Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Most arguments are not won by sheer force of logical persuasion; for, that would require the assumption that not only does everyone think “logically”, but that everyone also has been versed in the technicalities of propositional and syllogistic logic, has studied them and accepted them as overriding and dominant methodologies of discourse. […]
As to the familiar saying — of “knowing one’s self” — what can it possibly mean? The saying, “Know thyself”, was inscribed on various temples in Ancient Egypt and was known to be one of the Delphic maxims. Socrates, of course, taught a variation of the statement, contending that the “unexamined life is not worth living” […]
They come in various shapes and sizes; sometimes, the “moment” is just after something is said and regret begins to insidiously creep into one’s conscience, knowing that the statement made will come back to haunt. At other times, it is an event, perhaps beyond one’s control, and the seismic shift of tectonic undercurrents cannot be avoided or ignored. […]
There is certainly something to be said about it. But, then, by adding to the very word itself, there is always a danger of complicating the very concept implied from the singular word that stands alone as a paradigm of striving, a goal to attain, an end to achieve. “Simplicity” is a state of being, a characteristic of existence and the pinnacle of wishes in dreams fantasized. […]
Is sadness relative? Are there sad stories that are so sad that even the ones that were considered sad prior to the sadder story being told, somehow nullify the lesser sad stories and make them into not sad stories? Do we, after hearing the sadder tale, turn to the first story teller and say, “Yours was not so sad, after all, and in fact you have it pretty good”? If a person tells of having just buried his mother, and you ask, “How old was she?” […]
That’s a slice of the old stand-up routine, isn’t it? Where the old man is asked about whether this or that hurts, or whether he can feel such-and-such sensation, and he declares, “At my age, I’m lucky to feel anything at all!” Life sensations – it is too general a concept to retain any meaningful applicability. Instead, we are merely satisfied with portions and slices – of a cramp that is rubbed away, […]
It is something that we leave behind. Yet, unlike a wallet, a watch, a piece of jewelry or a troublesome child better left forgotten, we don’t have an opportunity to go back and get it. We say of that laundry list, “Oh, I need to go back and get it” (except maybe of the last in the list, whom we hope will be adopted into a kindly family and simultaneously also leave the parents behind); but not of the legacy. No one ever says of that, “Oh, I left my legacy behind, and I need to go back and get it.” Instead, it is intimately bound up with mortality, […]
Does freedom allow and liberty mandate, or have the two concepts been conflated such that we envision a proverbial “free-for-all” in either and both instances? Much of human history has been comprised of the latter – of Kantian obligatory categories imposed upon human behavior. It is only of recent vintage that modernity has spurned the traditional categorical imperatives that wills the ought which spurs one to have to initiate, engage and complete activities despite a want of denial. […]
The complaint is most often heard in a converse manner — that because of the minutiae and daily details required of one’s energy, focus and concentration, the “larger picture” fails to be seen. But the reverse is just as true: we often overlook the significance of the mundane, justifying such neglect by arguing that it is the cosmic and universal principles which are of greater relevance; mere human beings within the aegis of humanity, are but flies in a smattering of a decaying universe. […]
Pyrite is often the element mistaken for gold, with its bright yellow appearance and shiny, reflective compound. Why a given mineral is determined of greater value than another of similar appearance is a complicated affair, encapsulating economic principles of supply and demand, the fungibility and replacement feature of one over the other, and the plain fact that the elemental differentiation itself constitutes “real” versus “fake”. It is, in history books, novels and plays, a metaphor for greed, corruption, ill-fated endeavors, and motives which propel obsessions of determined failure and futility. […]