Response to Youth Idealism
"Idealism is the last luxury that only belongs to the youth," said Tan Malaka. The problem is each era has its own challenges that demand different responses. In line with that, the youth idealism must also be put in the context of challenges in its era.
The capability to respond to the challenges of an era as a collective work — not simply individual achievements — gives birth to a transformation generation. The meaning of a generation in sociology does not merely represent collectivity on the basis of age equality, but also on the common experience, vision and the call of historicity that forms the power of change.
Ron Eyerman said, "Sociological conception on generation implies more than simply being born in nearly the same era. This conception states a similarity of experience creates a foundation for the same point of view, so that it can unite the doers, even though they never meet each other."
The youths who initiated Generation 1928 represents the presence of a brilliant generation. In the limitation of technical connectivity (transportation and communication means), this generation can expand its political capability and imagination beyond archipelagic and primordial spatial boundaries.
Youth delegates from Jong Java, Jong Ambon, Jong Celebes, Jong Batak, Jong Sumatranen Bond, Jong Islamieten Bond, Sekar Rukun (Jong Sunda), among others, depended on ships and trains to travel to and attend the Youth Congress in Jakarta.
Some of them traveled for weeks. Meanwhile, the media communication to expand exchanges of thoughts among youths across regions was limited, and depended on printed media (newspapers, magazines), which had a limited circulation and took a long time to reach their readers across the archipelago.
The obstacles of technical connectivity did not hinder the connectivity of reasoning and a sense of nationality. In fact, linking people who lived on separate islands — with their diverse backgrounds, religion, language and culture — into a national community was not an easy matter.
Do not forget, even though humans are frequently called zoon politicon (societal animals), sociological researches show the maximum measure of a collection of humans who are able to intimately mingle as group is only 150 people.
Above the threshold, the sense of fellow solidarity was difficult to accomplish, particularly with people from remote islands across an ocean. The shadow of fraternity in a broad scale, across boundaries of tribes-ethnicities, could only be built through the engineering of imaginary reality, which was constructed by a "myth" system (the shared system of beliefs, symbols and rituals).
The youths who initiated Generation 1928 were successful in expanding the imagination of joint community through the creation of a "myth" of historical similarity, which was united by the "negative-defensive nationalism" (against common enemies), which encouraged the creation of an image of one nation: the nation of Indonesia.
This generation was also able to create f the "myth" of geopolitical similarity by admitting "one blood sphere: the motherland of Indonesia," whose horizon was exposed by the administration and colonial economic networks.
They were also capable of creating a "myth" of the linkage of socio-cultural roots that enabled a joint commitment that upheld the language of unity: the Indonesian language.
Thanks to the linguistic politics, the colonial literacy and unintentional impact of a liberal economy, which enabled the presence of a vernacular press industry, the expansion of Malay and the provision of reading materials in Malay paved the way for its use as an official language of the Japanese occupation.
In short, the youth of Generation 1928 also managed to overcome obstacles of technical connectivity with the creation of a system of confidence that linked millions of people from various primordial streams to the ocean of the Indonesian nationality, paving the way for the establishment of civic nationalism, which was broad and inclusive.
Challenges of today\'s youth
The challenges faced by today\'s youth is quite the opposite. In terms of technical connectivity, space and time constraints in communication and transportation have already been surpassed by the presence of various latest technological advancements in digital telecommunication and transportation. The Indonesian community is among the world’s most intense internet and social media users, enabling people spread across the islands to be connected intensively and extensively.
Seen from this angle, millions of Indonesian youths today even have the potential to experience a shift in their self-concept about the imaginary community they want to reach, from a citizen of a state-nation community to netizens of a global community. The problem is that a fully universal human who can live in a fictional world never exists. As long as they have bodies, humans are tied to the space of time; they need to eat and drink and experience real-life encounters, which is inevitably influenced by immediate environmental conditions. At this point, the Indonesian youths today now face a paradoxical situation.
When technical connectivity brings us increasingly closer, connectivity in reasoning and the sense of the nation becomes weaker. The adoption of high technology is usually not followed by high culture. The low literacy level, shallow historical horizon, poor scientific reasoning, shrinking intercultural association, narrative knowledge as the basis of characters are marginalized.
The intensity of technical connectivity without the basis of civility quickly propels the industry of hoaxes. The myth of the broad and inclusive national linkage as a legacy of the Youth Pledge generation is being pressured by the emergence of new myths that are produced with a deficit of literary and scientific reasoning, and with the aim of linking young people to the direction of a new dogmatic and fascist community.
Suddenly, we are witnessing millions of youths drifting in the waves of the reverse flow from the ocean of Indonesian nationality to primordial tributaries. The imaginary community of being Indonesian is getting narrower, separated by the differences of religion, ethnicity and groups. Indonesia is like a falling mirror that later breaks into pieces. Everyone sees the image of their own community in terms of interests and individual groups.
In the expanding phenomenon of national polarization and fragmentation, the youths today are challenged again to carry out their emancipatory mission. In connection with this, it has to remembered that in every era, the quantity of youths as thinkers and initiators always constitutes the creative minority.
