FERS Medical Retirement: Indicators and the Berkeley Problem

Are other people’s private thoughts different from ours?  Or, is “existence” defined as Berkeley attempted to clarify it?

George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was a brilliant 18th Century Metaphysician who effectively criticized Descartes, Malebranche, Locke and others; and, although he is often considered a “second-tier” philosopher, was logically sound in his defense of Idealism.

His famous precept — Esse est percipi (“To be is to be perceived”) — is often simplistically attacked by arguing thus: “So, what you are saying is that, once I leave the room, the room I left no longer exists because I am not perceiving it, anymore.”  No, not quite; no more than a person’s thoughts no longer exist once the conversation ends.

Berkeley’s conception of “existence” encompasses not only the worlds we directly perceive, but also the ones which we have perceived and can potentially perceive.  And his philosophical approach is more relevant today than ever before, as we insulate ourselves on computers and Smart phones, where “reality” is almost entirely encompassed by the confined universe of the surreal and virtual meta-universe of the Internet.

For many Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, the indicators and the Berkeley Problem persist: For many, whether psychiatric conditions or chronic pain, the “reality” of such medical conditions are “subjective” — meaning, they do not exist because they cannot be perceived.

But “perception” encompasses the conceptual arena of “feelings”, as well, and while OPM may attempt to dismiss your claims for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, they are clearly unaware that this attorney — the one writing this blog piece — wrote his Masters’ Thesis on the Berkeley problem — and is well aware of how to counter OPM’s lame arguments.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Federal Disability Retirement Legal Services: Where Did The Time Go?

It is most often a rhetorical question — one which the answer is known, but the point is made by the query itself.  The question is thus left mostly unanswered.  Time escapes, slips away, is robbed and stolen away by the activities which we enjoy but are not conscious about in the very pursuance of engaging in an enjoyable or otherwise highly distractible participation.

The beginning of a weekend brings a smile of self-satisfaction; on the afternoon of Sunday, the query becomes: Where Did the Time Go?  As if the previous 2 days somehow had disappeared without any explanation for the time spent; evaporated without any knowledge of the activities engaged, the people having met and conversed with, etc.

Sometimes, the query is posed for decades of a frenetic life: The kids have grown up and gone; the empty nest syndrome naturally is filled by the void and echo of the same question: Where Did the Time Go?  Do we ask that same question, however, when we desire something to come to an end — or only when we wish that the circumstances would last a bit longer?

For example, when a career-ending medical condition requires the filing of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, do we ask during the process, “Where did the time go?”  Or, instead, do we query: When is this process going to end?

Medical conditions, likewise, often reverberate with similar questions; for, it is only the times of enjoyment when we ask the rhetorical question, and not when an undesirable condition is being experienced.

To get beyond the times of crisis and concerns, contact a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and get an attorney who will see you through the time of uncertainty, and get you to a point where you may again ask the question, Where Did the Time Go?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: Bumps along the road

On any trip or travel, how many bumps are felt or experienced along the road?  Many are imperceptible; some are noticeable; a few may be jarring to the effect that it jolts one from the automatic-consciousness-mode of how most people remain while driving.  But what impact does the entirety of the aggregate have upon both the vehicle being driven and the individual sitting behind the wheel?

Take first those almost-imperceptible bumps — what effect do they have, over the life of a car, upon all of the parts, bolts, springs, complex computer systems, etc.?

We know that, over time, stresses and metal fatigue over many trips and upon thousands of miles of travel can result in the sudden breakup of an airplane engine, or when a catastrophic event suddenly occurs where a car stops running or a plane crumbles in mid-flight, we come to the realization that the aggregate of imperceptible bumps can, over time, cumulatively have the effect of a single jarring event.

The fact that they are ‘imperceptible’ doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, nor that they have no impact; rather, it is just that we do not perceive them.  That is the old Berkeley problem in existential philosophical discourse, is it not?  Of the following: Do mountains exist on the far side of the moon despite the fact that we do not see them?  Does perception equal existence, or merely one’s perspective upon an opinion concerning such existence?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition necessitates the effective preparation, formulation and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the bumps along the road in the complex administrative morass of a Federal Disability Retirement process will be many and sometimes overwhelming.

Some of the proverbial ‘bumps’ may be minor and merely irritating; others, looming large and difficult to conquer.  To ensure that the ‘ride’ is smooth and relatively trouble-free, you may want to consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest the bumps along the road result in a jarring decision of denial issued by OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Information: The pleasure robbery

There are “highway robberies”, “train robberies” (distinguishable from THE great train robbery, which has become a historical feature of mythical proportions) and “bank robberies” (is there a single one that overshadows all others, or are they better identified by the characters who perpetrated them, like “Bonnie and Clyde”, Ma Barker, John Dillinger or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc.?); there is the “car jacking” which is nothing more complicated than the robbery of a vehicle, except perhaps by violent means and confrontation with the driver and/or owner; Skyjacking or Hijacking; and then there are “grand” or “petty” larcenies, depending upon the amount stolen, as well as special formulations with particularly distinctive and distinguishing details, like “embezzlement” (which often must possess an employer-employee relationship) or exerting “undue influence” in the act of stealing (as in cases of elder-abuse where a child or relative begins to siphon off wealth from one’s own family member); and many other types of simple criminal acts of absconding with that which is not one’s own to possess.

But what about the daily occurrences of the most prevalent incidents — that of the pleasure robbery? You know — those simple acts of mental anguish, where worry steals and robs from the pleasure of the moment; where an anticipated future event not yet having come to fruition constantly overwhelms where one is obsessed with the expectation of disaster, and thus robs the person of any pleasures taken for the moment?  This often happens on the weekend, doesn’t it?  From late Friday until Monday morning, the worry and anxiety sets in, robbing from the reserve that the weekend itself was meant to preserve and restore; and it is the pleasure robbery that leaves one with the greatest of devastating effects: profound and unrelenting fatigue, and not just from the imagined catastrophe that has not yet occurred, but moreover, from the anxiety and worry itself.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who must contend with a medical condition, where the medical condition is impacting and preventing the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position, the concept of the pleasure robbery is a familiar one: for, one’s future, one’s career, and one’s livelihood are often at stake.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not be the “total solution” for the anxiety that it may cause — whether because of the knowledge of a reduced income or the admission that the Federal or Postal employee must face the reality of one’s medical condition. However — despite being a complex administrative process, it is nevertheless a benefit that may resolve some of the perplexing questions that often accompany a medical condition, and set one onto a path of future hope and greater certainty in order to stabilize a world of unfathomable uncertainties, and at the very least, to stop the pleasure robbery from any further stealing away the needed rest and peace that weekends, vacations and a good night’s sleep are meant to provide.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement from OPM: The warmth of a thought

Does it even make sense to cross over between tactile-based sensations and conceptual transmissions?  We’ve heard variations of that muddle — of how a thought brings warmth to one’s body; meaning, thereby, that there is a causal connection between a thought and a subsequent sensation, as in, “I was sitting there one evening thinking about my childhood, sitting on my grandfather’s lap when a secure feeling of warmth overcame me”.

In such an instance, we realize the cause-and-effect consequences at play — of a thought that leads to a sensation, where mind-to-body interaction is “proven” by the symbiotic relationships and coherence of and between the two.

David Hume, ever the doubter and cynic, would likely have argued (beyond a mere declaration of dismissiveness in saying, “Bosh!” with a distinctive Scottish accent) that no necessary connection between the thought and the sensation has occurred, any more than the sequence of one following upon another.  Yet, we all believe that there is some sort of a connection, whether directly causal or otherwise.

Thus do we accept the descriptive custom when a mystery write speaks about the “cold chill” that ran up the victim’s spine just before the killer put his hands around the woman’s throat — a clear indication that observation following upon a thought resulted in a tactile sensation.  But the subtle distinction made here — not of a thought that brings about a sensation, but the “warmth of a thought”, is a somewhat slight variation of the causal connection.  Not that the thought itself links to a consequential sensation, or that there is a causal linkage between thought and tactile phenomena, but that the two are one and the same — of the very sensation within, of and encasing and encapsulating the thought itself.

