https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20793948
"You lye, you are not sure [...] 'tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes---therefore hold your Tongue [...]."
- Christopher Bullock, 1716
The Cobler of Preston, A Farce. As It is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, London, 1716 (Fifth Edition: S. Bladon, London, 1767), p, 21.
"A Man can hardly refrain, after all that has been said, from flattering the Nation with Hopes, that they shall once more live to see themselves delivered from Task-masters, and Tax-gatherers. [...] This would be the reviving the Halcion Days, and bringing the Golden Age once more upon the Earth. Then it would be no more a Proverb or by-Word among us, that there is nothing sure, but Death and Taxes."
- Daniel De Foe, 1717
Fair Payment No Spunge: or, some considerations on the unreasonableness of refusing to receive back money lent on publick securities. And the necessity of setting the nation free from the insupportable burthen of debt and taxes. (London: J. Brotherton, W. Meddows, J. Roberts, 1717), p. 75.
"But now, alas! this part is out of the question, not the man in the moon, not the groaning-board, not the speaking of friar Bacon’s brazen-head, not the inspiration of mother Shipton, or the miracles of Dr. Faustus, things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed: the Devil not have a cloven foot!"
- Daniel De Foe, 1726
The Political History of the Devil. As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts (T. Warner, London, 1726). From: The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe, Vol. X (Oxford: D. A. Talboys. 1840), p. 246.
"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1789
"Letter to M. Le Roy, 13 November, 1789" in: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. XII, (ed.) John Bigelow (Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1904), p. 161.
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PART IV
The Hero and The Villain
SO WHAT have we learned thus far, what remains to be said, and what further questions should we ask regarding this dubious coupling, 'death and taxes'?
Nature's ways are always guiding us whether we realize it or not, even when we want to differentiate 'nurture' and 'culture', they are themselves both fundamentally natural and biological notions. What does not fit in with all of this is taxes as an obligatory payment, a method of administrative control, or even as a punitive measure. We can speak adjectivally of 'taxing' difficulties, of challenges and hardships, and if the idiom employed the term in this sense then there would be some semblance, perhaps, between death and taxes. Yet that is precisely not how it is meant. 'Taxes' in the 'death and taxes' coupling is explicitly meant to be as unnatural as possible, the 'inevitable' albeit unfortunate 'necessity' of payment, a kind of no-alternative outcome of our self-organization into communities and society. It is in this latter sense that the idiom functions and a coupling of taxes with death is made, i.e., as an attempt to obtain the impossible status of a natural process (note I avoid the term 'natural law' or 'law of nature' - an oxymoron par excellence, for laws are 'by nature' not 'natural', but that's another blog post).
Taxes are a human hubris that punishes itself. Death is not a punishment. We saw in Part III the Humble Hubris, Hubristic Humility of a phrase that tries to place taxes on the same level as death and mortality. In this sense taxes are a simulacra of death, an attempt to be as inevitable as death. In that attempt they are hubristic, and in their hubris not only do they fail, but they are also a self-imposing punishment for trying to be death's equal, trying to be inevitable. I say 'they' as though taxes were the agents of their hubris, but of course they are human hubris attempting to create an inevitability, to 'nurture' a custom that is as certain as death is a certainty of 'nature'.
Being confronted with this quagmire we've made for ourselves when we use, accept, and even (nervously) chuckle at this idiom, seeing but not seeing its oddly self-imposed and self-punishing hubris permeate its light- (but actually heavy-) hearted expression, I cannot help but imagine, by contrast, the laughter of Laozi (or Lao Tzu, Lao Tze, Lao Tse...) whose name, unlike the Way or Tao, can be said but apparently not so easily written (at least not in Roman letters). Laozi laughs because he takes joy in seeing how even in an attempt to differentiate ourselves from nature and then try to establish ourselves as its equal through imitation and dominance, even then, the Way of nature is at work. Every attempt to describe it, and even attempts to say how our descriptions are themselves natural, is an example of how it cannot actually be articulated in any way other than how it already articulates itself simply by being (and thus we end up writing sentences like the one I've just written).
