For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing. - J. M. Coetzee

Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange.

Not only may you not enter the state without certification: you are, in the eyes of the state, not dead until you are certified dead; and you can be certified dead only by an officer who himself (herself) holds state certification. The state pursues the certification of death with extraordinary thoroughness — witness the dispatch of a host of forensic scientists and bureaucrats to scrutinize and photograph and prod and poke the mountain of human corpses left behind by the great tsunami of December 2004 in order to establish their individual identities. No expense is spared to ensure that the census of subjects shall be complete and accurate.

Whether the citizen lives or dies is not a concern of the state. What matters to the state and its records is whether the citizen is alive or dead.

I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them.