In 1926, the peak period of political activities of Perhimpunan Indonesia (the Indonesian Society), out of more than 673 Indonesian students in the Netherlands at that time, only 38 became PI activists (Ingleson, 1979: 2). It was the same in Indonesia. Following the establishment of three universities in the 1920s (THS, RHS, and GHS), several university club students emerged in the East Indies with the aim of being creative.
However, amid the mainstream of recreation-oriented clubs, a small group of students who were conscious about politics emerged by establishing a politically oriented society with a very limited number of followers, like Algemene Studieclub, which was led by Soekarno. History recorded that this creative minority became the agents of change who conceptualized "Indonesia" as a knot of unity and independence.
As a result, there is no need to worry if most youths today prefer to spend their time chatting on social media, having fun in malls or enjoying their leisure time at recreation sites. At least there is still a minority of creative youths who are engaged in innovative works, entrepreneurship and political actions. Moreover, in line with the Indonesian demographic structure at present (with the majority of population of young people), the creative minority today should be much larger with more diverse varieties of creative fields than the previous generation.
The problem is, when the creative minority in the Youth Pledge generation was able to link and organize the scattered creative potential into the unity of the generation of change, the generation today has not shown an ability like that with the risk of being able to go toward the lost generation. The heaviest challenge of the youths today is not to give birth to successful individuals, but the ability to link personal successes into a joint agenda to face challenges of the era.
There can be no generation of change without deliberate efforts. The Youth Pledge generation deliberately responded to the challenge of colonialism and feudalism through the creation of public spaces, public discourses and collective organizations that linked the creative minority from various primordial backgrounds into an inclusive and progressive national block. Through the creation of public spaces, public discourses and the power of public reasoning, a connectivity of collectivity, which in its articulate power becomes a catalyst for political change, will be formed.
The creative minority of youths today moves independently or in limited groups. Without any deliberate efforts to lift the particularity of creative cells into the commonality of creative networks, the creative minority is scattered into isolated units. The emergence of social media with a very strong tendency to individuation further strengthens the tendency toward the atomization of creative forces.
Occasionally, a network of consciousness that moves slowly through social media can indeed give birth to a corrective force. However, the corrective force with no agenda and shared organization often merely becomes a reactive power that will immediately disappear as soon as the cycle of issues fades.
It is clearly visible that the capability to organize ideas publicly and politically will lift the particularities of the creative power into the power of collective changes.
As Hannah Arendt said, politics is the space of appearance for hidden ideas. Without the ability to organize themselves politically, the creative powers today, no matter how large they are, will not be able to make their ideas be exposed publicly, they will not be able to stimulate creative inspiration among the public, and will not encourage the joint binding of progressive powers.
National commitment
In making the generational response to the challenges of this era, it must be remembered, behind the revolutionary changes in the aspects of engineering, there is always a constant element that determines whether the new discoveries bring benefits or harm for mankind. The constant elements are called "ethical values.” Instrumental rationality without the demand for value means that the hunt for a short life damages the long life.
We do not exactly know how the continuity of the state-nation will be in the future, but as long as humans need a living space, our ethical orientation should be prioritizing ethical relationships in the immediate environment as well. The values of Pancasila are the genius heritage of the founding fathers, who explored ethical values for Indonesia itself, but with universal relevance that can become an ethical backdrop in facing the era of globalization.
In Pancasila\'s insight, nationalism has emancipatory values; that the source of oppression and dehumanization can come from the homogenization of globalism and from particularities of localism. Nationalism bridges the two extremist tendencies. In the one hand, nationalism protects the existence of local cultures from the domination and hegemony of foreign cultures. On the other hand, nationalism can also lift the particularities of local cultures to be abstracted and united into the collective value of nationality. In other words, the Indonesian nationality with the guidance of its Pancasila values will be able to anticipate challenges of the millennial generation by offering a blend between a global vision and local wisdom.
In that context, it is worth noting that the global pull toward democratization and protection of human rights will indeed strengthen. However, opposition and antagonism toward this tendency will also happen. All over the world, "identity politics," which reinforces the differences of collective identities, such as ethnicity, language, religion and nation, experiences a tidal wave.
In such a situation, the existence of Indonesia as a republic is asked to stand firmly above its basic principles. The central idea of republicanism emphasizes that democratic process can serve and also guarantee the existence of social integration in the community, which is increasingly experiencing a wide variety of differences. Therefore, the democratic challenges in the future will be how to realize political recognition and politics of recognition, which guarantees individual rights and equality of rights from various cultural groups, so that they can live side by side peacefully and productively in one republic.
Nevertheless, the state\'s efforts to provide space for the equal coexistence of various groups of ethnicities, cultures and religions should not be paid by the expensive costs in the form of social fragmentation.
Each group is demanded to have commitments of nationality by highly upholding the national consensus, as stated in Pancasila and the state constitution, as well as other elements that unite the nation, such as the Indonesian language. The commemoration of the Youth Pledge must be able to dig up its historical fire, not its ashes. The spirit of fire links personal potential and cultural diversity with the unity of struggle to respond to the challenges of the times.
YUDI LATIF
Chairman of the Presidential Working Unit on the Implementation of the State Ideology of Pancasila