farm dogs, would be the wolves or lions of a natural ecosystem.

We humans consume the flesh of the young.  The dogs are fed the flesh of the elderly, or injured.

Domestic animals made a trade off with humans.  They live under the care and protection of humans.  We feed them, care for them, and protect them from predation.  In return they serve us with their physical labor, or with the flesh of their bodies, or their young.

I realize that many people are thinking that the animals didn't have a choice, and humans forced them into domestication.  I personally don't think so.  For the ancestors of domestic animals the choice to live with humans was a much better option than trying to survive in the wild.

For every domestic animal, there is a close relative, for whom domestication was not an option, and they prefered to live in the wild.

Horse                         Zebra

Cattle                         Cape Buffalo/American Bison

Dog                            Grey Wolf

Cat                             African wild cats

Goose                        Barnical Goose

Sheep                         Dahl Sheep

Goat                            Bezoar

Llama                          Vicugna

Ferret                            Mink/wolverine/otter/skunk

Reindeer                     Moose

And so on, and so forth.  For many animals domestication worked....it was a good survival plan.  For other very close relatives (so close they can interbreed, quiet often) it did not work, and they simply will not allow themselves to become domesticated.

So I personally believe that certain animals made a pact with humans long ago.  I DO NOT believe this give humans the right to misstreat the animals.  I believe they should be give the best, and most natural life possible.  But I do believe there was a trade off...so my goats are not hunted by cougars, and they have shelter, water, and minerals 24/7.  My goats are domestic.  Part of the trade off, for the shelter, food, and protection that humans offer is to have some of their number sacrificed to provide food, and leather for humans.

Humans can understand a book made with human skin (and hopefully they shudder at the thought).  A cow is completely unable to comprehend that a book is bound with the leather of it's offspring.  

A cow can feel warm, cold, hunger, thirst, the love of an offspring.  Yet when that offspring is dead and gone, the grief for the cow is over.  She will not call for her calf more than a few days at most.  A human mother could wheep for her dead child, when she is a 90 year old woman.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 3

Depends on the opinion of the donor.  I'm  just going to take a shot in the dark and say human skin is worse because it's not as durable as leather.

Answer 4

What a perverted way of thinking.

Answer 5

uh..  Human, very bad, yuck, sick.... unless there a member of peta, in that case send me a copy of ten!

Answer 6

Hmm. My initial reaction was, not positive. During the holocaust the n***s made various products out of the remains of those who the slaughtered. Thus, the mere mention of books bound in human skin was upsetting.

However, the difference (in a non-genocide setting) between leather and human skin is that a fully functioning human can give expressed consent to be "utilized" post mortem, while an animal can give no consent to being used.

It has to do with ethics, but I'm not sure how it plays into environmental issues.

Answer 7

Neither are bad as long as the individual involuntarily donating the skin lived their whole natural life. Both types of skin are biodegradable. So I see no real environmental issue regarding the binding.  The paper itself is another issue.  

From an ethical standpoint the problem I have with leather is that an untimely death took place.  The cow was killed to get dairy and or  meat and then it's skin was used a by-product. It would actually be  better to use the skin of a human that passed on from natural causes.

We humans really don't contribute anything other than our  own waste products to the environment.  Upon death we bury each other in pine boxes so that the soil cannot be fed our nutrients.  Using each others organs including skin shouldn't be considered a taboo way to recycle ourselves.   IMO

Edit- I don't reside in an insane asylum either but we're talking about theoretics and specie-ism here.  The question is why do we  hold dead human skin with  so much more reverence than that of a buffaloes, cows, sheep's, etc.  I'm not advocating murdering another human to get their skin, just questioning why its so much better to slit something elses throat and then use it's.