Times, they are a changing.

It’s nothing knew. The vandal of peace, progress, harmony and the habitual human. The symptom is written in history, and back further more than likely in the lost echoes of older stories.

The twentieth year of the new century … The first century of the new millennium, the century of the Chinese, as it has already been dubbed, the obvious and predictable future. Perhaps that is simply redictable, in the inevitable power vacuum of a failing West – we’ve seen it before.

And here we sit on Anzac Day 2019. In a state!

Is that a state of change or simply a temporary disruption?

A hundred years post VE Day (Victory in Europe) and what is the biggest change you see, if you see one, if that’s even on your ever-frustrated busy radar of daily events? There’s thousands of answers to that question, spread amongst our individual freedom, something we shouldn’t take for granted along with our ability to express the same.

Rapid change appears to have a habit of ending in disaster. That, I think is sometimes what we see in history; the visible causes not the hidden reasons.

So, here’s one contemporary change that maybe worth thinking on.

In the reinvention of Europe in the second millennium we saw consideration given to The Three Estates; The clergy, the aristocracy, and the commoners, the simple divisions of society as it was then. Why suddenly give consideration to the commoner? Well, they proved the need to be respected. They proved their abilities, to communicate, agitate, cooperate and disrupt the lives of the base-wallahs, the would-be leaders of perpetual self-interest.

But the gulf still existed between the leaders and the led that in any sizable society there would need to be some form of constant communication and translation to keep it functional.

And The Fourt Estate became an essential element in society.

I’ve borrowed the following extract from Google;

In media the term fourth estate is applied to the press, with the earliest use in this sense described by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship: “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”

“Far more important than they all!”

An assumption worth thinking about.

Along the way something else happened. The commoner, The Third Estate lost his relevant place, his hard fought for existence. He lives on in name but became the 5th Estate, the court of public opinion, the commonsense of the people. The commoners in a sense of Anzac are older forgotten heroes of another time. And we’ve lived like this under the illusion the we were not the fifth estate, but the public, perhaps the voting public even.

The Fifth Estate today is something different. It’s us … or those of us who have fallen prey to the failings of society, to other persons’ power and ineptitude but with a new voice and a new place to voice our anger. Social media, or antisocial media as we sometimes call it. Along with blogs and protest websites that are the vent of individuals’ irreconcilable discontent.

I say that because to admit that we have a point or God forbid, could even be right, makes us a threat in many ways. So, we become the angry ones, the unclean. Their hate must be “disrepected and contained” say our needy breed of frivolous political directors.

And we’re stuck in this vacuum because there now exists a 6th Estate. Who are they? Everyone that’s left. The new commoner, the ignorant, the confused, the lost, the downtrodden, the displaced, the disinterested, and some of them are angry too.

But do you see what happened here? These are not my terms or concepts. See how the 3rd Estate became the 5th Estate, and how the more vocal 5th Estate has made the commoner the 6th Estate.

That, I think is our current reality. I’m unquestionably in the 5th Estate and I don’t mind being so, as a shocked media are seeing their reality, their choices. US or THEM. You’re either part of government now, (after the sneaky transistion to the media team) compliant, obedient, without your long held and treasured media freedom that was some how perceived as not being eroded, from where they sat but yet they allowed this to happend … what on earth were they thinking?

Did they lose their sense of self-worth or perhaps trade it in for a new existence along with their obligation to that ‘higher standard’?

So, are we our own media? Because we now have no other choice?

If you’re watching the news you’ll see that this was the political suggestion raised the day before Anzac Day. No coincidence I thought, but maybe I see things differently, maybe you don’t think like me.

Lest we forget.

And we shouldn’t fail that obligation. It wasn’t World War One (WW1) back then, it was the Great War, the war to end all wars. Perhaps though we should remember also the Third Estate.

Perhaps if they had not been allowed to be forgotten so quickly, there never would have been this Great War.