Ending a Hiatus From Our Stabiity Project

After our hiatus for Advent and the first days of the Christmas Season, it's time to circle back to what we've called our "Stability Project." We're looking to the Rule of St. Benedict for ideas on how to foster stability, calm, and peace in our workplace. We've already seen the benefits. 

Has anything changed since we originally pointed out the distractions and disturbances coming at us in our business and personal lives? No. Over the course of time, things have gotten worse. A few updates:

The brutal war in Ukraine, caused by an invasion of that country by forces of the Russian government, continues with no end in sight. My wife is Ukrainian, so this has had a huge impact on our personal lives. The Ukrainian military has surprised many with their ability to hold their own and then some against what were supposed to be overwhelming odds. Despite this fierce resistance, and some successful counterattacks, the killing and destruction continues unabated. There is no end in sight.

Looking forward, we may want to steel ourselves for more war on this scale. Besides various rumors of possible additional wars, experts in "cycle theory" have posited that we have entered a "war cycle" that recurs in discernible patternes through the centuries. Not that wars by any means cease in the interim, but they tend to be fewer and relatively contained. If the cycle guys are right, we may be looking at 10 years of increasing conflict, some at the scale (or worse) that we've seen in Ukraine.

Inflation continues unabated. Yes, it's increase has slowed. But remember, a slower increase still leaves us with inflation. And when you look at the last extended period of serious inflation in this country, you see the rate of inflation fluctuated from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s. Over that time, it ultimately reduced the spending power of our money up to 80%.

Crime has increased dramatically in most major cities. Where we live - the New York metro area - our local government keeps telling us things are improving. It's nonsense. Our last bout of crime at this level was the 1970s into the 1980s. I remember it well. What we're seeing now recalls that time. And now, as opposed to then, the police have been handcuffed, and the criminal justice system follows a pattern of avoiding prosecution of criminals. In addition, drug use has increased dramatically, homeless people proliferate, and emotionally disturbed people wander the streets, some of whom present a clear danger to the rest of us. It's not a good situation, but we'll leave it at that. 

Add to this social and cultural deterioration, which continues unabated. It's become quite worrisome to parents and grandparents who want to protect their children from the depredations of various "progressive" elements whose agenda is to drag our innocents into a moral sewer. And they do so with little constraint. 

What of the whole COVID/vaccine plague? When we began this project, we faced lock-downs, restrictions, and mandates by many employers who, in extreme cases, demanded their employees either get injected or get fired. Most of that has faded away. Good. But now we're told cases of COVID are rising and we hear talk of bringing back masks for schoolchildren, as well as imposing some of restrictions that were lifted. The push for us all to take the jab continues unabated.

In the face of this, there's been a dramatic uptick in disability and death, and a strong case can be made that the vaccines are the culprit. Now, people die all the time. And people have always become disabled from accident or disease. But statistics tell us these numbers have risen dramatically. We'll leave it to you to sort through the evidence. But you must have noticed reports in the media of celebrities and other public figures who have suddenly died, with no explanation. We're talking about healthy folks here. Closer to home, one of our neighbors collapsed and died in front of his house a few weeks ago - 50 years old, in relatively good health. Emergency resuscitation could not save him. While it's possible his asthma had something to do with this, it's not common for asthma to cause someone to die from a massive heart attack.

OK, I know this last subject brings some controversy with it. Some simply say the equivalent of, well, "Stuff happens" and there's no reason to conclude the vaccines have anything to do with all this. And yet, in our family's case, we've had some unexplained serious, life-threatening illnesses (no deaths) in family members who took the jab. Sure, they could have possibly been afflicted without it having anything to do with having taken the vaccine. But they were perfectly healthy, and then, wham. 

Whatever your experience has been in this matter, I can only say that it's a major source of concern to me.

Since our focus has been our work, all of this stuff can, at the very least, cause distractions from time to time during our work day. Some of it - especially when it's close to home - can disturb our minds and emotions such that our work can suffer. So to the extent we can create a work environment that minimizes outside and inside distractions, the better we can cope with what the world has been throwing at us.

And that, in a nutshell, is the purpose of our Stability Project. As for our ongoing reference to the Rule of St. Benedict, it's a matter of choosing a source of wisdom that we've found, over the years, lends a firm and steady hand to our efforts to work for the greater glory of God. 

It's that simple.

And so we'll pick up where we left off in the fall of 2022, as we work our way into 2023.