In other words, the thought itself is the warmth, and the warmth is the thought, such that the “of” is not a causal consequence brought about by a sequence of X-following-upon-Y, but the space between concept and sensation doesn’t even exist.  It is somewhat like the difference between the following 2 sentences: “The discontent in winter” and “The winter of discontent”.  Is there a distinction with a difference?

Linguistic subtleties abound only within the ivory towers of academicians; for the rest of us, such separateness of meanings rarely impact with significance or relevance (ah, now that is the rub, isn’t it — to argue over the difference between “significance” and “relevance”?).  The warmth of a thought — can the tactile sensation be separated from the conceptual construct?

It is like the medical condition that a Federal or Postal employee suffers from — the one (or many such ones) that begin to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  Can the medical condition itself ever be separated from the life that one lives?

Others talk about “it” as if the “it” (the medical condition) is some other entity or stranger, but for the suffering Federal or Postal employee, the “it” is part and parcel of the life itself.  That is why, for a Federal employee under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it is important to be clear, elucidating and coherent in writing up one’s Statement of Disability on SF 3112A when making one’s “case” for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to approve a Federal Disability Retirement Application — for, when the Federal or Postal employee is suffering from a medical condition and is in need of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, the warmth of a thought is the same as the suffering felt and the anxiety one is left with for a future yet uncertain.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirements: The verse of 1-liners

Can a verse stand alone, isolated in its metrical composition, without preceding or succeeding contextual delineations?  Of what value can the singular have, without the surrounding aggregation of the whole?  Like a scrap or fragment of a larger narrative revelation, of archaeologists and anthropologists working with but a piece of the greater story, the verse of 1-liners forever echoes for a harkening of others to join.

John Donne poetically captured the sense of that isolation, and Thomas Merton wrote a reflective narrative upon that very theme; but there we are, still left with the hollowness of an island’s separation, revealed by a lack, concealed by non-existence. We can, of course, always pretend that nothing came before, and there is no need for the after; but, somehow, such a vacuum of emptiness left alone in the quietude of a vast sea floating amidst the morass of a lonely singularity, doesn’t quite fit the narrative we all seek.

And it is not merely the personhood; it can be in the context of one’s past, where the currency of experiential encounters would lack meaning without an untold yearning for the future, and nothing to rely upon of what we recognize as the prefatory period of living.  Perhaps that is why people seek to unseal adoption records and search for the origins of genetic lineage; of why hope for a more promising tomorrow is necessary for the healthy preservation of every human being; it is because, without a connection to the past, nor a window of hopeful vision for the future, human beings are left with being a mere verse of a 1-liner.

There are monks and hermits in lonely pockets of isolated caverns, where meditation upon the consciousness of self or the wider phenomena of collective discoveries is attained by deliberate seeking of a singularity for solitude’s sake, in hermitages jutting out from cliffs afar; but that is rare, much like the monophonic sacredness of the Gregorian chant, reverberating across the valleys of our own sense of isolation and despair.

Or, perhaps that verse of a 1-liner (note the singular grammatical ascription, now, as opposed to the plural as reflected in the title of this narrative) can possess a gemstone of wisdom, and in that event, it can stand alone in the strength of its own lack of plurality. But for the rest of us, we recognize that it is the support of the greater whole that gives meaning, purpose and relevance to the lives we mold and hope to embrace.

That is why, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who come to a point of realization and recognition that the medical condition which developed, and which has come to a crossroads where the medical condition prevents the Federal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, and therefore will cut short the career of one’s choice, the option to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a final admission that one will no longer remain as part of a greater stanza, but become separated as a verse of a 1-liner.

Isolation and separation are concepts alien to a social animal; and for the Federal or Postal employee who must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, that concession that the verse of 1-liners has arrived, is indeed a difficult line to accept, but nonetheless a necessary one.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Program: Word Piles

The etymology connotes the Biblical narrative found in Genesis, generally referred to as the Tower of Babel; in that case, not of words, but of civilizations attempting to reach the heavens in order to breach the power of the universe.  But Babel was more than the diaspora of a rebellious cabal of God’s children gathered to defy and deface; it had to do with evil, impure intent, and the conspiracy of human depravity in the face of a pure heaven and the violation of man’s sacrosanct relationship implicit after the metaphor of the Great Flood.

