Federal Employee Disability Retirement: How we treat one another

Separation, distance, objectification and electronic means of communication; the loss of human emotions in the very living of life, where the organic has become equivalent to the android, where the original concept encompassed an admixture of synthetic humanity and the combining of components both human and mechanized – and so the artificial construct that we feared in those novels of sci-fi nightmares has, in fact, been realized.

Orwell’s major work, 1984 is, by comparison, both prescient and outdated.  The underlying concept of a totalitarian state is still relevant, but the technological means by which we have achieved such a state of affairs, and the naïve assumption that we would somehow be informed enough to recognize when we are being “had” by such powerful forces of domination, leaves one breathless with puzzlement.

Existentialism, especially of the French version (i.e., Sartre and Camus, as the two paradigmatic participles – borrowing from the grammatical meaning and translating it into the positional element of influence) argues at the inception from its philosophical origination that language games geared towards objectification and distancing from the humanity of worth, value and normative constraints as defined by the traditions evolving from social contracts, is intended to allow for the justification of the depraved to engage in violent acts of crimes against humanity.

Language allows for cruelty.  How we describe, in what form and manner the grammatical application separates, distances and isolates groups into demeaning and debasing linguistic caricatures that alters the essence of who we are, allows for how we treat one another to result in the horrors of 20th Century camps of torture, totalitarianism and total war.  We can couch language and hide behind it to do as we want.  Power left in the hands of evil, with the meaninglessness of language disseminated among a gullible population left without dictionaries and relying upon the technological information controlled by an elite few, will only progressively decay and deteriorate the foundations of liberty and freedom.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who already experience the consequences of having to submit to linguistic elasticity, meaningless phrases of power and totalitarianism are already in a difficult position when a medical condition begins to impact and prevent the Federal or Postal employee from continuing in the career one has chosen.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often a test of sorts that reveals how we treat one another, and it is always better to know at the outset who one’s friends and caring associates are, than to remain in ignorance while the knives are sharpened for the time you turn your back and expect some protections to have watchful eyes while the weakness of debilitating medical conditions continues to progressively deteriorate.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire