Last Updated on December 4, 2017
Why must advancement always entail greater complexity? Or, is that merely the concurrent and natural evolution of linguistic modes of communication? Do words ascribed and the antiquated, outdated philosophical concept of language as a “correspondence” between the objective world and the language games one plays (yes, an admixture of Bertrand Russell’s criticism and Wittgenstein’s deconstructionism combined) naturally result in the bungled world of complications as a mere afterthought to sophistication and the rise of a civilization?
The simplicity of a stone-age civilization, where pursuance of food and the bare necessities to survive – is that what can be termed a “simple” life, and therefore a primitive, less advanced (or none at all) civilization? Does the capacity to invent, discover and apply technology by definition establish that a collective group of people has “advanced”, and is the advancement a reflection of greater complexity, or is complexity the hallmark of such advancement? Can you have an “advanced” society and yet maintain a level of simplicity such that the pinnacle of such advancement is better defined by the simplicity of living standards?
And where does sophistication, culture and refinement of the arts fit in? Does the fact that exchange of monetary currency, the involvement of extending credit and the concomitant issues of owing and debt necessarily arise in a complex society? When did the concept of “owing” and the concurrent idea of a “debt” owed come into the daily consciousness of an individual, a society, a civilization? And, was it first tied to the idea of money, then to an analogy about “favors”, obligations, return of bartered goods – or was the very idea of owing or being obligated to, and having a debt to be repaid, separate and apart from the exchange of currency? We owe a “debt of gratitude”, and a sense of “owing” that which we borrowed, or the debt we are in, and there is the “debt ceiling” and bills yet to be paid, as well as a “debt of loyalty” – do these all arise from the origin of bartering and money-lending?
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal employee’s capacity and ability to continue in the career of one’s choice, there is often a sense of “owing” the Federal Agency or the Postal service “something” – one’s time, one’s gratitude, one’s commitment, etc.; and that the “debt” has to somehow be repaid by killing one’s self to the enslavement of work.
It is a false idea one clings to. The “owing” one must first be concerned with is the debt to one’s self, first – of health, future orientation and obligations to a family one has brought into this world. Don’t confuse concepts; and be aware of metaphors that have evolved from civilization’s greater complexity where advancement does not always mean greater complexity of confounding confusions.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire