Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
We talk about objects being “in the way”; of an accident on the road and we complain, “Why can’t they just pull over and get their vehicles out of the way?” We use similar phraseology when we “objectify” human beings, as in — when we seethe with anger and retribution at some person — the threatening tone of: “Stay out of my way!” […]
Young men and women should always be looking to the future. It is the past which haunts and makes one stuck, unable to move forward; of memories and past hauntings that paralyze with fear and anxiety; and yet, so many of youth in modernity are stuck in the mudslides of the past that they know not the brightness of a future yet unachieved. […]
What is a conversation? Or, is it an empirical phenomenon that — only when we are in the middle of it — we know as we experience it, but otherwise is undefinable? If there are 5 people in a room but only 1 is doing the talking, is a conversation ongoing? Must there be a “back and forth” give and take, or must something more be involved? If the same 5 people are in the same room, and all of them are talking all at once, […]
Are we the only species which engages in it? Do we ever see a dog standing aside and participating in such a phenomena? Or a cardinal pausing in its morning melody of exuberant sing-song in order to address a non-existent other? And, it isn’t even an artifice or convention for which the actor is being paid, as in an “aside” or a “soliloquy” where private thoughts are spoken aloud for the benefit of the audience, but where others in the drama act “as if” such thoughts are unspoken and shared not. […]
Karl Popper’s division of the world into three clean segments of definable universes was, on the one hand, quite controversial — especially as the esoteric world of philosophy had been steadily ‘progressing‘ towards pure materialism and scientism; and yet, on the other, self-evident to almost a simplistic, tautological fault. Perhaps that is the very implication of profundity: it is that which appears so basic and elementary as to presuppose idiocy, but containing such inherent complexity as to remain beyond the reach of most. […]
Why is it that we delight in the misfortune of others? Is it a perversity of defective character, like a genetic malformation of deviancy magnified by exponential proportions within the essence of man? Or, is it that, by comparative analysis and contrasting the parallel states of being, we can elevate our own estimation of worth by pointing to the relative denigration of our neighbor? Certainly, we proffer the words of appropriate opprobrium; “I feel badly for X”; “I get no joy out of hearing that,” and similarly innocuous statements of hypocritical emptiness. […]
Of the former, it forces us within that fitful slice of time to endure the determined events beyond our control; and as to the latter, it does almost the very opposite: it grants us a reprieve of sorts, and draws us into the delusional universe of believing without cause. Causation is indeed the harbinger of validity and scientific accountability; whether and by what means the short-lived fit of revelatory insight occurs, the paroxysmal opening of one’s eyes to the reality of a matter can result in truth unveiled, or falsehood concealed. […]