Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
It is always the private conversation that is the most dangerous and unpredictable; for, the voices within are unknown to the surrounding conversations without amidst the public domain, and are most persuasive precisely because the multiple participants come down to a single voice: The “I” or “me” of the inner ego. […]
When rights are asserted, community dissipates. When, once in years of yore, before modernity complicated the simplicity of human interaction and integrity of society’s binding ties, a handshake was all that was necessary to ensure the continuity of words spoken and promises committed. Of course, con men and worthless statements of vacuity unfettered in boundless dishonesty have always existed, especially when such events quickly spread word within a cohesive community […]
What are the consequences of a wrong turn? Recognition before venturing too far into the detoured travel; loss of some amount of time (allowing for that cumbersome freeway that doesn’t have another exit for some 25 miles); a rash attempt to correct the mistake by crossing the grassy knoll that divides the highway, only to find that the invitation of the greenery is a muck of quick sand that sinks the four tires into a pit of immobility; or, in the most positive scenario, a mere four-corner turn to get back onto the “right” track of travel. […]
Of course, the most significant discussion concerning the shifting of major paradigms in the intellectual sphere of human advancement, occurs in Thomas Kuhn’s work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The concept of a “paradigm” shift, of adhering to a hypothetical model despite evidentiary incommensurability with the reality of an impervious and objective world; of a theocratic insistence upon a geocentric explanation despite factual calculations pertaining to a heliocentric reality; of bloodletting in medicine based upon the foundational paradigm of the bodily balance of humors; and, in personal lives, of how things “ought to be” as opposed to what actually are. […]
It is an act which involves non-action, and results from the character trait of caution. As an identified activity of inert behavior, it is telling that the concept is recognized as a contrast to its linguistic cousin, like the coupling of “being and nothingness”, or of “love and hate”, as if the mercurial combination is a natural outflowing of innate necessity. […]
It is the characteristic which precludes and prevents unnecessary harm, and allows for the survival instinct to flourish; yet, as with most traits, there are both positive and negative aspects to it. Yes, the telltale signs of hesitation, trepidation in approach, care in proceeding, and sometimes outright flight, allows for the evolutionary dominance of survival of the fittest and the genetic propagation of a species on the rise. In modernity, however, when the dangers once diverse in the State of Nature are no longer applicable, that same innate fingerprint can be the preventative modality of stunted growth. What was once the thrust for endurance of longevity may now be the invisible thread which holds back. […]
Each country with a colonial past celebrates it; though, for some, separation may not have been accomplished through violent revolution, but via natural evolution by decoupling of cultural and economic ties. Then, of course, there are individual demarcations of personal milestones; of becoming an adult; of the first habitat away from childhood memories; or even a first paycheck replacing the dependency of an allowance bundled in caveats of emotional connections veiled in subtle admonitions of responsibilities, adolescent resentments and the proverbial cutting of the lawn by a weekend warrior. […]
The origin denotes an unsavory history of imperialistic exploitation and deserved degeneration of culturally unseen and unforetold consequences; of an encounter between foreign soils bridged by greed, necessity and inevitable destinies, but where the conqueror reaped more than what it sought. In the opium dens which followed and the devastation of addictions ensuing, the phantoms derived from the processing of a plant which otherwise concealed the deadliness of its essence, beautiful in its floral toxicity amidst the sweet aroma that diffusely pervaded an unsuspecting population — dreams, indeed, of unreachable heights and great expectations otherwise squandered. […]