"<p>There is no age in the life of advanced, social humanity when its most distinguished poets and thinkers have not scolded the office and the bureaucrat. Only the nomadic man and the horde have not known this complaint. Groups of men mingled together in society, cannot do without this necessary evil, the office: Cicero scolds it as much as Shakespeare or Montesquieu, and no age can do without it. In the beginning, there is a square, the agora, where men from their nomadic life come together to discuss common human tasks; around the square, the city, the polis, is built; around the city, by pathological and natural procreation, the state is built. This process repeats itself for millennia at a unison pace. The official is the consequence of society, the office is the condition for the functioning of the city. No one has yet invented a substitute or a better one.</p> <p>And the office has always been bad and always overbearing; think of it when you queue up in front of a cashier's office to pay your taxes after a polite and humble wait, or to save something that is yours by right and by law. The purpose of the office is not to be "good". Its purpose is not human, but public. The best official and the most perfect office is the one which does not interfere too much with life. One who does not act too much. If they make a deal with each other, life and office, they make about fifty percent deal and do not hurt each other too much: that is the most. But only very advanced, over-mature, mostly moribund societies and offices can do that.</p>"