copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2015
We first heard of a “New World Order” when George Bush was president and let those words slip. We want to pick up those words and expand and change what that means – just a little.
We live and see others prosper as we recapture the past and move into the future world order. Some of us see the past as that place full of light and goodness. Others see this new technology creating that place full of light and goodness. We think they are both wrong and totally destroying what they are trying to achieve and capture. How does that happen? How did and do they get it so wrong?
We have to go back to the old world understanding that we don’t own anything on this earth. We contribute those ways of thinking to the ‘primitives’. Those groups of people who didn’t understand and were very ‘unintelligent’ in their ways of thinking. Their basic belief was that we don’t and can’t own anything in this world. All of that changed. But did it really or only in new constructs we chose to use to define who we are and how we live!
When we enter this world we do so with nothing except the body we take on at conception. When we leave it, we leave with nothing – not even the body with which we have identified for as long as we have lived on this earth. So how have we gotten everything so messed up, mixed up, confused and just downright wrong?
We need to go back to accept the fact of who we are instead of who our leaders have created us to be through their mythology – which we have accepted – and look at and accept who we really are and what we really own, if anything. Once we do that, the Bettina Lifestyle is simple – it is a “New World Order” based on our shared humanity – and a joy to live.
Whatever we receive in this life is a gift and something we own only temporarily. It really belongs to the earth – whatever that means. So we should take care of every pin, every dot, every tittle and iota that comes into our possession because it is not permanent and it is not ours. We keep all of these things for a second and then pass them on to someone else, unless we have ruined all of what we have possessed in the meantime and then we throw our things into the landfills. Those things we claim to own came from someplace else and are going someplace else when we no longer have use of whatever we have acquired.
Enter the Estate Sale – the Yard Sale – the Garage Sale. All ways we use to get rid of our ‘old’ stuff’ that we no longer want nor think we can use. The thought of taking care of our things because we are passing them along in the future very seldom enters our minds. We are the throw away society. We use it and throw it away. And what happens to those waiting to receive those throw away items? Sorry, but they were trashed, discarded, uncared for because the person using them interrupted the cycle by their inability to recognize their humanity and the need to share everything with those waiting to receive. We have dehumanized those waiting to receive to justify the way we have dehumanized ourselves. We have re-created ourselves in the image of the god we created who would put up with our sins, and wastefulness and uglinesses to ourselves and to others.
If we had taken good care of what we ‘owned’ temporarily, and understood that what we have must be used by someone else, those things would continue their lives and would continue to be useful someplace else and to someone else.
Some people can only buy and use “new” stuff. Some of us delight and cherish the ‘old stuff’ that we find at Estate Sales. It is like winning the lottery to find something wonderful for a fraction of what we would have to pay for the same item “new”. It is living on society’s throw aways, but what a luxury life.
Clothes are the best example. If you wear your clothes carefully, you can pass them on to continue to be used by someone else. So Bettina provides for that. Bettina Network, inc. has estate sales. Bettina Network Foundation, inc. gives away that which is given to us to those who need the give-aways to be able to participate in this society. How wonderful to find those give-aways in good condition.
There is no understanding of the ugliness and selfishness of the society in which we live until one becomes homeless. You can understand it on a very small basis as you interact and see the political fights, the petty jealousies, the coveting thy neighbors belongings. You can understand it only so far, if you also have a position which pays you money to work; friends in the same or better position of whom you can be jealous; belongings which don’t quite measure up to those of your neighbors. Homeless, you are cut off from all of that and are standing outside alone or with children or with other family or with friends- all of you alone -it is a stark emptiness, fear and feeling of what was it all about and what is it all about now that I am on the street! But oddly enough, that tendency to create negative structures in which to live is so strong that the homeless recreate the same scenarios only on a different level from that which we find in the society at large. What stops that? What intervenes to get rid of all the myths which we have created to continue this insanity?
To be homeless raises the question as to what got me in this place? Did I do something or not do something that I wound up homeless and cut off from everyone and everything except those in my condition? There are a few people who reach out to help, but they are not my friends. They are making themselves feel good as a part of their “belonging,”‘ enhancing their position in society; reaching out to ‘do good’, but going back into the lifestyle and the society which created the underbelly of people that are not doing so good.
Why do we throw away our children onto the streets? Why do we cast our elderly into buildings which harbor and collect all of the germs and diseases one gets as one gets older and keeps them from being seen and interacted with by others – the normal younger ones? Why do we eliminate youth and family from these buildings and put those who are only one step above the elderly in such places to ‘care’ for them? Is there something about youth who don’t tow the line and the elderly who shouldn’t be seen with the rest of us that makes us segregate?
