Monica

“No decent person ought associate with murderers, by the same token any collaboration with that greatest of criminals—Nature—is inexcusable. Yet what is burial but collaboration through a game of hide-and-seek? The point being to dispose of the body, as accomplices are wont to do; on the tombstones various inconsequential things are written, save the only one that is material: for if people would but dare to look the truth in the eye, they would be carving there instead a couple of the more pungent profanities, addressed to Mother Nature, for it is she who got us into this. Meanwhile no one breathes a word, as if a murderer clever enough always to get away with it deserved, for that, some special consideration. Not “memento mori” but “Estote ultores,” onward to immortality, that should be the cry, even if it means parting with our traditional appearance. Such was the ontological testament of that eminent philosopher.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy