The plethora of dystopian fiction must be an indicator of society’s anxieties. It used to be that Orwell’s 1984 was the singular defining work, followed by Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. More recently, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and its sequel, Klara and the Sun; and Ogawa’s The Memory Police. These round out the quality of dystopian novels — not relegated to pulp fiction, but of a serious genre.
Why we relate to such themes; whether this global pandemic will produce a wider variety of such works; and to what extent the negative worldview created by problems worldwide seemingly unsolvable and constantly inundating us with tragic stories about poverty, destruction, death and injustices — only time will tell.
Personal struggles and tragedies should not be overlooked and dismissed merely because greater worldwide catastrophes exist. It is never helpful to minimize one’s personal problems by saying, “Oh, it is nothing in comparison to what happened at X”.
For Federal employees and U.S Postal employees who suffer 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 one’s Federal or Postal job, the other side of Utopia is not merely to endure the growing realization that you can no longer do your job; rather, the other side of Utopia is to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.
Contact a retirement attorney who specializes in OPM Employee Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of precluding the dystopian worldview that a medical condition can surely impose.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Lawyer