I'm a scientist. I'm not a poet, an artist, writer, or orator. Well, I think there's a pretty convincing case to be made that mathematics and seeing the beauty of nature in the laws that govern it have artistic merit, I'm at least an amateur writer (I have, like I suspect many do, a few beginnings to books, short stories, or articles), and am actually a pretty decent public speaker (though maybe not anymore, I haven't really done any public speaking for quite a while), but I'm speaking here to my outlook on the world and my communication with others and a scientific outlook has strongly influenced these aspects of who I am. There's two things that I find especially influenced by this background; objectivity and concern for clarity.
I explain that so I can explain this, it's very difficult and a little odd for me to tell my wife I love her. Not because I don't, I'm madly in love with her. Not because I think there's anything wrong or strange about it either, but because it's so hard to know what I'm saying. Often when we are sitting in our apartment together I let those words, "I love you," sum things up, hoping that my feelings are transmitted correctly. In other moments though, when I want to expound on what that means, on the way I'm excited by her beautiful form, the softening spark in me of her amazing smile, the joy I take in her fun personality, or the deep passion when I notice how well read and thoughtful she is, I don't know what to say.
One thing is I feel like I've said it all before, and I hate repetition. Rather, perhaps, I know that expressing something in a new way is more powerful than repeating something you've heard before. Heard enough times anything can seem clichéd. How many different ways are there to say, "You're beautiful and I'm very attracted to you," though? I have a fairly formidable vocabulary, but still there are only so many synonyms for beautiful, happy, and love that one can use meaningfully.
Often, and bear with me through the cheesiness of this statement, words seem inadequate. I can tell how I'm feeling, but how do I express that? And moreover, when I feel something so powerfully, how do I express that with equal power? If I'm to be clear in communicating my feelings, what do I do when I feel something which seems more potent than the words I've been using. Moments where recognition of all her glorious beauty flares up in a way that I guess I've felt before, but certainly feels new and exhilarating surely can't be expressed in a simple, "You're so pretty/beautiful/stunning/gorgeous/sexy," when I've already said that many times before, ¿can they?
I've mentioned before that I have a certain emotional austerity. That doesn't mean I don't feel strongly, I do. It does mean I usually hold off on expressing what I feel, and moreover that when I do I try to strengthen what I say about those feelings in an alloy of emotion, thought, reason, possibly evidence, and probably sources. I can't really do that when I express my love for my wife. I know it's my subjective experience, I know that it's the way I feel, heck I even have an idea of some of the neurochemistry and cerebral circuitry that's powering and processing it, but still my love is real, and I want to let her know that. I'm learning a lot as I learn how to say it.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Taxes and Taxation
I recently did my taxes and have also been reading The Federalist Papers and have been thinking a lot about taxation lately. One thing that always strikes me at tax time is the labyrinthine extensiveness of the tax code. I'm terrified of filing next year, trying to figure out how I'll file after getting married, having an HSA, and who knows what else is still to come. The complexity of the tax code is always what has struck me as the most immoral thing about it.
In The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton said, "The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws." (emphasis added) We are living a world of privacy concerns. We watch our internet service providers eavesdrop on their customers at the behest of the entertainment industry or for advertising profit, the web services we use constantly collect that details of how we're using them, we keep devices in our pockets which may upload our exact location throughout our day, and we're told to be careful about grocery store discount cards as they can easily lead our eating habits getting sold to an insurance company to raise our rates. In this world of shrinking privacy our government should be working to protect what we have left, but instead we see it complacent and then at tax time bold faced enough to ask and expect us to answer a slew of questions about our investments, medical bills, work location, housing, and 'anything else you might have missed.'
An uncle of mine that prepares taxes has said that he would be unable to do so without the aid of computers. The fact that we have created such a situation is ludicrous. I have more than one uncle who makes pretty decent money preparing people's taxes, so let me make one thing very clear: I don't think there's inherent corruption in the tax preparation industry. There's competition, people concern themselves with following the law, and try to be honest. That said, I don't think it should exist. The fact that the layman cannot pay those who govern him without going through an entity that's insinuated itself through great deal of study and hard work is unnerving. I don't want a people that separated from their government, especially regarding something affects them so directly. This can only be done through an exceedingly simple tax code, far from what we have now where only one who devotes his life to understanding the tax code or is wealthy enough to hire someone who does will get the benefits of it.
This country was founded on many things, but one of them was "no taxation without representation." We believed so strongly that we deserved a say in how and why governments take money from us that we fought for that right. Has the American spirit dwindled to a point where we accept taxes as an inevitability, overseen by some arcane power that we can only glimpse through the eyes of a few initiated elite among us?
In The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton said, "The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws." (emphasis added) We are living a world of privacy concerns. We watch our internet service providers eavesdrop on their customers at the behest of the entertainment industry or for advertising profit, the web services we use constantly collect that details of how we're using them, we keep devices in our pockets which may upload our exact location throughout our day, and we're told to be careful about grocery store discount cards as they can easily lead our eating habits getting sold to an insurance company to raise our rates. In this world of shrinking privacy our government should be working to protect what we have left, but instead we see it complacent and then at tax time bold faced enough to ask and expect us to answer a slew of questions about our investments, medical bills, work location, housing, and 'anything else you might have missed.'
An uncle of mine that prepares taxes has said that he would be unable to do so without the aid of computers. The fact that we have created such a situation is ludicrous. I have more than one uncle who makes pretty decent money preparing people's taxes, so let me make one thing very clear: I don't think there's inherent corruption in the tax preparation industry. There's competition, people concern themselves with following the law, and try to be honest. That said, I don't think it should exist. The fact that the layman cannot pay those who govern him without going through an entity that's insinuated itself through great deal of study and hard work is unnerving. I don't want a people that separated from their government, especially regarding something affects them so directly. This can only be done through an exceedingly simple tax code, far from what we have now where only one who devotes his life to understanding the tax code or is wealthy enough to hire someone who does will get the benefits of it.
This country was founded on many things, but one of them was "no taxation without representation." We believed so strongly that we deserved a say in how and why governments take money from us that we fought for that right. Has the American spirit dwindled to a point where we accept taxes as an inevitability, overseen by some arcane power that we can only glimpse through the eyes of a few initiated elite among us?
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