copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2011
Wouldn’t you know the Royal Wedding would not escape a Bettina breakfast table. It was a great and very funny discussion. Basically, how to cure the world’s ills using the 30 to 60 million dollars it is estimated will be the cost of this wedding. Homelessness, poverty, hunger, etc. could all be cured well within that amount of money.
Skeptics will question that possibility, but we were sure it could happen. It boggled the mind of everyone at the table that a wedding could cost that amount of money in 2011 – or rather that any one, any country, any institution would spend that kind of money on a wedding, especially in a time when the world is awash in so much tragedy; so many people living in the streets because of earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, and more – not even beginning to call up those who live in the streets all the time.
It makes the “good works” done by the royals look like so much cover for lives led on a level that is beyond human decency. As one person said – who are they that they take the right to themselves to use that much of the world’s very limited resources on such a senseless extravaganza. When these extravaganza’s were in vogue and the thing to do because that was the way of the world, it was done to scare people and so impress them with the power of the throne that they would not dare revolt they would be afraid to even consider another way of life. What then, does it mean today?
What does it mean when Charles raises money for his charities when he doesn’t even put his own tooth paste on his own tooth brush to brush his own teeth? That almost ended breakfast because none of us could eat we were laughing so hard at the description of how this grown man lives.
What does it mean when our media goes rushing to England to cover this extravaganza, searching all around to make it more than it is, spending lots of money and media space while totally not covering those in England who don’t have enough to eat or a decent place to sleep, while gilded horses and carriages are riding about and people are yelling and screaming with joy over the fact that they are being ‘royally’ screwed.
We went from high hysteria with laughter to serious discussions about how long this kind of obscenity can last. Why do so many people follow the high and mighty when their own lives are in trouble because of the resources taken from them to pay for such unnecessary frivolity and show of power and money.
What makes it even more not understandable is the fact that this all takes place in a Christian Church! WOW, did that ever get comment! Exactly what is happening in that Church that all of this is what it is about and what it takes as its “ministry”? They probably even have a mission to the poor – which probably makes up about one-half of one percent of the total amount spent on other things.
The discussion was mostly about what ‘they’ have and what ‘others’ don’t have. It was about the demeaning of the human being – both royal and servant to the royals who do the ‘care taking’ of the royals by running their baths, brushing their teeth, etc..
(You can leave this next part out, but it just totally disrupted breakfast and it took a good five minutes before we could calm down from the laughter this generated).
We wondered who was the servant to the royals who wiped their —— . And we wondered if the American media might get a ‘live’ interview with that person so the rest of us could see whose job it was to do this! We also wondered if this was done with paper or with washable rags. We hoped it was with washable rags so there would at least be some redeeming environmentally friendly result.
I think you get the picture. How we got such raucous laughter out of all of this I don’t know, but it was a pretty funny breakfast and one I have not been able to get out of my mind. None of this was upfront for me. I even watched some of the media coverage leading up to the big day. After that breakfast I have been totally sensitized in a way I hadn’t been before. Long Live the Bettina Network!
Ed Note: We put your blog in as you wrote it without eliminating anything. It was astounding to us. As a result of this breakfast and what was discussed – much of it we hadn’t thought of before either, we are putting the Royal Wedding in Bettina’s Hall of Shame.
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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.
Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com
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1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.
Industrialization of Information
Thursday, April 7th, 2011copyright The Bettina Network, inc. 2011
What follows is a summary – as best we could – of a very interesting breakfast conversation in one of the bed & breakfast homes in the Bettina Network, inc. It is a woefully inadequate summary, but it is one we think you will understand from the bits and pieces we picked up.
“Our ancestors lived through and saw their lives dramatically changed by the Industrialization of Agriculture. Some good, but a whole lot not so good, has come out of that still-ongoing movement.
We moved from a pastoral, family oriented, farm society in which we knew where our food came from; we knew how it was grown; we didn’t eat food very far from its source; and we created much of what we needed. From that era we have moved to a society where we eat food which has been processed so much that we don’t know what it was originally; have to read the labels to find out what’s in the food being sold; and when we do we discover food is the last ingredient on the label, most of the other ingredients are words we can neither read nor pronounce. The dilution, pasteurization, manipulation of real food has happened while we were all looking in another direction.
Huge machinery has been designed and built to produce things like potato chips, bread, cookies, jam, rice, pasta and to make vegetables into things we could never imagine and wouldn’t eat if we hand’t been introduced to some really grotesque abominations from childhood. Healthy real foods have been processed and industrialized into out of control and life denying addictions. Animals are being raised and slaughtered in ways that make science fictions’ most abominable and ruthless monsters cry at the thought of what we do to the animals with which we share this earth.
Today, the big industry is the food industry with processing taking place on nearly every food item available and those which are not now in the processing industry are being pushed there by the ever increasing and more ridiculous requirements of the FDA – i.e. the edict that raw almonds have to be pasteurized before they can be sold because of the fear of mold negatively affecting those who buy and eat raw almonds. Almonds, which have been sold and eaten raw for thousands of years with no bad effects on those who have eaten them.
We are a society with increasing kinds of illnesses happening from this processing, genetic expansion, experimental development from the corporate farm.
The same type of thing is happening in the information arena. We are digitizing, organizing, exploding the information available to the average person. We are organizing people into social networks and feeding them all kinds of information which is becoming a necessity instead of a some-time thing. Where is that going? How will that affect everyday people? What will it do to how we live and what is considered necessary for modern survival?
It is bizarre with some of the equipment, which has become indispensable. If you are of an age, you went about your life without a cell phone and felt very secure in where you were going, how you were going to get there and some smattering of what to do in case of an emergency.
Today, many children hyperventilate at the thought of their parents going around without a cell phone. They feel and articulate that they have no emergency outlet if something horrible befalls them. These are parents who didn’t know anything about cell phones and let’s not even mention grandparents.
If you moved from one city to another, you found your way around and found your way to the local library, city hall and other places to become acquainted with your new surroundings. Today, many feel stripped naked if they move and don’t have access to their computer and Google, Yahoo or some other search engine. They absolutely can’t function without it.
The first thing many of us do when meeting someone new is to “Google” them to see what is on line about them; click on their address to see what kind of house they live in, etc. We don’t feel comfortable with another human being until we have “Googled” them.
We moved on from there in a very lively debate, but I think you get the gist of the breakfast conversation. – Huge amounts of money is being made taking what was in the public sphere and putting it in the technology sphere making money on this information in the process. Much more will gradually be put into some form of this informational industrialization with many more making obscene amounts of money manipulating what was free.
In the process we become more and more tied to machines and the developing technology as we get sicker by the minute from what this technology and its developing delivery utensils are doing to our bodies. They irradiate, and do all kinds of other things to us, our genes, our bodies, our environment, our lifestyle AND the food we snack on while engaging in and enjoying this newfound power. The Industrialization of Information ties into and promotes the Industrialization of our food industry. One promotes the other. And where will it all end? In the industrialization of yet another part of this society? Or in leaving this world to robots which will be the only things which will be able to survive the atmosphere and environment we are creating.
Maybe we need a group to look into and study this, presenting their findings globally in a webinar which will compete with another study groups’ webinar encouraging us to go back to the primitive life before all of this happened and outlining how to do this.
We won’t be able to run off to Vermont as one could do to escape much of the Industrialization of Food because Vermont is well into the Industrialization of Information. Those who are going back to the ‘old ways’, the ‘non-consumer’ ways by running off to Vermont usually do so taking with them their technology toys. So we will have to find another safe haven to which we can escape when we have made millions from this new Industrialization and find it too difficult to sustain ourselves as humans through old age in the world we created.
Ed. Note: Hmmmm, isn’t that the Christian definition of sin? Probably the definition of sin in many of the world’s religions
________________________________________________________________
Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!
[give_form id=”3763″]
______________________________________________________________
Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.
Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com
TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com
IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!
1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.
Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Making Connections | No Comments »