As told by Dominic:

The first time I saw somebody die was while standing in a queue at the UBS bank in Geneva. Switzerland is a country famous for its anonymous banking system, and I was taught a swift lesson in the priorities of finance over any unexpected eruptions of “the real” that may occur in the marbled shrines of capitalism. An old man, waiting to make a deposit or withdrawal, or simply an inquiry, had a heart attack and collapsed. The already hushed bank went totally silent for a moment, as the echo of his cry dissolved in the distant corners of that vast open space. Several people certainly did the humane thing, and ran to his aid. An ambulance was called. But soon enough a man – who may or may not have been a doctor – pronounced him already dead. Still, they waited for someone in uniform to make this opinion official.

Nobody, however (including myself), was going to let this unfortunate incident disturb our business affairs. The show must go on; and when the show is global capital, it will go on twenty-four hours, seven days a week. The didactic part of this experience occurred when people in the queue actually stepped over the corpse to continue their banking. The silence continued, perhaps a sign of some kind of lingering guilt, and fortunately for me, I was in a different queue. I did not have to make this most explicit and blasphemous of gestures: to step over a fresh corpse. To ignore the dead.

Thinking back on the incident later that day, I realized that I had mixed up my terms. It wasn't blasphemous to ignore the dead (since it is, after all, something we do every day). No, the blasphemy was to die, and to die so publicly. This is the biggest faux pas one can make in our society (hence the traditional insistence on clean underwear, as if that is a token of apology for making such a fuss). Western culture distinguishes itself from all others, and indeed its former self, through its inability to enjoy symbolic commerce with the dead.