 
                        20070707.00

     In studying the electrical code for designing the
connection between the electric company's transformer and
the circuit breaker panel in the house, there occurred to
me the remarkable resemblance between the electrical code
and, of all things, the tax code.  Both documents rely on
extraordinary circumstantial directives, referring the
reader from one numbered section to another on the tacit
assumption that each section is independently clear and
meaningful, which is hardly ever the case. There develops
then a web of relatively meaningless references susceptible
to interpretation only by an algorithm far too complex for
the ordinary electrician (or tax payer) to grasp. In the
end, the code lays claim to a spurious autonomy of its own.
It creates its own world, its own living space,
environment, Lebensraum, which is remote and perhaps
unreachable from the experience which it is intended to
reflect and to control. The code becomes a self-contained
scheme, an autonomous logic with but a tenuous relationship
to what has happened or to what will happen. (was geschehen
ist oder was geschehen wird.) The intestices of this logic
web are in fact its substance which provides the arena for
the inspectors' arbitrary decisions. The interpretation is
remote from the text; and what is actually done can hardly
be inferred from it; the text itself not being susceptible
to translation into reality of any sort.

     In the end all directives must appear to be arbitrary,
even those purportedly in consequence of or in compliance
with the code: if only because the determination which
portions of the code should be applied is arbitrary. This
is the case with the building code no less than the tax
code. The presumption that it is possible to obey the code
or the law, and that submission to the law is the true
freedom: "Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben." This
Kantian fantasy is an illusion. Freedom, if it is possible
at all exists in escape, in avoidance in evasion, in
deception. It has often been argued that the tax system is
dependent on voluntary compliance. This is not true,
because although represented as being voluntary, the
compliance is coerced by intimidation. The voluntariness is
a postulate introjected into the psyche of the victim, who
is not even permitted to articulate the humiliation to
which he is subjected. The personality of the taxpayer is
the ultimate incorporation of the individual into the
society. He becomes part of the government, he himself
becomes the police by which he is persecuted. He is forced
to deny the dialectical nature of his relationship. He is
forced to lie. This compulsion to lie is the ultimate
humiliation; because the truth, that the law is
contradictory and senseless may not be spoken. What is
punished most severely, the most serious offense is to tell
the truth, as did Leona Helmsley who famously said that
only poor people pay taxes.  Nothing is so likely to lead
to prosecution as to point out the essential hypocrisy and
logical inconsistency of the government.  Only if one
acquiesces in the lies, only if one collaborates in the
deceit, is one spared.

     The initial step, the first phase of enlightenment is
to disabuse oneself of notions of good and evil: that the
government is "good", that the laws are just and are
susceptible to being applied justly, that it is possible to
act virtuously and that this virtue should be rewarded.

     The reward is not from "virtue", or from "the good".
The reward is not from God and is no derivative of
inwardness. Inwardness, subjectivity is what virtue amounts
to: worauf die Tugend hinauslaeuft.  Justification by
obeying the law, by being law abiding, by being objectively
just, is, as Martin Luther explained and expounded, an
unholy compromise between what is external, - objective,
and what is inward and subjective. And yet in the end, this
dialectic also fails. It is a mistake to argue, as did
Kierkegaard, that God=subjectivity=truth=good, and that
world=objectivity=falsehood=evil.  Although dialectic may
be indispensable to demonstrating the power, the actuality
and the limitations of both.

     In sum, the conceptualization, the rationalization
does not, cannot do justice to reality, to experience. It
is rather in the dialectic, in the to and fro between
polarities that the mind most closely approximates and
anticipates experience.

     It is only in its imperfection that dialectic
anticipates reality.  Perfected dialectic leads to a
synthesis, which in view of its unavoidable imperfections
and inadequacies, becomes thesis of yet another dialectic,
albeit of a higher order.

                     * * * * *
Copyright 2007, Ernst Jochen Meyer
