Last Updated on August 16, 2016
We focus much on lost species, forever erased at a rate of untold apocryphal dimensions, as if the deletion of undiscovered DNA material might never be recovered, and thus for once, we worry about things which we have never known ascribed as that which “could” have saved us from our own extinguishment, all the while ignoring the plight of human detritus all around us. We do that with fading civilizations, too, don’t we?
We argue for egalitarianism, impartiality, and for all things being of equivalency in value and worth; but, somehow, the “primitives” remind us of that romanticized notion which touched our nerves, even as Rousseau created a fictional “State of Nature” in which we lived in complete harmony (but for those few who, through brutish force and uncivilized conduct, forced us into an unwilling social contract in order to aggregate our weaknesses against a Hobbsian Leviathan for self-preservation and protective numerical advantage) and to which we pay homage in childhood fantasies. And so we strive to pursue our own environmental agendas, as if we can police the universe against the insanity of our own making; all the while, we engage in cavalier extinctions, ourselves, though we may name it by another identity.
We form and drop relationships; we friend, defriend, add and delete with a push of a button; we even divorce and break up so-called lifetime commitments, with the cavalier explanation that it is “better” to live in harmonious consonance than to subject the innocent to daily ravages of our own termpermantal tumults. An electronic screen, whether on a tabletop, laptop or a smartphone, can easily bring the bright glare of activity as the blank blackness of nothingness.
That is why extinguishment of purported “friends” can occur just as easily as engaging artifices of friendships; the button itself determines the substance and depth of any such relationship. It was hard enough actually know and tolerating people; it is easier still, to know them on the tablet of a screen, and not have to contend with irritants of behavioral eccentricities.
On the spectrum of human growth, we are stunting ourselves by relegating the mechanism and tools for human conduct to mere words and responsive utterances on lighted screens. The tools which we provide to the innocents, to develop those traits for successful human interaction, are diminished by the limited resources available via distance interaction.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and who by necessity must consider preparing, formulating and 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 notion that there is a negation of estimable empathy, sympathy, and just simple human caring, becomes a glaring reality too quickly, too forcefully, and with a dosage of untold reality.
Will it only get worse? Probably. As the new crop of managers and supervisors who have little contact with actual relationships, but whose voided perspective has been formed by online services of gratuitous and dubious authenticity, the level of understanding and mechanisms for human compassion become exponentially diminished.
Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for a Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is not a mere choice of optional engagement; it is spurred by necessity and human tragedy. But beware, as this brave new world of cavalier extinctions will bring forth the worst in the unclaimed losses of genetic materials, where the Darwinian principles seem to finally win out in a battle of fierce and unwitting conflicts for the survival of the fittest — or meanest.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
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