Last Updated on April 12, 2017
Are falsity and nonexistence equivalent concepts? If you believe in something that cannot be proven, but nevertheless turns out to not exist but yet cannot be verified with certitude or confirmed validity, is it a “false” belief? Conversely, if there is general recognition, acknowledgment and consensus of agreement that embracing a certain paradigm is an act of futility precisely because it is deemed to be “false”, but doing so provides a semblance and feeling of comfort and security, does such submission to falsity encompass any substantive differentiation from a mistaken but unsubstantiated belief?
The inane nature of believing in “false gods”, of course, has taken its own absurd turn of nonsensical meaninglessness. We have now made of moral equivalence idol-worshiping of mundane objects, events and activities, such that the charge itself is so widespread as to no longer have any relative relationship with ‘sacrilege’ or sin of a mortal nature, leaving aside being merely a venial sin of inconsequential punishment of deeds or beliefs. Whether edifying false gods or nonexistent ones, the point nowadays is to make sure that it isn’t something that will harm one’s self.
Throughout history, people have always harbored secret beliefs, whether of superstitious and nonsensically held ones that resulted in no or little harm (unless, of course, eccentricity and bizarre, somewhat out-of-the-ordinary behavior was engaged in under the watchful eyes of innocent children who ratted out on witchcraft and sorcery counter to the religious decorum of the town’s ruling class), and such discourse of irrationality and lack of methodological reasoning were acceptable so long as self-harm or interruption of another’s peace and tranquility were not engaged.
In modernity, edifying false gods has been accepted, if only because liberty, freedom and free will have all been conflated to confuse and deify the self, the ego and the echoes of rebelling against the traditionalism of past ages. We love to tear things down, to defy the past and unravel the historicity of yesterday’s constraints.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have been too readily praying at the altar of “the mission of the agency” or the importance of the Postal work by volume and time, all at the expense of edifying the false gods of immortality, invincibility and loyalty to a function which has no end, the wages paid are often the deterioration of one’s health.
Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the only way to step away from the altar of workplace madness, and the recognition of edifying false gods is often accomplished only by realizing that no gods, false, nonexistent or malevolent, are worth the price of one’s health.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire