Scholars, Cold War and Digital War

KOMPAS/MACHRADIN WAHYUDI RITONGA

Rikard Bagun

When Kompas launched its Dedicated Scholar Awards 10 years ago, post-Cold War uncertainties hung low on the horizon. A decade has since passed and the comforts of certainty still elude us. Instead, things are growing worse thanks to the digital revolution that has resulted in disrupting values.

It needs to be said that the digital war has been no less fierce and vicious than the Cold War. If the Cold War involved only two sides, the West and the East, the digital war, using social media as its main weapon, seems to involve many different sides and has turned value systems upside down. It is truly a battle of all against all: bellum omnium contra omnes. The lines between friend and foe have blurred.

Because of these worsening conditions, Kompas, with all its limitations, appreciates and bestows great hope upon those scholars who have provided much-needed public enlightenment amid the shocks of ongoing, fast and simultaneous changes.

Since 2008, Kompas has awarded a number of notable scholars for their contributions to the nation, including to Ashadi Siregar and Anita Lie this year. These scholars’ progressive ideas are necessary to face the waves of global changes.

Waves of change

After the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the world has been in a continuous state of flux that has brought forth uncertainties, new complexities, ambiguity and ambivalence. Before the world can truly overcome all these issues, digital disruption has arrived to make things worse.

Regardless of all the positive advancements it has brought, digital technology has also given birth to a great ambivalence between right and wrong, good and bad, substance and sensation, voice and noise, and truth and lies.

The chaos and ambivalence of this age requires enlightened guidance from scholars. As far as discourse goes, it seems that the role of scholars has been receding amid all the crashing waves of change and being increasingly pushed to the backburner.

The public awaits the strategic role of scholars, especially in moments of crisis. Their contributions are needed even during normal conditions, as changes can occur at any time and the sun does not always shine upon our lives.

It must also be said that a cynical view is emerging that some scholars have been carried away by the chaos and ambivalence of the present age. Perhaps this is because of the pull of pragmatism, and that certain scholars have also lost their orientation in their values and ethics to end up spreading falsehoods, hatred and hypocrisy. This is a great loss for not only Indonesia, but also humanity.