Honey, what planet did your space craft just land from? I have BEEN there, have you? There are a few exceptions, but the vast majority of people who must apply for disability through social security wait for at least two years. Go call up your local social security office and find out for yourself if you don't believe me. People who speak of speedy disability awards are often confusing private disability insurance with federal. Also, those who do have private insurance, ironicly enough, often recieve assistance from their private carriers to help prod the Feds along.

My disability award is a big $625.00 a month. If I'd only had to wait two months for it, the back pay would have been $1250. Maybe you consider this whopping. I don't.

marichiko--don't call me honey. I have been there, I am THERE NOW. I resent your attitude of exclusion--you are not the only one out here, you know? FEDERAL SSDI takes 2-4 months in Ohio. The award is 1271 single, 2570 for a woman with two kids. I've worked in the ss system for 25 years. You? Why don't you move to Canada? They would no doubt take better care of you.

Really. Don't call me honey. I find you a whiner at best.

Doesn't SSDI depend to some extent on how much you've put into the system?

yes, HM, it does. I've worked and put into the system for 25 years. It's based on that. It's a FEDERAL program--It's Social Security and in ohio it takes 2-4 months to know if you are getting an award or not. It's a MEDICAL decision. Marichiko complains of spatial difficulties yet she drives--makes me wonder. Maybe the SSDI wonders about her disability, too.

REALLY? You have worked in the federal civil service for the social security system for 25 years? May I ask what is your position and GS rating, if that is not being too personal, Ms. Brianna ?

If you really are a government worker, than in all due respect, you are a perfect example of what is wrong with the system. Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is based upon an individual's life time contributions to the system with their most recent year's work quarters of income being given the highest weight. A single person is NOT automatically given a set amount of 1271 and the amount of the award is not based on the number of dependents a person may or may not have. $1271 is practically an unheard of amount from social security for disability. People who draw on social security for their old age pensions don't even recieve that much after contributing to the system for fourty years.

Finally, you have made a correct statement. It is indeed a medical decision. But, whoops! Catch-22! How does a person without medical insurance get the required medical documentation? Answer: With the greatest of difficulty. Social security will pay for a claiment to be examined by one of its own doctors. However, the wait for this examination generally runs a year to a year and a half. I am intrigued that the federal system has allocated extra resources to the state of Ohio while short changing the western states. Perhaps, as a federal government worker you can explain why this might be so?

Given the discrepancy between your statements and the reality of the SSDI system, you must exist in a state of perpetual wonderment, and I feel no special need to explain myself to you. I find you a source of mis-information and astonishing inaccuracies at best.

Mari--I was recently awarded 2570 a month in SSDI payments. I payed into the system for 25 years. I have a documented medical condition. How is it that a woman with 2 master's degree's and the amount of responsibility you had in your job did not score medical insurance? freaky. Maybe no one valued you. Or your opinion.

[quote=marichiko]REALLY? You have worked in the federal civil service for the social security system for 25 years? May I ask what is your position and GS rating, if that is not being too personal, Ms. Brianna ? [quote]

You're pretty cute, mari. Too bad you're an asshole.

Hey, don't worry about it. I'm not. The feeling is quite mutual, and I'm not going to waste any further time with responding to you in either this thread or the other one. I've already explained in tedious detail the reasons for my current situation. If you're that curious check out some of the older threads. I'm not going to bother to explain myself all over to every newbie who comes and goes. I find your statements as implausible as you find mine. At least we agree on that much.

To get back to the thread ,,,,,,
Uhh most of you folks have evedently never worked on to many construction or indusrrial sites , I am scale man or scale dude , or the scale doc , or yo dude !!!!!

You have all missed the point.

It saddens me that you are willing to bypass an opportunity to find the answer you have all been looking for. Your whole life you have been asking questions like 'What are we doing here?', 'What is the meaning of this?', 'There must be more to life than this.'

Observe the conflict above. Marichiko and Brianna. Two anonymous internet names. Two anonymous people. They have never met. Yet they are attempting to strengthen themselves through their conflict. Marichiko has an identity here. People may see her as thoughtful, honest, literate, lefty. This is her identity. Her 'self'. If she was in touch with her real self that consists of nothing but truth, there would not be such anger.

Brianna associates with Mari's identity. Parts of it are like her, she thinks. I too have suffered, I too have pain. I want my pain, my validity, my ability to see and think clearly, to equal and rival yours, Mari, because that will strengthen my sense of self.

Both of you - please - remove yourselves from this equation. You are not unique or individual or special. You - and everyone else reading this including myself - are quite ordinary. Quite ordinary.

Mari - your first post - you describe a time in your life where you were absent of name or acquisition. Yet you put on make-up. You made sure you looked good. If you were on a desert island with no other being, would you wear make-up then? Of course not. Appearance does not matter. Survival does. I can't help feeling that you often get close to the point, nearing the truth, but keep just missing it. It passes you by.

Come on, all of you. The 'red pill' is right here. These are just words. What can you see?

You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.
- Fight Club

God I love that movie.

You know, I was waaaay out of line up there. I shouldn't have said the mean things that I said to Mari. I apologize to her and to all of you who had to slag thru the muck I spewed. I don't like to be nasty and I was.

But, I guess I don't understand Catwoman. If we are not unique, not special in our own right--what does it matter why I am here? Really, it doesn't matter to anyone.

No. It doesn't matter. Not in the sense that you mean. In the sense that 'he doesn't care that I exist' or 'I am nothing without my children' - bear in mind this is only your personalised sense of self speaking - it does not matter that your fragmented insecure self exists. I would rather it didn't exist. In fact, the best thing would be for it to die. Not in a physical sense. If your contrived 'persona' ceases to exists you are left only with truth. Why would you want to lie?

Fight Club demonstrates another important truth. That by fighting with someone else you are fighting with yourself. Because we are all the same.

You all remember the commandment 'Love thy neighbour as yourself'. Now, this has been misinterpreted to mean 'Love thy neighbour as you would yourself'. This is wrong. What Jesus actually said was a much more fundamental truth, that you are the same as your neighbour. Because your neighbour is yourself. We are all the same. Humanity does not move forward as individuals but as a whole. Do not be under the illusion that you are unique.

So now answer my question. What can you see?

I'm tempted to say that it's the name or label that makes us unique and without that we are the same. But fundamentally that's still not true. Even without a name, no one is really the same as everyone else.

For people, the face is the primary visual identifier. By that face, we could get a name and from that name we could get all kinds of other self-identifying information.Take two men and put sacks over their heads. All you have left are the persons, the human animals. Even then, they aren't the same. They're both human, yes, and can look the same on the surface. But one's a diabetic and one's not. One's has high blood pressure, the other doesn't. One can shoot milk from his eye, the other can't. These people are still very different and unique given everything about them. They only lack a means to easily identify them.

And the same goes, from the physical to metaphysical. In a lifetime, however long it may be, no one has the same experiences. Say these two head-sacked men are both 30. Allow they both grew up in the same town on the same street and went to the same school and played on the same Little League team. Even then life experiences can be very different. One man was hit in the mouth by a line drive and refused to play baseball ever again. The other got a baseball scholarship to X University. One man's house was destroyed by a tornado while the other boy's house across the street was untouched. One man had a hard-nosed history teacher at school while the other got the fun teacher.

In all of that, depending on where they live, both men could have lived perfect ordinary lives. If they lived in Nebraska or Oklahoma, being victim to a tornado doesn't make either unique. However, if one moved to Montana where tornadoes more often show up on TV or in movies, he would be unique among the locals. How unique and different you are depends on your surroundings. In places like Africa or Asia, having a monkey as a pet wouldn't turn heads, but in Alexandria, VA, it'd likely be fodder for the local interest portion of the evening news and they'd call it an 'exotic' animal.

That is just nature playing with form.

All that surrounds you, including your body, is just form. Changing, interacting (although that is not strictly the right word) and metamorphosing.

Learn to recognise these forms for what they are. And remember that they can only happen NOW, not in the past or in the future. The computer in front of you, the tree in the garden, your best friend or lover. They are all just forms.

Look at the shapes, and see them without opinion or judgement. Just look at them. What do you see?