Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
It is probably the single most difficult thing to do in life, and its inability reflects upon the abysmal state of education, both higher and lower. The manner in which education is perpetuated – where “right answers” receive accolades and admitting of defeat merely alters the pecking order of who is admired and who are relegated to […]
Of masochism, there are indeed some who purport to invite the chaos of life, and actually enjoy it, relish in it and thrive in it. Its opposite is considered monotonous, lacking of artistic content and without the excitement of unpredictability. Yet, even those who thrive within the chaos of life will often need that period of respite, whether with a quiet moment of reflection, a night of reading beside a crackling fire, or just dozing in front of the drone of a television. […]
We learn at an early age to create a world of make-believe; of knights and princesses extracted not from the dungeons of the feudal world steeped in hunger, mass epidemic deaths and living conditions unfit even for the rats which lived and traveled freely in the underbelly of wealthy kings and courtesans, but from the literary imaginations of later dreamers. Or of happiness couched in syllables of uncertain saliency, where we talk ourselves into believing that fairness is inherent in games of chance, that speeches make for belief, and what people do behind closed doors are for the privacy of minds and mindless chatter, not for public consumption before the vote is cast. […]
Often, truth is found in contrasting and inherently antithetical concepts; the fact that they may be contradictory in appearance, does not substantively make it so; and, instead, it is often the combined tension between the two which engenders cohesive cooperation, whether forced, mandatory, unhappily or otherwise. Think of marriage. […]
It is well that human beings have short attention spans and memories, lest the magnification of residual retentive powers should lead one to act. Despite daily repetition of pain, frustration and humiliation or turmoil, we are ready to repeat the process, and let our memories fade into oblivion. Perhaps it is merely another one of the genetically-engineered traits for survivability within the evolutionary context of epochs of adaptation; or, a more proverbial mis-attribution to P.T. Barnum […]
Each generation has a flavor of the times — that obscure and fuzzy sense of “something” beyond which one cannot quite describe, but nevertheless leaves a distinctive aftertaste that remains and cannot be washed away. Hypocrisy may come close to identifying it — of saying one thing, meaning another; of using words and virtual reality in order to conceal the true motive and intentions. We see it in our politicians, in newspapers and neighborly barbecues; as truth is not the sought-after goal, and as relativism and the capacity to perform linguistic gymnastics at every turn of words, so the natural consequence of our deeds should not surprise us. […]