Words, likewise, hold such a contractual connection.  They were meant to convey the differentiation between Truth and Falsity, and to correspond to the objective universe in communicating the worth and beauty of a sanctified world.  The defamation of that level of spiritual relationship was violated not because of the tower’s construction; rather, Babel’s unanswerable sin had to do with the depravity of the human heart, and the essence of a soul’s darkening.

Whatever the motivation of the gathering’s aggregate will never be known; and of individual reasons for participating in the construction of such a structure, we can only guess at; but what is clear is that the response was one of anger, and such reaction must have had a reason:  the dispersion was both an explanation of the state of current affairs, a forewarning for any who might consider future similar actions, and a consequence of man’s violation of a once-sacred right.

Modernity suffers from a parallel state of affairs.  Though clinging to the paradigm of a Darwinian explanation of human history, and devoid of everything spiritual, mythological or generational transfers of traditional narratives, the metaphorical pile of words we amass reflect not just an attempt to become gods ourselves, but in the very process, to rebel against the very foundation of what words were meant to accomplish.

Once upon a time, in the flickering shadows and glow from fires where the village gathered to hear the storytelling ancients of the town historian, sorcerer and magic healer, the traditions carried forth from the inception of timelessness into the mysteries of the heart would pierce like the spear of the warrior, and children listened with wide-eyed wonder at the shaman who effortlessly rolled the tales from tongues emitting not mere sounds, but images and shadows of pictures more frightening than the lion’s roar or the wild boar’s tusks.

Words spoken, meant something, then.  Truth was bundled in the very telling of the tale; and falsity reflected the depravity of man’s heart, confounded by the loss of innocence in a world gone mad.

We can still get a sense of that — that encounter with words, meaning and truth; and, indeed, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must convey facts, circumstances and narratives of human experience when preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the piling of words upon words must convey a test of reality, and a dose of the shaman’s storytelling.

Preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application is, in the end, not just creating a word pile; it is to communicate the essence of the human condition in a world which often fails to listen, and refuses to hear.  That is why it is important to formulate it effectively, accurately, and with a coherence beyond mere word piling, lest the fall be a cloud of dust greater than the collapse of the Tower of Babel.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Disability from Federal Government Employment: That departed innocence of yonder years

Whether we have become meaner as a whole, or that people have always been so and we just never knew it, we shall never know.  How does one contrast the incomparable?  What algorithm would be applied, which quantitative analysis, and how would a qualitative methodology of content-purity be administered?  Parity of differentiation would destroy any meaningful application; for, the generational divide would question the relevance of any prior criteria applied, and the subjectivity of inherent bias as to the meaning of innately elastic words would undermine the entire format.

Is there a natural yearning for a bygone age — of romanticizing a time never quite existing, somewhat skewed, and forever filtered through the antiseptic memory edited by time, desire and the psychology of protective devotion?  Do we selectively choose, whether unconsciously or with deliberative acuity, that which we want to preserve, like those museums housing reconstructed prehistoric beasts from mere fragments developed into an imaginative construct of creative fantasies?  Yet, there are clearly narratives which have annotated a different mentality, a structure of a departed innocence portraying a pastoral purity forever vanquished by modernity of vacuity.

Mark Twain’s works surely provide evidence of it; although, one has to read his works of later years to recognize that even he succumbed to the cynicism of life’s undesired experiences.  Look at the ending in Pudd’nhead Wilson; do any of the characters emerge victorious from the circumstances ascribed, or does the wheel of misfortune simply accept the inevitability of a world ensconced in the satire of fate as administered by gods who play with eternity and circumstances, like malevolent children with insects and matches?

Then, of course, there is Carl Sandburg’s depiction in, The Prairie Years —  but does that not prove the point?  Was it not merely a retrospective outlook of a selectively chosen era, characterized by age and want of holding on to yonder years forever lost and transcribed merely by an age of innocence never in existence but by device of mythologization (despite the ugliness of such a term)?  Yet, whether of reality or of tricking one’s self by some repressed psychological device, the human need to retain and preserve that departed innocence of yonder years, is a reality which is part and parcel of the complexity inherent in the phenomenology of sanity.