Perhaps the problem lies in the words themselves, then? It is worth noting how the Etymonline site (which has its limitations but is still a good initial resource for basic etymologies, and still better, in my view, than the auto-generated Google search results) explains the term for both the verb 'tax' and the noun 'tax':
tax(v.) c. 1300, taxen, "impose a tax on; demand, require, impose (a penalty)," from Old French taxer "impose a tax" (13c.) and directly from Latin taxare "evaluate, estimate, assess, handle," also "censure, charge," probably a frequentative form of tangere "to touch" (from PIE root *tag- "to touch, handle").
The meaning "subject (someone) to taxation" is from early 14c. The sense of "to burden, put a strain on" is recorded from early 14c.; the figurative use in this sense is by 1670s. The meaning "censure, reprove" is from 1560s. Its use in Luke ii in reference to the census translates Greek apographein "to enter on a list, enroll" is due to Tyndale. Related: Taxed; taxing.
tax(n.) early 14c., "obligatory contribution levied by a sovereign or government," from Anglo-French tax, Old French taxe, and directly from Medieval Latin taxa, from Latin taxare (see tax (v.)). Related: Taxes.
Tax-gatherer is attested from 1550s. Tax-dodger "one who avoids payment of a tax or taxes" is by 1876. Tax-deduction is from 1942; tax-shelter is attested from 1961; tax-break by 1968; tax-bracket by 1975. (Etymonline)
What is missing from these listings is the Ancient Greek taxis. In biology we see this sense in the term 'taxonomy', and in Ancient Greek mathematics as taxis (e.g., Euclid's Elements, especially Book X), and the original title of Ptolemy's Syntaxis (or as we know it from the Arabic translation, Almagest). All of these uses (including music and military contexts with the Ancient Greek) have to do with an ordering and organization. And this brings us to a complex issue regarding the origins of writing in relation to oral traditions. It casts our gaze back to Cuneiform and Mesopotamia, to the Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylon languages. I mentioned The Epic of Gilgamesh in Part I of this series, and perhaps now is an opportunity to better understand why.
Thus, in place of more critical analysis, I'd like to tell at least the beginnings of a myth (mythos), or as Plato might say, a 'likely' story (logos). And since I have spent much of the time railing against the idiom in question, our story should probably include a Villain of some sort to better illustrate the significance of 'death and taxes' as a kind of dupe's 'stupor-truth', i.e., the seeming certainty of both death and taxes and why Laotzi would laugh at this (but he would do so for different reasons than those that make most people chuckle when they hear the expression).
To tell the beginnings of such a story then will probably require a certain figure, a Villain whose motives and logic will highlight the nature and operation of what can only be described as an insidious 'spirit' within our midst, and one that we would all do well to learn how to recognize both within ourselves and throughout our day-to-day lives. I'll even provide the moral in advance: Where uninhibited tranquility is strength, power unchecked is weakness.
The Villain
Our Villain's name is J. Bureau. The following is an account of his origins, his motives, and his gradual rise to power. There are no extant primary sources of Bureau himself, so our inquiries and history must remain speculative and limited until further research is conducted and more direct evidence can be obtained.
From what we know, J. Bureau has gone by many different names, and his presence reaches far back into antiquity. This particular version of the name, 'J. Bureau', is only the most recent and modern manifestation. It is important to note also that our J. Bureau does not seem to be in any way related to the descendants of the 'Bureau' family, whose line is usually traced back to Normandy in the 14th century. Indeed there is also no specific given name for the abbreviation 'J.', either. (Although some have referred to him as 'Jacques', 'Jack', and even 'Joe', but none of these bear historical accuracy.) Still, I find that 'Jacques Bureau' has a nice ring to it. If anything, our subject has merely adopted this first initial and surname without specifying a full identifier, and may have done so ironically simply to enjoy using the initials 'J.B.'.
So What are the origins of this Villain? Before Gilgamesh was pursuing the fountain of youth in an attempt to overcome death and mortality, scribes in ancient Mesopotamia were already etching out cuneiform tablets, indeed marking out one of the earliest known bureaucracies. It is speculated that, somehow, within the discarded clay shavings nicked out by the stylus-wielding scribes, in the unwanted piles. there began to emerge a kind of smoldering, an effluence fueled by the first feelings of monotony that took hold of the otherwise magical work that went into producing these earliest writings. In that befouled and smoldering mound were the first noxious signs of this spirit, this monotonizing entity now known as 'J. Bureau'. This new toxin quickly spread into the breath and minds of the scribes, thus making them the first 'bureaucrats'.
However, the suggestion that Bureau's toxic presence resulted from these 'clay shavings' of the scribes is most likely untrue, for in fact a simple glance at any of the numerous ancient clay tablets will show that the process of writing was more a kind of angled indentation, producing small imprints into the soft clay in accordance with the pressure of the scribes' styluses. There may have been some excess clay notched out, but the tablets were made mostly by pushing the clay down rather then being 'carved' out as some might imagine. The clay itself was still soft when being inscribed and then later dried into the more solid (and thus breakable) tablets that are so ubiquitous in archaeological digs to this day.
Nevertheless, Bureau's being an unintended consequence of the scribal activity is quite real. While the material and physical dynamic of the clay's involvement is also real, the physical aspect of Bureau's origins resulted mostly from a different process. We must therefore consider the connection between otherwise distinct activities, i.e., the physical manifestation of the toxin via clay on the one hand, and the inadvertent social (and scribal) intoxication that it caused, on the other.
Two basic principles should be established at this point: 1) All human labor runs the risk of becoming mindless labor, or more precisely (as indicated above), monotonous. 2) All monotonous labor is vulnerable to bureaucratization; its purpose, dynamics, liveliness, sonority, polyphony and tonality are drawn upon, drawn (led) out, extracted (ex- ducere, 'educated') and siphoned into fueling the very structure that seeks to organize, exploit and 'tax' it. The energy of the work and labor itself becomes taxed in order to tax it. It is a relationship similar to that of host (work) and parasite (bureaucracy).
Monotony is a fascinating term. Clearly it is derived from a combination of 'monas'/'mono-', meaning 'one', and the term 'tone', such that 'mono-tone' means 'one-tone' or 'single tone'. It has gone from this literal sense of a single tone to the more everyday sense of something repetitive, 'boring' or tedious. Indeed, what is bureaucracy itself if not precisely that, i.e., repetitive, boring and tedious?
The long yawn of the bureaucrat's, scribe's or student's tedium is perhaps the very inhaling gasp by which J. Bureau's toxin entered the minds and bodies of ancient scribes, students and workers alike, whereas those in power, due to their weakness and lack of tolerance, would have been over-stimulated by the same ingredient (they are what teenagers in my day would have called 'lightweights').
One question these principles raise is: whether or not such monotony and exploitative taxation is necessary or inevitable. Are there any variables that preclude such an outcome?
In the case of cuneiform in Mesopotamia and Sumeria, there are at least four factors which seem especially relevant to the bureaucratization and taxation of labor: 1) education, 2) agriculture focused on crops and centralized storage of harvests, 3) mass production of materiel (pottery, tools, textiles...), and 4) architecture. It is interesting to compare these elements with what now appear to be older prehistoric societies, especially those in Ancient Amazonia that have only recently been discovered and are now slowly becoming better understood. In particular we note that these civilizations did have agriculture and architecture, but were not focused on centralized harvest storage or administration, and as far as we know they did not produce written texts. Instead there is a long tradition of cave art, geoglyphs and oral storytelling.
We must wonder, then: is the taxing spirit of Bureau and centralized administration more directly aligned with the development of writing, and with only certain types of administrative agriculture, than with the two factors just mentioned?
The Hero, The Villain, and The Scribes
Perhaps it is not writing itself that gives rise to the Villain J. Bureau, but rather the corruption of why writing was created in the first place. The story of Gilgamesh was, it is thought, first recorded around 2100 BC, and not standardized until 1600 BC. The poetry of the priestess Enheduana, however, predates even the first written account of Gilgamesh by two centuries, and she herself was writing in around 2300 BC. Enheduana then, was both author and scribe, and she is the Hero in this tale.
Let us continue exploring the origins of our characters. One thing we tend to overlook, especially today, is the manner in which things either thrive or perish, that both thriving and perishing happen in myriad ways. Files, machines, documents, hardware and even software can be destroyed without much incident. Memories shared, stories told, heard and retold with explanations and interpretations, although subject to variation, are not so easily deleted when humans themselves are the ones telling, hearing, retelling and recreating them. In all of this, Plato (as always) looms large. His story of Thoth (or Theuth), the remedy-poison-cure of writing, of the conflict between repetition vs. live speech, poetic encoding vs. logical decoding, live argument and dialogue vs. un-listening written and recorded speeches delivered as orations, but memorized or rehearsed by the orators (perhaps with written notes before the performance), and the fact that Plato captures all of it simultaneously in a written dialogue in which he 'retells' or 'makes up' a myth about the invention of writing, it's all wonderfully dizzying.
