Just because the subject is up...

"Fury as councils to axe free places in private nurseries" (title to an article in The (Glasgow) Herald of 17 October)

Ah. The old Tinstaafl debate...

I have a very hard time with 'freebies', and that mentality. The mentality of 'entitlements'. If that mindset is all that I had known in life, I might understand better why people have so easily gotten brainwashed by it. It would - could easily - seem so 'natural' to them. But it's only natural in socialist-like settings.

I am an American. I came to the UK (Scotland) as an adult, so I didn't grow up in this sort of culture, of 'entitlements'. Perhaps that is why it rubs me so much 'the wrong way' - like, raw.

My position: No one is 'entitled' as a matter of 'right' to the earnings of any other person. That is theft. Not so pure, and not so simple - we do pay taxes to cover community-wide services like roads and public transport and police and fire services, and so forth. And yes - public education. And the latter is obviously where this business, of the attitude of social 'benefits', stemmed from. But it has become the proverbial foot in the door, for more, and more, and more 'entitlements' to muscle their way through to the public trough. And soon, it gets out of hand. As could have been seen, by anybody with eyes to see. It would have taken some very astute observers, and politicians, to keep a lid on the matter - a stopper on the door, to keep it from being widened more and more; as more and more people voted more and more money out of other people's pockets.

Oh yes, they were taxpayers, too, to start with. And it was the idea of a 'national insurance tax' to start with. But then the mentality of pure 'entitlement', and also of 'soak the rich', comes into play; and many people do get seduced by the idea of getting 'something for nothing'.

The welfare mentality...sapping individual initiative. Living off of other people's earnings, like leeches. Deadbeats. Layabouts...

Yes, it is the individual's fault, ultimately, as to a sense of responsibility. But it is also - and I would say equally if not more so - the fault of the leaders of the society, and the structure itself; making it too easy for the citizenry to rest on their oars, and expect others to do the heavy lifting, as it were. And then everybody turns to pointing their fingers at each other; or blaming the system, for their not getting their 'fair share' out of the goody box...

So. I see red, figuratively and literally, in all this. (Or at the least - as to the latter 'take' on it - varying shades of pink.)

And yet. And yet...

And now for another side to this matter. Because I see the future, too, in it. Just with a couple of ingredients missing in the mix. The 'mix' between individualism and collectivism; 'capitalism' and 'communism'; self and society.

In the current campaigns going on in the streets of the U.S. and the UK in particular, I see signs that read 'Education is a right', and 'Health care is a right'. And you know what? They are. In a proper context. And it is the hem of that garment that these people are touching. The point being obscured by the trees of the moment. ('They're a privilege, not a right!' 'Nonsense! They are a fundamental right!' 'Nonsense! That's slavery!' 'Nonsense! That's just good common sense!' 'You're a commie!' 'And you're a fascist - and so's your old man!' 'And your mother is'...)

Consider a society where everything is provided by the society - that is, by the people in their grand 'collective'. There is enough food and housing for all; there is free-to-cheap energy (we're just about there, on that front, anyway); there are cars and bicycles and such, held in common, with individuals capable of 'purchasing' specific such items, beyond those held in common, from the credits they have received - 'earned' for various services to the collective. But the motivating power of the system is just that: service to the 'collective'. Not out of a desire for personal aggrandizement. (Although individuality will still be expressed, because there will inevitably not be enough of everything for everybody, and so they will make choices.) And the motivating power, more precisely - behind this concept of service to the Whole - will be very clear.

It will be, not 'money'. (And particularly not 'profit', since the key to the whole shift in civilizational level is to do away with interest-bearing money, and one of its major outcome structures, fractional-reserve banking; by then having been superseded.) Rather, it will be - and the system will have come about - out of gratitude to our Creator for life with meaning.

Out of the recognition that life has Purpose, and that Purpose is Good. That life has meaning, beyond just in and for itself only. And once humanity really gets that - that life is not just about 'creature comforts', and bound by the space between the cradle and the grave - we will move out of the troubled waters of the present, and into the smooth sailing of the future; beginning to appear on our horizon, now.

Also because of the recognition, by then - as part of the recognized (re-cognized) Plan in and Purpose to the life experience- that We Are One Another. That through the process that we recognize at one of its stages as reincarnation (with its attendant law of karma), we are but playing parts while in incarnation. Now a prince, now a pauper; now male, now female; now one race or nationality or creed or religion, now another. For learning lessons, in the school that is life. And so, as we do unto others, so do we do unto ourselves.

Literally.

Because We Are All One.

Needing now to release our sense of individuality - of individuation - and return to our Source; as part of One Holy Being.


Join the move into the New.

It's going to happen anyway. With you, consciously, or without you. Because

the play is over.

It's time now for the real thing.

And the way to get there - the only way it will come about - is for each of us to give it our best shot; as it were.

The new paradigm can't work - will not work - if people individually take advantage of it.

And so we really need to release these thoughtforms of 'freebies'.

There really is, then, no such thing as a free lunch.

But if we all 'give it our best': the best will be manifested.

It's all a matter of attitude. To receive, you must first learn to give. And if we do - when we do - 'all else will be added unto us'. For life does not exist in a vacuum.

There's far, far more awaiting us.

But first things first:

cleaning up, and setting to rights, our home.

Our home, that is, away from Home.