Societies and cultures develop values. These values are nurtured and fostered over the centuries and millennia by persons and groups (sometimes they are not even aware of it). At all times, there have been individual and collective “custodians and keepers of values”. Let me call them “the social elite”.
This elite is represented by merchants and craftsmen, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, lawyers and scientists, the armed forces and rebels, philosophers and artists, farmers and soldiers, engineers and labourers. They found each other in churches and Masonic lodges, guilds and trade unions, universities and parties, freedom movements and revolutions, as well as in the age of enlightenment and in academic environments.
Where is the elite of today? I tend to find only a scattering of them in the traditional fields (politics, research, education, industry). Hardly every at the top of those fields. If at all, you can mostly only find them in the respective “medium-size” or “lower” echelons.
Strangely enough, it is the much-dispraised media where I discover some “elite”. To be sure, there is a lot of hopeless rubbish produced in those media (which it is not even worth the time it takes to ignore it). Yet I come across more and more people working for the media, especially for the radio and press, who deliver excellent work in their reports, thereby transporting wonderful values and discussing issues in a responsible manner.
🙂 And that is also true for the internet and its bloggers!
RMD
(Translated by EG)