Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Whether everyone without exception experiences it, one can never tell. For some, it comes in a subtle, slow manner, approaching at the beginning of, somewhere in the middle, or near the end when the long days of cold and darkness seem to have pervaded for too long that it has extinguished any memories of summer days and the sound of lapping waves in the heat of August. […]
Why must advancement always entail greater complexity? Or, is that merely the concurrent and natural evolution of linguistic modes of communication? Do words ascribed and the antiquated, outdated philosophical concept of language as a “correspondence” between the objective world and the language games one plays (yes, an admixture of Bertrand Russell’s criticism and Wittgenstein’s deconstructionism combined) […]
It is an amalgamation of penultimate collectivism; based primarily upon the concept that centralization constitutes efficiency, bureaucracies exist for the sake of a mission long forgotten and forever compelling the existence of its own justified creation. They have histories, and often historians to record and annotate the accomplishments of their own beings; and the people who work for them speak about them in objective tones of third persons. […]
What constitutes a worthwhile goal? Is it determined by the outcome – i.e., a retrospective, outcome-based proposal, as opposed to the gambling one where one must enter into the dangerous waters not knowing what the future provides? Are we so safely ensconced in life’s predictability such that we will not longer accept as a goal that which cannot be ascertained unless and until there is some guarantee? […]
Goals define an aspect of humanity that differentiates from the beast; just look at nature and the existential encounter with the “now” at all times. Animals besides Man look at the world around and respond appropriately and accordingly. For them, the future is the now; the past is merely a basis upon which to react in this moment of time; and what the appetitive parts of the soul require, the predator attempts to satisfy. Goals, on the other hand, project into the future. […]
We often collect that which we know we need not; and of fodder for other’s play, who but the foolish gather the refuse of one’s own folly? Why does youth engage in a greater percentage of folly, and why do old men insist upon driving uncomfortable cars which make them look foolish once they park and struggle to get out from a position of near-supine discomfort so debilitating that you can almost see the decrepit arches of an arthritic back? Foolishness, of course, is not the reserve of the young only, as middle-aged men with youthful grins and old men with conniving friends whose sole purpose in remaining a soul-mate is contingent upon peeking at the bank account of retirees, reveal and manifest daily. […]