So, this blog is the Fifth Estate. What exactly does that mean, and why am I writing this? I’ll try not to be too long winded, but a short history note is in order.
The term Fifth Estate is used to describe an emerging power structure in Australian (and world) politics. It comes from a re-jigging of a set of labels used to describe various antique and obsolete political structures in pre-Revolutionary French politics. The four traditional estates were, supposedly, 1) the clergy, 2) the nobility, 3) the commoners and 4) the press. Given the French Revolution was over 200 years ago, let’s translate that into modern terms.
The first estate is the church. A slippery old beast, and in our society the last remaining political vestige of the Roman Empire (I kid you not). It certainly retains its position, though with far reduced obvious clout compared to bygone days. Gone are the medievalisms of Abbot-Commanders slaughtering innocent Cathar heretics and innocent Christians alike, crowing “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius — Kill them all, the Lord will recognize His own”. Today, such overweening zealots simply hold prayer sessions in the Prime Minister’s Abbott-Commander’s office. With the Abbott-Commander himself. Or they push the social agenda on Brother Costello at family Christmas lunch. Fiddling at the edges, ever fiddling at the edges.
The second: the nobility. For this, we must read the modern equivalent: James Packer, I’m looking right at you, son. As a son of Dandenong, I huck a loogie of contempt in their direction. What a bunch of unmitigated wanna-be bevans the nobility are. Horsebraying, unbowed by decorum, the magesterial faux-westitude that is the ultra-rich maintains its place as the taste(less) arbiter of ostentatious, inefficient chintzy living. Why not piss 100 times more cash than you have to? I’m having the deluxe gold option on my lowered bimmer too, mate. (Strange how these bogans of all social classes always go for pokies, babes from zoo magazine and hot-up cars). But it’s Get Rich, and Die Still Trying pumpin’ on them pimpin’ Maserati subwoofers. And that’s the failure of the nobility – it’s so lifeskills-challenged it just can’t live without lots of money. Thus it can’t even get being a bogan right – it can’t survive on half a dole cheque like a real munger from the burbs. James Packer, I’m looking at you too, you half-arsed pseudo-westie. Do YOU know how to survive by dumpster-dive? Have you no clue about cheap effective eats? If you traded places, could you survive? I could adapt to live on your wage, but could you adapt to live on mine? I dare you to try, you inefficient and incompetent scumbag.
The third: the commoners. For this, read parliament and associated hangers on, apparatchiks and flunkies. Those wrapped up in thinking they actually run stuff. Got some news for you, guys – you might not. This is the 21st century, we have the science, it’s called chaos maths, and we are learning about self-assembly and the way all sorts of dynamic systems (like social structures, perhaps?) self-regulate. (Otherwise known as the rule of no central command in the body politic, all the parts work in a dynamic instability). Are you really necessary, Mr Fearless Leader? Like Bucky Fuller said: eradicate the politicians, we’d grow more in 6 weeks. Eradicate the farmers, we’d all starve inside 6 months. So, who really runs the country, eh? (God no, the Nationals). I don’t care which group you claim you represent. A pox on all your houses for even trying to speak for people.
The fourth: the media. The fourth estate was originally the mob (and perhaps there’s something explanatory in that, given their rabble-rousing ways). When Burke mentioned them, he said: “Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all”. Well, he got that one wrong. This is the glue that supposedly hold democracy together. *sigh* So many churn out an article based on a pair of press releases and the tired cynicism of a Walkley hack. So few actually know what their job is, that we must now school them proper in applied communications.
And so I come to the Fifth Estate. That’s my personal <tag>, for all of us outside the so-called political process. From our vantage point here in Fifth-land, we can all see that the political process needs a rejig. Given the shittiness of the Fourth Estate’s professional ethic, the growing irrelevancy and monotone technocracy of the Third Estate, the fart-burping Winnie-Blue-chaining and Jim-Beam-chugging of the Second Estate, and the pederastic pointlessness of the First Estate, we’re just going to have to take matters into our own hands. You see, when it comes to storming the Bastille of power processes, we got the flash-mob waiting: start handing out the how-to-SIM cards, ladies and gents. Tracking all sorts of inter-related messages trailing around our push from the Fifth Estate towards something better than this representational turd called “democracy” is the purpose of this blog.
Oooooh. A kind of hush – Heresy! Call the Abbot-Commander, I impugned democracy! Well, one thing you’ll find here is the Cathar of social thinking. Just call me the Mithras of sacred cowdom. Follow this Ginsu carve: if we have a system which is a true expression of democracy, and in its correct and proper functioning we find it to be a half-arsed system, then surely anything that is *better* than it would be necessarily *better than democracy*. QED. There’s the 9000-tonne pink elephant grinning from the butter tray. Capice? But so often, the idea floats that democracy is the end goal of progress. I cries in me cups, along with Churchill.
But if you think that moving beyond democracy means going back to useless pseudo-solutions that limit freedoms and propose a narrow range of Glorious Leaders, then maybe you might like to rack off now. So here’s to all the rest of you, implementing the post-representation distributed solution right now. Start talking up, and sharing your knowledge. That way, we all get to have a say as we all help run our country.
