Celebrating Human Dignity
Electoral politics have created a social space that has become increasingly worrisome. Anything is politicized. Symbols, identities, speeches and even the sitting and standing positions can be questioned in politics.
A group of elementary school students visit the Pancasila Sakti Monument on Oct. 2, 2018 in Lubang Buaya, Jakarta. The school trip was held to coincide with Pancasila Sanctity Day, which is celebrated in remembrance of the heroes of the Indonesian National Revolution.
Is it possible for democracy to survive without respecting human dignity? Does human dignity still have space in the praxis of power?
Electoral politics have created a social space that has become increasingly worrisome. Anything is politicized. Symbols, identities, speeches and even the sitting and standing positions can be questioned in politics. According to Sam Kriss (2016), the lust for power urges people to think about something that is not true as if it were true.
The presence of social media devastates civilization and drags social evolution back into the past when humans, in the Hobbesian perspective, were controlled by animalist instincts to destroy each other. Even though it also contains good messages, such as the rise of the "political public space" referred to by German philosopher Habermas (1987, 1989), social media has proven to be both a blessing and a curse.
At the end of the last century, political discourse still focused on the "moral crunch", then looked for answers to who was wrong: the political elite or society. The moralists considered the way the elite thought as the center of the problem, which had an impact on the decline of the quality of democratic practices. Pragmatists even viewed social poverty as casus belli, in that society was considered the center of demand and supply in the political market, which presented money politics, vote theft and the practice of stealth voters.
Entering the millennial era, the debate became outdated. In the 21st century, people started to talk about manipulation and political crime. History has plunged into absolute relativism. Suddenly, we jumped from a “fact-based society” – most of the modern era since the 17th century – to a “post-fact society”, which is marked by the relativization of the truth and the rise of false news.
Actually, the rise of postmodernism in the late 1960s opened the gates for a new model of thinking that combined with the rise of social media and gave birth to what is called the post-truth society.
In the post-truth world, people begin to doubt whether the principle of "work, work" or the belief "the public knows to choose the right leader" is truly a benchmark in shaping political preferences. In reality, hoaxes continue to increase the popularity curve of the perpetrators.
Human dignity
The danger begins when politics is simplified as a matter of winning or losing. The nature of politics is one of mutual benefits. The principle of bonum commune is the teleological essence of an entity called "society". This is reinforced by Larry Diamond\'s thesis (2008) that the spirit of democracy is inherent in and within society. Therefore, for me, (1) politics is a celebration of humanity so that (2) understanding the current democratic deficits really shows our lack of understanding of our "humanity" (ontology).
In his latest book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Francis Fukuyama (2018) started his explanation by discussing the politics of dignity; that human dignity is the ontological essence of humans who demand (social) recognition.
In the social context, dignity takes the form of “mutual identity” in terms of ethnicity, religion, race, language and nation. The emergence of identity politics in the second decade of the 21st century, according to Fukuyama, was an effort to search for recognition of that identity.
Decades of globalization have led to the birth of economic inequality. As inequality has blended with feelings of disrespect and degradation of dignity, people have returned to group identity for the sake of gaining fundamental recognition and respect (Fukuyama, 2018: 9-11).
Identity politics needs to be seen as the antithesis of liberal political hegemony. However, the politicization of identity is a matter of its own. The politicization of identity, which is widely used in electoral campaigns, reflects the logic of "maximizing utility", which, of course, damages the order of identity and human dignity on its own.
The phenomenon of utilizing group identity as campaign capital is dangerous misdirection. Recently, Kompas daily (31/10/2018) disclosed the results of a study by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) on intolerance and radicalism.
The majority of respondents (61 percent) agreed that the ideology of Pancasila is most appropriate for Indonesia. However, there were 58.4 percent who said they tended to choose leaders of the same religious background and 42.5 percent agreed to sharia bylaws. In the qualitative report, LIPI described four factors of intolerance in political choices: (a) social media, (b) fanaticism, (c) religiosity and (d) secularism.
LIPI emphasized that there was conservatism in society and pragmatism at the elite level. Pragmatism is exhibited by political entrepreneurs. I prefer to call them the rent seekers rather than political entrepreneurs. Politics is a market that offers profit opportunities. However, political entrepreneurs usually know the rules of the game, while the rent seekers do not care as the important thing is profiting.
Pay attention to the aforementioned quantitative results. Methodologically, there is a contradiction. The percentage of support for Pancasila should be in line with the concrete attitude toward the state. Qualitative results are not the answer to this contradiction.
Empty narratives
Therefore, it is necessary to have a new study, perhaps with a different method, to explain the asymmetry of support for Pancasila and the citizenship practices. Possibly, (1) there is factionalism in the understanding of Pancasila (so that those who want the Jakarta Charter and others who oppose it fall into the same category in the LIPI survey), or (2) Pancasila as a formal ideology has not been properly accepted in society.
People can approve its form, but do not understand the content and application of it. In other words, Pancasila is still an empty narrative. In short, between Pancasila and the community, there is a missing link that the survey cannot explain. Its location is between (1) state praxis and (2) social reality.
The state has been absent from moral responsibility for a long time. It is an "abomination" of its own, forcing Jokowi, who has just been in power for four years, to fill that empty space instantly.
On the contrary, rent-seeking groups or political losers see the empty space as an opportunity. In that space, they play by capitalizing on conventional symbols (religion, ethnicity, tribe and race) with the "crime of pragmatic thinking", which is totally absurd.
To realize improvements in the relationship between society and the state, there needs to be clarity about democratic power, namely with (1) the politics of power and (2) the politics of empowering.
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Boni Hargens
For years and years now, our political history has focused on the lust of power. The community is marginalized and fails to be empowered. The authoritarian style of the New Order\'s legacy and corrupt character are still fresh in the heads of many political elites.
The campaign pattern that forces people to incite, spread hatred and provoke hostility not only undermines the image of human dignity, but also civilization in general.
The 2019 general election can only act as momentum for celebrating human dignity if political elites, religious leaders and community leaders stand on the same foundation and see through the same lens, namely that of Pancasila.
Boni Hargens, Director of the Indonesian Voters Institution (LPI)