Dizzying and intoxicating like the lines of Enheduana as she breathes, sings, writes and recites her prayers and praises to Inana (Ishtar), doing so into both air and clay. Of course, whether she herself wrote her own writings is a topic of debate among scholars. Although it is accepted that she was alive in 2500 BC, the surviving texts of her work were transcribed circa. 1750 BC.
Unfortunately this debate could be crucial to our retelling and our tale, and it creates a dilemma. I will try to articulate the question (truly writing a good question is one of the most difficult and meaningful tasks we can set for ourselves).
If Enheduana did not write her own words (if they were her own words, which is also under debate), but instead they were preserved orally and then eventually written down only later by scribes for purposes that were already infected by the noxious fumes and spirit of Bureau, the administrators and power grabbers, then does writing itself ever truly escape Bureau, either in early history or even now? If Laozi says the Way cannot be said, and therefore cannot be written either, then does writing that it cannot be said not put us into the very intoxicating stupor-illusion of hubris released by the Villain Bureau? In other words, is there a Hero who wrote without being corrupted by Bureau, or is the very notion of her having done so just part of the Villain's story? Is writing possible without corruption, or is that possibility itself only one of the illusions of its intoxication? Is Jacques Bureau inevitable? Are taxes?
Much seems as stake. We can look a little further into the debate regarding Enheduana's actual written authorship in order to figure out how our likely story/myth should be retold.
A couple of things are worth clarifying from the outset. First the cuneiform texts that people discuss fall into different categories because cuneiform was used for writing down different languages. The language of Enheduana was Sumerian. Aside from Sumerian the other significant language grouping of Mesopotamia is Akkadian, which is then divided into Babylonian and Assyrian. (So the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, is in the Babylonian language). Thus there is one significant degree of separation to bear in mind, namely that while the script is cuneiform, the languages are different. The extent to which that distinction will be relevant to our question remains to be seen, but it is important to have in mind.
The most recent authoritative text on Enheduana which includes all of the writings attributed to her is Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author, by Sophus Helle (2023). There Helle acknowledges the debate in question and states clearly that it is still a debate. However, he reminds us that either way, whether she wrote or even authored verbally the works, they are indeed about her, a true historical figure, and she is the first "author" to have been recognized as an "author" by her own tradition. Helle is right, also, to remind us that being such a significant historical person, the lack of popular notoriety and more common recognition of her very existence inexcusable. Patriarchy is obviously to blame most of all, but there are also other factors which pervade our human priorities and never fail to disappoint when it comes to what we commonly know and what we don't, what is popular and what is not. Our priorities are a mess, in short, and in fact when you think about it that means that our priorities are not, in fact, our actual priorities - we just believe that they are.
It is possible to make some distinctions especially between Enheduana's hymn, the Exultation of Inana, and the figure and role of the same goddess Ishtar (the Akkadian version of the name) in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh, however, was also a story told in Sumerian, so it did not originate necessarily later, but it existed in various forms and parts before becoming the Babylonian epic that is read in most classrooms today. There are many other texts besides those of Enheduana and those ahout Gilgamesh in both Sumerian and Akkadian to consult, and it may well all be an oversimplification on my part, but the obvious shift between the portrayal and function of this goddess Inana/Ishtar in these two likewise very different texts (one a hymn, the other an epic) is too compelling to ignore.
Indeed, the differing portrayals of the goddess have not been ignored by leading scholars in the field. Helle (mentioned above) addresses these differences, along with Pryke, Harris, and many others. However, the particular interest we have here was hinted at in Part I, where we saw a thematic connection in the nature/nurture issue and different literary works including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1984, A Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, The Cobler of Preston, The Taming of the Shrew and Gilgamesh. We can add the portrayals of Inana/Ishtar to these threads that weave the theme together, and many other works both old and new besides.