This is important to consider, especially for the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who feels a sense of hopelessness and despondency, given the current situation of contending with a medical condition and where decisions concerning one’s future must be made.  For, when a medical condition begins to intervene, and the Federal or Postal employee must consider the probability of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the “surface” issues that must be contended with — of the unpleasantness of the circumstances themselves; the hostility of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service; the medical inability and incapacity resulting from the illness or injury; all of these are mere “appearances” which conceal a more substantive undercurrent of “reality” imposed.

For, like the yearning for that departed innocence of yonder years, the truth of the matter is that all human beings seek for, and desire, a sign of kindness — that simple act that costs nothing, but encompasses an untold value of meaningful touch which feels for a brief moment the brush of an angel’s garment as it shuffles silently by, leaving the warmth and floral scent of a life worth living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Fated Lives Intersecting

To state that, because something has happened, it was fated to happen, is to merely confess a tautology of meaningless repetition; and so there must be more to it than what the words themselves seem to logically undermine.  Thus, when Cassius lamented to Brutus that men at times “are master of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” he was referring to the clash between human will and the predetermination of events already set, and despite our best efforts, our condemnation by force of will, it is our own pathos that evinces tragedy.

From Classical Greek mythologies to Heraclitus and beyond, the one constant throughout is that, like the river which ever flows and shifts to erode the currency in time, there is little that we can do to forego the fated intersection of lives.

The people we sit beside in school, whether we reach out to make friends or ignore in silent disdain; the lives we impact, whether by choice or by unintended disregard; it is because we cannot live in seclusion and the profound truism of John Donne’s poetry that, indeed, the bell tolls not for everyone else, but specifically for each person, that hamlets and hermitages abound in defiance of fated encounters.

That loneliness and sense of abandonment by all around, is never more powerful than when a person is beset with a medical condition, and suddenly it is as if one is either a martyr or a person shunned for contracting leprosy; either way, the doom of fate and the promising stars have banished any history of meaningful contributions previously attributable.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal position or Postal craft, the sense that the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service will not be supportive of a filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is not just a mere chimera based upon unfounded psychosis; it is, instead, a very real dilemma.

And that is where fate, will and intersecting lives must be deliberatively evaluated and carefully analyzed; for, who is informed, at what point, and when to speak words of intended acts, may govern the future course of an Agency’s reactive motive.  For, the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the time has clearly come when one may well believe that fated lives intersecting must be viewed not merely as a tautology of inane beliefs, but where careful scrutiny must be engaged in so that the stars do not interfere in the playful laughter of gods and karma, in the effective preparation, formulating and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Social Security Filing

I have received numerous telephone calls which indicate that there are many people who are confused, misinformed, or ill-informed about the issue of Social Security disability, filing for it, when to file for it, etc., in conjunction with filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS (obviously, if you are under CSRS, you do not need to file for it).  For informational purposes, here is the bottom line:  Whether or not you plan to actually qualify for Social Security disability benefits, the only concern with respect to meeting the requirement for the Office of Personnel Management, as part of the FERS disability retirement application, is as follows:  OPM really doesn’t care when you file, so long as you have filed and show a receipt on or before the day they approve your disability retirement application. 

Thus, many people will tell me that they were “informed” by their Human Resources personnel that they must file with Social Security first before they can file for OPM disability retirement under FERS (not true); or, that they must have a decision by Social Security before they can file under FERS (even more untrue); or, that OPM will not even look at a federal disability retirement application unless you have first filed with Social Security (again, untrue).  The bottom line:  Yes, you must file for Social Security, but OPM doesn’t need to see a receipt showing that you filed, until the day they approve your OPM disability retirement application.  So, sometime before the Federal Disability Retirement application gets to OPM, or, in those cases where one has procrastinated for too long, even after the application gets to OPM, you need to file for Social Security disability benefits, and have a receipt ready to show OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire