Why Pay Taxes?

I suspect a lot of today’s political disconnect comes from a different perception of wealth and poverty. Wealth is good, poverty is bad – ergo the wealthy are good and the poor are bad. Wealthy people made good choices, succeeded, and deserve to enjoy the fruits of their success. Poor people made bad choices, failed, and deserve to suffer the consequences of their failure. Many viewpoints I hear place a much greater emphasis on the potential for corruption from below – the poor taking advantage of government charity – while the wealthy are trusted to bestow their gifts in a benevolent and positive manner.

However, there are studies that show that wealthy people are more selfish and uncooperative than poor people. The simple explanation is that wealthy people can *afford* to be selfish. Poor people find it advantageous to pool their resources, do favors for one another, forge supportive bonds. Society is built on common necessity, not individual achievement. America has been fortunate in its ability to foster a great deal of both and to be able to balance the destabilizing effects of individual power and freedom with the grounding nature of communal support.

And that is the key. There needs to be a balance. Enforced if necessary. Our system of government, as flawed as it is, has an extraordinary system of checks and balances. The forgers of the constitution understood that power is naturally destabilizing. No single branch of the government should have too much. Those making and enforcing laws should be elected and removed by the will of the people – except for the members of the Supreme Court, who should be beyond the promise of election or the threat of being unseated, in the hopes that this would encourage impartiality.

Most of us have quibbles with this system – sometimes one view dominates another, and maybe no one ever really gets what they truly want – but the capacity for non-violent self-correction is beyond anything that has ever existed before.

Too much power is destabilizing. Unions – the foundation of America’s working-class success – are now frowned upon due to their collective bargaining power. They can influence political results by throwing the weight of numbers around. “Do this and our members will vote for you”. But to me this simply sounds like politics. A bunch of people getting together and saying “we want this. Help us make it happen and we will reward you.” The potential for corruption certainly exists, but at least the impact is somewhat diffused by the number of people who both contribute their voices and who benefit from the results. It is also a localized phenomenon, so the repercussions will directly impact the community of which the union members are a part. If they throw their weight behind something bad – “strip the treasury to pay us exorbitantly for work we don’t do” – their community will pay in other ways, and they, or people they know, are likely to suffer. Word may get out and they will be shunned and ostracized – people could choose not to do business with them. If regulations are broken, there could be legal ramifications and punishments.

A properly working society in which all members have a stake and a voice has a clear system of checks and balances. If you have a little stake, and yet have a loud voice, the society is not functioning properly. The louder your individual voice and the less of a stake you hold in the welfare of the community as a whole, the more likely the society is to fail.

The threat of corruption is ever present. It is human nature to work for one’s own benefit. It is the nature of society to prevent one person, or one group from working against the rest of society on their own behalf. Ergo the preservation of *society* is paramount for the benefit of all. I say that an imbalance of power is detrimental to a functioning society. It is not the poor who are a threat to this balance, it is the wealthy who isolate themselves from society with their gated communities, hired security, and private schools who wish only to protect what they have and increase it, and who face no censure or punishment for shaping a political system to do this for them. On the contrary, they are envied and congratulated for their ‘success’.

Checks and balances are *necessary*. The wealthy must give up some of their power on behalf of society in order to keep them from creating a plutocracy which primarily benefits people like them. Those with power must be held responsible and accountable for how they use it. But it is human nature to avoid both, and wealth makes this much easier to do. They must be taxed and those taxes should go towards building and protecting the society of which we are all a part, and whose health affects us all, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not.

Grinding poverty – the kind where decent shelter, proper food, and basic health care are *luxuries*, while it may be the result of bad choices, is more often the result of a broken society. It should not be looked upon as a punishment inflicted upon those who deserve it. Especially when *most* of them are children, who have no voice, but an *enormous* stake in the quality of the society in which they are raised and nurtured.

Being poor is not a crime. People without money are not ‘bad’. Those who work for little or no money – as women did for decades and many continue to do as they take care of homes and children and most of the volunteer efforts in this country – are not ‘failures’. Yes, money is hard to earn. So is respect, and trust, and love. It is a terrible thing when a person is forced to give up one for the other, and perhaps it is worse when – due to the overvaluation of money and the pressure to ‘succeed’ – a person *chooses* to disregard the importance of one in favor of the other.

Why Will? (Shakespeare, that is)

It took me a looong time to learn to appreciate Shakespeare, but I’m slow that way. We read bits of the plays in high school English class and acted out scenes (badly). In college we read the plays out loud, discussed them in great detail, wrote papers that often missed the point completely (mine did, anyway). Then I worked backstage on a  school production, and as I kept hearing it, the language and the rhythms started to seep in and I slowly began to ‘get it’.

Then I joined a local Shakespeare theatre troup and ran costumes on two shows a year for several years. I sat in on the read-thrus and rehearsals, listening to the director explain how the wording, punctuation and structure of the text were all the stage direction that Shakespeare needed (aside from ‘Enter Pirates’ and ‘Exit, Pursued By A Bear’). He pointed out that if you only took a breath at the full stops, it was clear how fast and intensely you should be speaking in order to get the words out. If you studied the iambic structure, you knew which words should be stressed – and when Shakespeare broke those rules, there was a reason for that dissonance. It was rather like reading a score of music, and when performed right, could evoke just as much visceral emotion from those listening to it.

Shakespeare played with every sort of humor, from horrible puns, to broad characters, to ridiculous situations, to wicked wit. He delved into the depths of tragedy, the excesses of depravity, and the heights of honor. He ransacked the classics for familiar themes and stole all the best bits from his fellow playwrites – dressing them up to sound new and original. He wrote histories and romances and great dollops of pure fantasy. There were Gods and monsters, Kings and Queens, knaves and fools, shepherds and sailors – and he used them all simply in order to show us ourselves.

He did it with tricks and skill, using language and archetypes designed to trigger our instinctive reactions. He marshalled all the art and artifice at his command to represent the truth of the human condition. He layered them one on top of another so they obscured and smoothed over the seams and joints of his careful construction. You have to dig down and take it all apart to see why it works so well and carries its weight so effortlessly.

It is hard to imagine anyone else doing it ‘better’. Contemporary style concentrates more on portraying ‘reality’ in a stark and direct manner. Making art represent true life, rather than constructing artistic representations of life’s truths. It’s just a different way of doing the same thing – packing human experience into a very small space with such power and precision that when ignited by the spark between audience and performers, it explodes into a display that opens the mind and moves the heart.

Happy Birthday, Will. Glad you were born

Why Edit?

Editing…honestly I’m a rotten editor. I don’t know how people do it. It’s a *little* easier going over someone else’s work – hearing the sound of an inconsistent voice or falling into obvious plot holes – but determining the objective quality of a story? That seems possible at the exteme ends of the spectrum – either astonishingly good or appallingly bad – but most stories fall somewhere in the middle. And some poorly crafted aspect may well ruin a great story, while a streak of brilliance can often salvage a bad one – and much of that is due to the experience and experiences of the reader interacting with those elements of the story. It’s very hard to determine what will strike a chord and resonate with another individual. Things you see as trite and junky could be like someone else’s treasured memories of eating Cracker Jacks and cotten candy on their first trip to the circus. It really is a matter of perspective.

I think by exposing ourselves to stories that are accepted as well-written, studying the elements that comprise good craftsmanship, developing a large repertoire of what works and why – we are much more likely to know ‘good writing’ when we see it. Even more helpful, we may be able to pinpoint things that are less ‘well-written’ and think of specific ways to improve them. We are also more likely to recognize what is hackneyed and what is novel. That seems to be one of the biggest complaints of slush-readers in general – they see too much of the same thing over and over again. The writers may not know they were being derivative, but the gate-keepers have seen that tired old act five times already today and don’t want to waste their time on one more. This is where experience and wide-reaching knowledge of the field becomes a valuable commodity.

Will professional editing infallibly create or select a best-seller? No. Will it be able to predict the next big genre-bubble? Nope. Can it turn a pretty good book into a slightly better one? Yes, very likely. Can it bandage and splint a wretched tale into something readable? Maybe, but there is wisdom and mercy in knowing when to stop. Can it chop a good story into a pile of hash? Probably, which is why the author needs to believe in the story they wrote – even if their objective view is obscured by the shining vision of ‘how it should have been’. Save it for the next story – this is how this one is. Make it sing, but don’t try to change a pop hit into an opera.

Why War?

I was lucky enough to have a chance to see the Anglo-Saxon Hoard that was discovered few years ago in a field in Staffordshire, England. It was magnificent. More than two hundred of the exquisitely crafted pieces of gold and garnet treasure had decorated the hilts of swords. This was proof of how high the tools of war – and the prowess of the men who wielded them – were valued. I imagined how they would have glittered in barbaric splendor, riding together, raising their weapons with the fire of gold and the blood-red garnets shining on them. I thought of those warriors, with their pride and their mastery of battle. But, I thought of all the death and destruction those weapons represented, the culture of battle and conquest that required such symbols of power and wondered if I really understood. If I could ever understand.

