OPM Disability Retirement: The Coherent Life

Coherence fails to take into the account the unexpected; moreover, a linear, systematic unfolding of events is rarely the rule, but rather the exception. Look at nature and the traumatic tumult which follows daily — of predators and pendulums swinging between life and death, and the instability of future courses yet to be determined. What do we make of it all? Kant would posit that we bring to the objective world structural viewpoints in order to bring order into a chaotic world; but is rationality seen from within of any greater coherence than a world unfettered by human perspective? […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Living beyond chance

Perhaps we engaged in it as children: making sure to skip over the jagged cracks in the sidewalk; turning suddenly in the opposite direction, believing that fate and determinism would be defied if an unexpected act were to be embraced; and later, the purchase of a lottery ticket, or to become more seriously addicted to gambling.  Chance provides the thrill of the unknown; but it need not rise to the level of daily obsessions in order to be caught in the delicate web of its enchantments; […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Limbo Eruptions

Of certain politicians, it has become commonplace to expect such occurrences, but with a slight change in consonants in the first word. As it stands, however, the word as left alone is a state of another kind; not of relational states of erotic ecstasy, but rather a border on the region of heaven or hell, where an intermediate state of oblivion exists in a transitional state of suspension. To that extent, perhaps the two concepts are similar. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: The Deeper Recesses of Unwanted Caricatures

Caricatures often depict an exaggerated degree of undesirable characteristics, whether for comic effect or sleaze of meanness. The totality of the person or entity described is rarely the reality of the grotesque aggregate of the negative characteristics, but one can still see the relative truth of validation in the aspects shown. Such caricatures, too, can be either internal or external; the latter being the depiction from the perspective of someone “other”; the former comprised of the totality of one’s self-image, […] Read More …