As racism subsides are we so quickly replacing it with this form of elder-ism and creating more isms – so we don’t run out and might have to acknowledge our equality? Separate and unequal now true for the elderly and for our children?
It is interesting that one sees, on the streets, people active until about age 70 and then it is rare to see those much older unless we see them amongst the homeless. We have to go out of our way to these elder-buildings to see anyone older than 70. Why do we so desperately need to be better than, that we will destroy other human beings to fill our need to be better than?
Marketing and advertising create the image of being stunned by those over 40 who look good (translate young) – who are not ill – who are active in society. We just gasp at a 50 year old who looks younger and is still very active. Corporations almost totally refuse to hire anyone over 45 and we go along with that. Somehow, wisdom does not count. And we can see that in how our society operates. If wisdom were allowed in, and we commonly shared the experiences we have acquired from having lived many years through much, that might change the structures of our world and those who are busy creating this horror might have to give way to others who understand, acknowledge and act out of our common humanity.
If we treated our possessions as being with us only temporarily would that change all of this? If we consciously understood that when we leave this earth we would not even be able to do so taking our own bodies? Would that make a change? If we passed on what we now own and use when we either no longer want or need it and we passed that on in good shape to others would all of this change?
As of now, wearing clothes someone else bought and wore and now throws away is not considered great. Many of us won’t wear other peoples’ clothes. We expect to immediately get sick and die from some terminal disease we catch in that process. This need for new stuff and only new stuff has been created by a marketing and advertising campaign which has made us deathly afraid of each other and sometimes of ourselves. We must feed the “growth through throw away” societal structure. The faster we can get others to discard and throw away the faster new industries and companies can grow.
Look at this, – we can’t stand to be around someone who has an odor. That has created a whole industry, which is thriving. Try it sometimes and see how repulsed your friends and even your family can be if you smell. And we all smell. The exception is those who temporarily get rid of their smell by using chemicals which in the long run are harmful to one’s health. Maybe those products need the addition in their television commercials to list all the bad things they do to the body, if you use them, as soothing music plays in the background. Your smell is as unique as everything else. Get used to it. Can you walk into a room and know any of the people who just exited by the odors left or do you know the odors left by the brand of the chemicals used by the individuals?
We prefer to be around those who have more than we do and we will do some strange things to each other reaching ‘up’. We cater to those who seem to have more, hoping they will acknowledge us and pull us ‘up’ with them. And those already ‘up’ are doing their best to distance themselves from those who have less because they don’t want their ‘position’ compromised, especially by the unwashed.
Take a look at what keeps us without an odor – full of chemicals. Take a look at what keeps us clothed – chemicals, oil, especially in the middle classes and you will find these chemicals and processed oils giving off gases into our bodies. The food the chefs, who now make millions of dollars for the prattle produce, – can be really fowl, only we claim it to be exquisite because we repeat what we are expected to repeat to stay a member of the group. Once upon a time these Chefs touted Olive Oil as the only Oil to cook with if you wanted to be healthy. Slowly, too slowly, word got out that one can’t really cook with Olive Oil because it goes rancid as the temperature in the pot goes up and it doesn’t have to go up very far for the rancidity to appear killing all of the B vitamins in our system.
Try life in this New World Order. Take good care of what you currently own, with the thought that it will be owned by someone else in the not too d
istant future and you want to preserve it so it can continue to be used and enjoyed. Pass your belongings on to those who either won’t or can’t pay the top dollars required of the people buying new stuff. What is this new stuff they are buying? Shoes full of chemicals way into four figures; New pocketbooks which show off a certain status costing into five figures. Instead of landfill, make sure those items with which you currently live are in such good condition they can be passed on to others to enjoy.
Find someone homeless and bring them into your social circle. Include them in your parties, your dinners, your outings, your vacations. You don’t have to provide them with permanent housing. When dinner is over they go back to their homeless state. When you return from vacation, they go back to their homeless state. When you pass someone homeless on the street – smile and speak. When you pass anyone on the street – smile and acknowledge your common humanity. What will that do? Possibly cure this society’s penchant for creating homelessness and then not taking responsibility for what we have created. How? By acknowledging our common humanity. If I have a lot in common with that person on the street how can I do otherwise than to at least speak. Maybe one day……………..
As the homeless are more included in your life and the lives of your friends and family maybe they will see another way to move out of the state they are in. Maybe doors have been opened for them and within them to help move them off the street.
Try this beginning of a truly New World Order and see how far it takes you and us.
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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.
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