To put it briefly, the Inana described by Enheduana is incredibly powerful, basically a force of nature - and as such is capable of representing polar opposites such as destruction and creation, being nurturing and wrathful, vengeful and protective, good, bad, and every kind of coincidentia oppositorum one can think of. The Ishtar of Gilgamesh, on the other hand, is jealous, petty, spiteful but still dangerous. Whole books have been written on these distinctions, so we cannot investigate all of the complexities here. Yet I am not sure that any scholar has drawn the deeper insight into Enheduana's portrayal. Even though Harris uses the most important phrase coincidentia oppositorum, the philosophical significance is not fully explored. For that, we would have to turn to thinkers like Alan Watts and Iain McGilchrist, who rightfully draw a philosophical thread from Laozi to Heraclitus and Nicolas von Cusa, among others. Watts also investigates various Chinese, Indian and other mythological traditions, including that of Christianity, in his book The Two Hands of God, and McGilchrist draws his connections in both The Master and His Emissary as well as in The Matter with Things. I defer a lengthier discussion of these works to another time, suffice it to say that Enheduana's portrayal of Inana should be added to their lists.
As a poet, priestess, author, orator (the context of her Exaltation is a kind of court, where she pleads to Inana for help in regaining her position as High Priestess - a notably bureaucratic/political dilemma) and philosopher who perceives the coincidentia oppositorum in line with the thinkers mentioned above, as all of these, Enheduana is our Hero here, not necessarily for her morals (as Helle points out, she seems to represent a rather violent acceptance and desire for both power and empire) but for her early status as the first author, one who writes beyond the influence of Bureau, who commits her words to depictions of nature and its ways, its contrary forces, over those of made up customs. She sings of death, not of taxes.
Another scholar in this field whom we must mention is the famous Irving Finkel (his being famous but not famous enough is further testament to our made up and mistaken priorities). Finkel speculates (controversially, as he is well aware) that writing did not originate with the Sumerians. Perhaps the technology of writing so much on clay, which in turn has preserved their writing as the oldest, is all there is to it (although perhaps also phonetic writing as opposed to merely pictographic). Either way Finkel finds it difficult to believe that with a building structures such as Gobekli Tepe in modern Turkey, which is approximately 9000 years old, and where there are stone inscriptions which seem to Finkel like stamps or seals that would have been used on other written materials, therefore we might safely assume that writing on more perishable mediums was prevalent long before the invention of cuneiform clay tablets. Again, however, with the mention of official seals, we also recognize the spirit of Bureau alongside those perished texts. Perhaps we will find some of those texts, somehow, and with them other, earlier Heroes to combat the Villain.
One thing to bear in mind is that here our hero Enheduana was a real person, she existed, she died, and yet - she is remembered. The scholar Gina Konstantopoulos writes about the "three lives" of Enheduana: Her actual life, her life as the author whose writings students had to copy out over and over to learn literacy appropriate to scribes (Bureau's stench permeating throughout the classrooms), and her recent modern revival and recognition today as the first author and even feminist paradigm. The Villain J. Bureau, by contrast, is entirely made up, does not exist, and yet insofar as real people continue to follow him, adhere to his rules, aspire to his (ironically human-like) hubris in suggesting that taxes (themselves bureaucratic make-believe) are as inevitable as death, insofar as this continues, so too will this non-existent Villain not go away. J. Bureau is not remembered (how could he be, having just been invented) but instead he and taxes will persist if we insist upon it; his existence is only as certain as that of the idiom itself, "death and taxes."
What Follows
SO WHAT follows this look at one of our worst idioms, "death and taxes"? There are, as there ought to be, many questions to ask, queries and investigations to be made, and much research to be done. Among these is a comparative look at ancient terms from various languages and cultures that are somehow equivalent or similar to the modern term 'bureaucracy'. Such studies exist, but a more comprehensive and purposeful inquiry should be made, and the search for the true origins of the spirit of J. Bureau can serve as a kind of guide. How did this noxious fume of a spirit really come about? Does it haunt the halls of all administrative buildings and structures, both modern and ancient? Does it entangle itself with every push of the stylus, scratch of the reed, twirl of the feather and scribble of the pen? Are these technological tools for writing something like wands, reverse-releasing an exhaust 'Bureaurian' fume into our brains?