There is something in us that seeks out and responds to the extremes of conflict. We appreciate and reward those who push themselves farther than can be believed – who hone themselves into objects of power. They first fight against their own perceived limits, and then set themselves to conquer the limits the world sets before them. Those that succeed become lords of men, hallowed, revered, adulated.

This, I think, is the spirit of the warrior – the one who comes again and again to the wall of failure and does not surrender to it. This is the spirit of battle that I think all humans should experience if they truly wish to understand themselves. We can never know who we are until we surpass it, look back and *see* what we were, measure how far we’ve come, wonder at how much farther we have to go. It *is* a struggle – hard, exhausting, painful. To fight against who we are, to take the next step towards who we may become, to weep with the impossibility of it, again and again. And yet to keep going despite it all.

That is the way of the warrior. That much of it I believe I understand.

But there is something missing. All that beautiful treasure and the skill, power, and prowess it represented, had been carelessly stripped off those weapons of war, stuffed in a hole in the ground, and forgotten for 1,300 years. The incredible craftsmen who made it, and those mighty warriors who earned the right to carry it – completely unknown and utterly forgotten. Perhaps that is simply the way of time – to roll like a wheel over the world, obliterating what was to make room for what will be. But how are we to know ourselves in the wake of such destruction? Must we endure the repetition of slash-and-burn tactics, that leaves a vast mess and shattered lives to clean up before any sort of painstaking progress can be begun again? Before artists and craftsmen have the peace and luxury to create their masterpieces that may once again be carried into a war that can only have one ending? Is that the only wheel we will ever know?

I believe in the need to battle against our own limits, to fight against the pull of inertia and despair. But I suspect there is more we need to know than that. Along with the art of war, we need to understand the art of surrender. Not of giving up out of frustration, or giving in to weakness and self-pity, but surrendering to that which we cannot control. Accepting that we are not all-powerful and all-knowing. Relinquishing our deeply cherished hope that we are *enough*.

We are not enough, and all the fighting in the world will never make us so. Only by giving up who we are and what we think we want, will we open ourselves to everything else that is possible. *We* are not enough, but the universe is. Once we surrender to that, all the battling will seem as nothing.

War is too costly to glorify. Honor and courage are too valuable to waste on a battlefield steeped in blood and hatred. There are better ways to wage war, and more important things to fight for.

Why Resolutions?

I’m not one to make resolutions – I do much better with positive reinforcement than negative, and I find unmet goals to be a source of dissatisfaction and recrimination, rather than motivation. However, I agree that it is important to establish priorities and keep them firmly in mind. Once we do that, it becomes a question of how much time and attention we bestow upon them. For that’s how we imbue things with power – we focus our attention on them, we consider their importance in our lives, we *care* about them. That depth of caring informs our decisions and thus we make choices more closely aligned with who we truly are and what we sincerely want. We must decide how important each thing is to us, try to foresee how spending time and effort on it may lead us closer to a greater understanding of our hearts and minds, and the creation of a world where we can honestly feel at home and at peace.

I think that’s what happens when we’re doing it right – we achieve that lovely sense of calm centeredness at the core of our being, as well as tapping into an endless source of wonder and delight.

Given all those benefits, I’m forever surprised at how difficult it is to do the work that provides such rewards. I expect that’s part of the challenge of self-discovery – learning which of our own buttons to push in order to make ourselves *want* to do the work in a consistent manner. Find our unconscious triggers, manipulate ourselves mercilessly, tell ourselves the irresistible story that ends with blazing triumph and success .

And know where we can’t trust ourselves not to give into easy temptation or unhappy discouragement. Create a supporting structure that directs us away from these things. We are creatures of habit. We are eminently programmable. If we don’t take an active hand in designing our software apps, someone or something else will. It is important to understand our choices. Consider the possibilities. Know that it makes all the difference.

Time and attention – they are like the heat and pressure with which we shape the raw materials available to us. With steady, loving application, each moment has the potential to become a bright jewel strung upon the long strand of our existence. That is the power we hold. How can we deny ourselves the pleasure of using it?

Why Boundaries?

