Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Remember the child who used to stand in front of the mirror and make faces at him/herself? It was great fun to “make-believe” and perform visual contortions to stretch the limits of muscular pretzels of interactions between eyes, tongue and bursting cheeks; or the imaginative stance of being the sheriff in town, eyes narrowing; or perhaps just seeing whether the twitches of a reflection can fool the reality of timeless childhood. […]
It is a cognitive invention, as most events and occurrences are a continuum without such neatly-trifurcated wholes segmented into a tripartite of sectional constructs. That is why sophistry can rule — because thought fails to meet reality and conform with it. So the argument goes: An arrow shot from a bow can never reach its destination, as the the distance the arrow travels merely cuts the chasm between Point A and Point B […]
The term and the conceptual attachment possesses a connotation that is often repugnant to atheists and pagans – although, if reincarnation and a circular vision of regeneration of life are the belief-systems embraced, the declaration of “rebirth” or being “reborn” are not that foreign. It can, too, have a very elementary meaning, to encompass merely a “new beginning” or a sense of transcending or climbing into a different stratosphere of thinking; […]
To read his works often entails utilization of descriptive metaphors, such as “tackle”, or “spend the summer” doing it, or even, “It has taken me a year to reach the midpoint”. To have read Tolstoy’s major works is a kind of initiation into the upper echelons of cultivated sophistication; how many fakes and phonies there are, can only be guessed at, but some would estimate that nearly half of those claiming to have read “War and Peace” or “Anna Karenina” either failed to complete the rite of passage, skimmed or skipped major portions of either or both, or simply studied carefully the Cliff Notes in the secluded corner of nefarious midnight travails. […]
That we would have the imaginative capacity to invent such a medium and attract countless millions to sit and passively view the saga on a picture screen tells much about our species. To be persuaded to suspend disbelief and discuss it as if it reflects a reality and can be designated as such, unmasks the myth of representing the pinnacle of the highest order. Perhaps it is pure escapism which propagates the widespread popularity of such shows; or our desire to believe, which is that essence of being that caricature encapsulated by the quote often misattributed to P.T. Barnum, […]