I have begun the philological and philosophical search into words and concepts of various ancient languages and societies for equivalents to 'bureaucracy', and likewise terms similar to Ancient Geek technē and various notions connected with graphē ('writing'). Especially interesting are Sumerian terms such as those that distintinguish between Namgalam ('skilled craftsmanship') and Me (a sort of 'divine power' or more-than-human skill which features prominently in Enheduana's Exaltation, and is also the category to which writing is assigned instead of Namgalam. I would connect these notions to those of the actual buildings, halls and palaces of administrative power called É-Gal, and the institute of Nam-Gub-Sar or 'scribe-dom' whereby scribes were educated, churned out in factories ('schools') thick with the stench of Bureau's fumes.
Another compelling thread to follow can lead to other mythical figures whose stories may indicate further manifestations of Bureau. For example, the monotonous punishment of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain only to have it always roll back down again, was, it is sometimes forgotten, in large part due to his having challenged Hades in the Underworld and having sought immortality, to defeat or overcome death (more than once). Indeed I would venture to suggest that all tales (there are so many) where main characters, such as Gilgamesh himself, seek out to escape death all manifest an odor of Bureau in one form or another.
More must be done, however, if we are to truly identify, isolate, and exorcise this malevolent impostor, this parasitic patron of nothing, this wanna-be deity and failure who seeks to be equal to Nature, even surpass it, but cannot - especially when we stop making mundane offerings and multiple copies of unnecessary stamped, signed, sealed and ever-undelivered 'official' documents, stop standing in lines to the slaughter-houses of numbered windows, the uniformed desks of officialdom and pretenses of power, stop sucking on the noxious toxins of taxation - when we finally stop our false sacrifices to this false god, demon, deity, spirit, pawn-brokering hocker of hubris, this whatever it is we've inadvertently fashioned... a made-up non-entity, a nothing called 'Bureau'; let us be ever vigilant against this Villain, both throughout our daily lives in relation to one another, and what is the same, within the essentially relational nature of each other and ourselves.
It is on that last note that I would like to finish. For now that the Villainy of Bureau has been established and at least partially portrayed, we can actually see the other side of taxes as such. In many ways taxes represent what Aristotle once told us about money in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics: it is meant as a form of 'justice'. This topic may require its own blog entry, namely a critical look the expression that "money is the root of all evil." For now, let us consider why Aristotle would have said something so seemingly opposite to this and actually identify money with justice. The basic problem is quite simple. How to trade fairly when what is being traded has no common measure? In its most basic form, that is all that money really is, a common measure between incommensurate things. By establishing a common 'currency', a value or quantifiable amount of the same 'stuff' can be assigned to disparate and seemingly incommensurable items or goods, even activities ('labor'). (It is worth noting that Book X of Euclid's Elements, which focuses on the 'irrationals', i.e., the alogoi and asummetria or incommensurable lines, is also where the term taxis features most prominently in that work.) Taxes, in their most basic form, are a way to establish the belonging and participation of individuals in a community. As Helle points out in one of the Essays included in his edition of Gilgamesh, the usual trade was that of corvée, i.e., having to help build via one's labor certain projects designated by the ruler of a city or state. In other words, in exchange for one's labor one gained citizenship. Then, by comparison, we can compare taxes. Helle quotes another scholar: "As the Assyriologist Eva van Dassow points out, the performance of corvée became synonymous with 'citizenship', in the same way 'taxpayer' is today" (p. 205). In some sense then, similar to Aristotle's explanation of money as a form of justice that establishes a common measure, so too might we say that taxes allow one to gain citizenship not just by physical labor, but in any number of ways insofar as they can be monetized, i.e., measured and paid via the common measure.
SO WHAT happened to this seemingly flexible, justice-oriented and potentially even more freedom granting method of establishing community, belonging and participation? Was it the Villain that happened? Here I refer the reader back to page one, and invite a rereading of everything that has been said regarding the 'death and taxes' idiom - doing so now, however, with that very question foremost in one's mind: SO WHAT 'just' happened?
By: V. Duane J. Lacey, PhD.
Last Updated: June 22, 2026
For Full Text with Bibliography and Other References, see:
Lacey, V. Duane J. ‘How To 'So What.?' The "Death and Taxes" Quote(s): Parts I-IV’. Zenodo, 22 June 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20793948.