I was reading ‘Thief of Time’ by Terry Pratchett again, where the Auditors are discovering how many unconscious impulses come hard-wired with a human body and how difficult those impulses are to understand and control. I’m starting to see us each as a little self-contained disc-world, with trolls, dwarves and elves battling it out. Thieves, assassins, seamstresses plying their trades. Vetinari setting small fires to keep the big ones in check. Werewolves and vampires wreaking havok among the peasantry. Igors patching it back together any which way. Feegles butting heads and nicking sheep, or butting sheep and nicking heads. Anthropomorphic Personifications created out of our darkest fears, which only makes them slightly easier to live with… 
 
Wizards opening doors and witches shutting them as they patrol the edges. Susan reluctantly straddling the threshhold, brandishing her poker against whatever tries to get past. Vimes and the Watch holding the center together with a few rusty pikes and a threadbare mantle of authority. Because someone has to.
 
We contain multitudes, and all too often, they’re rioting about something. But while it can be devastating, agonizing, frustrating, infuriating, exasperating, incoherent anarchy, it shouldn’t ever be *boring*. Not with all that going on, and the never-ending struggle to prevent things getting entirely out of hand and the overwhelming desire to shape some kind of sense out of it. 

The trick, to me, seems to be determining a cohesive internal narrative. Get your story straight – who are you and what do you want? What are you willing to do to get it? What are you not? Determine your limits, your boundaries. Patrol them, guard them, brandish your poker. Know in your heart what is right, what is wrong – at least for you, if for no one else. Hold to this belief. Because willful disregard of what your heart knows is right — no matter what the thieves, elves and vampires may say — is committing a crime against yourself. And what would Vimes say to that?

Why Love a Lie?

Fiction is like a magic act. Making something appear to happen that doesn’t really happen. Like a magician, the writer uses the mind’s propensity to create a cohesive narrative from our sensory inputs, in order to create a reality that doesn’t truly exist. Though instead of fooling our eyes, the author relies on our imaginary senses to trigger our willing suspension of disbelief.

He lies to us, and we are active participants in the deception. If he’s got his act together, we enjoy it immensely. Why?

To my mind, complex communication arose to serve two primary purposes – to facilitate cooperation in order to gain the assistance of others in getting what we want, and to deceive others in order to get what we want without resorting to potentially dangerous aggression. Conning someone out of their banana, while not a particularly nice thing to do, is still better than hitting them over the head for it.

So, communication is used for the purposes of both cooperation and deception. And we spend a great deal of effort determining which is which. Can I trust him? Is she playing fair? Am I getting what I want without giving more than I choose? From the unconditional promises of love, to trade agreements, to diplomatic sparring, to aggressive bluffing, to ruinous back-stabbing, we are constantly faced with the choice to react with willing vulnerability or frigid suspicion. Being played for a fool is *costly* to us and we react accordingly – with shame, frustration, anger. And we learn to protect ourselves, to win more than we lose, to play the game just like everyone else.

So why do we love being lied to? How do we benefit from being wound about in a cunning web of fiction?

It’s my thought that deception is hugely important to us – both the ability to detect it as well as practice it ourselves. And unless you are an accomplished con-artist, the best way to deceive someone is to deceive yourself at the same time. If you believe you are being fair and trustworthy, at least at some level, you are much more likely to secure the cooperation of another. So the ability to subsume selective critical faculties, to believe the story you are weaving, is important. Sinking deep into a well-written tale is excellent practice.

We also enjoy being in on the con. A good author will include the reader in his scheme – giving hints, dropping clues, and following well-worn tropes so that we often have a good idea of where we are being led. At the end of the mystery, when the murderer is unmasked, there is great satisfaction in crowing “Hah! I knew it was the butler all along!” He couldn’t fool us, and thus our confidence in our deception-detection is increased.

But what about the thrilling twists and breathtaking shocks in which we also delight? (Joss Whedon, I’m looking at you!) I think we do like being fooled. We can appreciate a good con, even if it’s on us. Not only do we learn from it, but preserving, even encouraging such characteristics is clearly a human survival trait. It *is* a game, and we admire the ones who know how to play it well. We can’t help but love the charming rogue. We fall for the femme fatale every time. They flatter us with their honey tongues, seduce us with their bedroom eyes, and even when we know better, we allow ourselves to be led down the primrose path because it feels too good, and we surrender to it, begging them to have their wicked way with us.

We may not love being made to feel a fool, but there is a perverse pleasure in being fooled by someone who really knows what they’re doing.