system of the world
Friday, 22 September 2006 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtThe nice tax man gave me R2500 back this year, which both reminds me of and rather validates my insane tendency to get an unholy kick out of filling in my tax returns.
The perverse pleasure of tax returns could stem from a number of things, among them very possibly the fact that it's one of the few aspects of my so-called life which actually feels Grown Up (I've only been a post-student for three years, after all). It's also a process which tends to reduce my life for the last year to neat columns of numbers, which does assist materially in the illusion that I actually have a handle on it.
However, mature reflection (and possibly the cold meds - this cough syrup is lethal) suggests that there's a lot more to it, and that, in fact, the pleasures of tax returns are not unrelated, in my twisted psyche, to various odd manifestations in my life. Among them: my undergrad moonlighting in temp secretarial work rather than waitressing; my absolute and utter loathing of Jacob Zuma and all his works; and my bizarre addiction to ShadowMagic.
While I cling tenaciously to the belief that the academic life is the fate destined for me since time began, I cannot claim that my two years of admin as the secretary to an academic department were, in fact, a horrible experience; there were lots of aspects of it that I really enjoyed. Specifically, I love order: I love feeling that intelligent effort on my part can extract order from chaos, can make things work. I gravitate naturally to committees because of this, not just because of natural bossiness. I appreciate systems.
Systems are important. They're the way we formalise the compromises, the balances in withholding and return, which make our lives civilised rather than barbaric. Systems are intelligent, they allow small, comparatively powerless individual entities to work together in order to achieve greater ends - traffic control, economies, universities, a music recording industry, a biosphere. I don't suffer from angst at the thought of being a cog in a greater machine. I celebrate like mad the fact that I'm a multiply-useful cog in all sorts of different machines which, to a greater or lesser extent, improve my life.
As a result of this, the wilful or heedless sabotage of systems causes me, probably, more pain than anything else in my life. I am paralysed with rage and horror to contemplate the extent to which individuals will participate in a system only enough to learn the movement of its particular cogs, and then pervert it: deny the overall purpose of the system in order to milk it for their own, individual profit. As soon as they do this, they slowly but surely start to unbalance its functioning, leading inevitably to grit in the wheels, worn parts, decay, breakdown and eventual explosive, apocalyptic disfunction.
You can't really say I'm an idealist in this, because I'm all too aware of how many examples abound in our stupid world of the slow assassination of systems: of systems which no longer make sense because of long-term assaults on their integrity. Oil companies are too busy making a profit to care about the fact that emissions are destroying the planet. Jacob Zuma is active in politics not because it's a social system which can make people's lives better, but because he can milk it for all it's worth to his personal gain. Hell, even my personal woes with the English department have a lot to do with individuals playing the system according to their own ignoble preferences rather than the better functioning of the whole. Many of these instances are of large, complex systems which have become unstable and perverted because of gradual corruption by the cogs which should be making them work. Results: global warming. George Bush. Zimbabwe. Microsoft. Me retreating into hours of ShadowMagic, where at least I can, slowly and carefully, build an empire that works, reducing chaos and violence to order.
Therefore: pleasure in filling in my tax returns. Striking my blow for order. A tiny, probably absolutely futile blow against the cannibalisation of the system by far larger fish than I am, but dammit, it's my blow, and I strike it. Waving my tiny fist in impotent rage.
On a not entirely unrelated note, courtesy of the wonderful BoingBoing: Bruce Sterling's ironic, witty, terrifying short fiction piece in New Scientist, projecting a horribly dystopian future to current trends in computers as a means of control. Scary stuff.
The perverse pleasure of tax returns could stem from a number of things, among them very possibly the fact that it's one of the few aspects of my so-called life which actually feels Grown Up (I've only been a post-student for three years, after all). It's also a process which tends to reduce my life for the last year to neat columns of numbers, which does assist materially in the illusion that I actually have a handle on it.
However, mature reflection (and possibly the cold meds - this cough syrup is lethal) suggests that there's a lot more to it, and that, in fact, the pleasures of tax returns are not unrelated, in my twisted psyche, to various odd manifestations in my life. Among them: my undergrad moonlighting in temp secretarial work rather than waitressing; my absolute and utter loathing of Jacob Zuma and all his works; and my bizarre addiction to ShadowMagic.
While I cling tenaciously to the belief that the academic life is the fate destined for me since time began, I cannot claim that my two years of admin as the secretary to an academic department were, in fact, a horrible experience; there were lots of aspects of it that I really enjoyed. Specifically, I love order: I love feeling that intelligent effort on my part can extract order from chaos, can make things work. I gravitate naturally to committees because of this, not just because of natural bossiness. I appreciate systems.
Systems are important. They're the way we formalise the compromises, the balances in withholding and return, which make our lives civilised rather than barbaric. Systems are intelligent, they allow small, comparatively powerless individual entities to work together in order to achieve greater ends - traffic control, economies, universities, a music recording industry, a biosphere. I don't suffer from angst at the thought of being a cog in a greater machine. I celebrate like mad the fact that I'm a multiply-useful cog in all sorts of different machines which, to a greater or lesser extent, improve my life.
As a result of this, the wilful or heedless sabotage of systems causes me, probably, more pain than anything else in my life. I am paralysed with rage and horror to contemplate the extent to which individuals will participate in a system only enough to learn the movement of its particular cogs, and then pervert it: deny the overall purpose of the system in order to milk it for their own, individual profit. As soon as they do this, they slowly but surely start to unbalance its functioning, leading inevitably to grit in the wheels, worn parts, decay, breakdown and eventual explosive, apocalyptic disfunction.
You can't really say I'm an idealist in this, because I'm all too aware of how many examples abound in our stupid world of the slow assassination of systems: of systems which no longer make sense because of long-term assaults on their integrity. Oil companies are too busy making a profit to care about the fact that emissions are destroying the planet. Jacob Zuma is active in politics not because it's a social system which can make people's lives better, but because he can milk it for all it's worth to his personal gain. Hell, even my personal woes with the English department have a lot to do with individuals playing the system according to their own ignoble preferences rather than the better functioning of the whole. Many of these instances are of large, complex systems which have become unstable and perverted because of gradual corruption by the cogs which should be making them work. Results: global warming. George Bush. Zimbabwe. Microsoft. Me retreating into hours of ShadowMagic, where at least I can, slowly and carefully, build an empire that works, reducing chaos and violence to order.
Therefore: pleasure in filling in my tax returns. Striking my blow for order. A tiny, probably absolutely futile blow against the cannibalisation of the system by far larger fish than I am, but dammit, it's my blow, and I strike it. Waving my tiny fist in impotent rage.
On a not entirely unrelated note, courtesy of the wonderful BoingBoing: Bruce Sterling's ironic, witty, terrifying short fiction piece in New Scientist, projecting a horribly dystopian future to current trends in computers as a means of control. Scary stuff.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Oy!
Date: Friday, 22 September 2006 09:01 pm (UTC)This is the first year I've earned enough to have to fill in a tax return. I'll do it next year with P holding my hand. I go all blank when I see numbers that represent money, kind of like my students do when they see long division.
Re: Oy!
Date: Saturday, 23 September 2006 06:11 am (UTC)Strikes a chord
Date: Friday, 22 September 2006 11:00 pm (UTC)It's also why I like strategy/sandbox god games - you can make something Better, a little cluster of bits that represents an achievement. It's also why I like Ars Magica more than any other role-playing system; a good game results in maps and lists and stats and filled-in sheets for characters and libraries and buildings. You're *building* something in the game.
Re: Strikes a chord
Date: Saturday, 23 September 2006 06:22 am (UTC)Re: Strikes a chord
Date: Sunday, 24 September 2006 06:32 pm (UTC)everymoment
Re: Strikes a chord
Date: Monday, 25 September 2006 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, 23 September 2006 08:25 am (UTC)And spreadsheets. I dig spreadsheets of all kinds. Mmmm numbers!
As it happens I've just got my tax return back from accountant and I would like you to know that you Saffers have it easy. All that gumpf from SARS about making these things easy? They're not kidding. I found the SA return so much easier than the one over here. Hence the need for an accountant - well, that and the complex multiple income/expense streams. Still, I miss the nice easy tax return that actually made sense to me.
scroob
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 07:29 am (UTC)Yay - more people getting money back (I also scored large from the taxman - have shiny new mobile to show for it).
I see about the system thing - sadly, most people are at best TN if not CE, and the ones that do use the system tend to be LE rather than LG. This makes it all the harder to be a Paladin in a world of tieves and liars. Sigh. Then again, am a CN anarchist, so shouldn't talk...
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 11:20 am (UTC)