Imagination of the Masses

Kurnia JR

· 5 minutes read

Are we growing more rational? Ahead of the general election, there is no more hubbub surrounding mythological figures such as Satria Piningit or Ratu Adil, with their exaggerated tales that lack intellectual analysis and common sense. On social media, people are uploading photos of the Rp 50,000 bill adorned with the words Satria Piningit and the name of a presidential candidate. The public response was cold.

The topic was among the hottest issues in 1998, immediately after Soeharto’s fall. Even regular citizens, gathering information with their ears, acted like political experts from renowned universities in the western world. In coffee shops, at security posts and in public minivans, people young and old, male and female, traveling vegetable sellers and bank employees were talking fluently about the May Tragedy with all its political implications in a battered nation brimming with strong hopes and dreams of a bright future.

The “Ratu Adil” concept

The people, dispirited by the reality of skyrocketing unemployment due to the currency collapse and companies shutting down, thoroughly uncertain conditions and the spread of various unconfirmed fear-mongering rumors day and night, could only soothe themselves with conversations wrapped in myths. When reality is too frightening to live in, hearts are entangled with one another in discussions that the nation will soon be nurtured by Ratu Adil, or the just leader. He is the Satria Piningit, or the hidden warrior, found in Javanese tales, filled with noble wisdom intertwined with difficult narratives that are hard to discern.

More than 99 percent of the discussers consuming such narratives have no intention to really dig into the Ratu Adil concept in Javanese mythology.

They just need something to hold onto when their legs turn feeble and the earth is quaking all day long; when there is no certainty that they have rice for the next day; and when souls have grown too exhausted after getting the boot suddenly. Overnight, former pilots opened coffee stalls and former bank managers became property brokers. Meanwhile, out of a slum somewhere in Jakarta, someone who had failed as a professional suddenly got lucky as a politician, sitting on a comfy chair and enjoying a huge salary at the legislative complex in Senayan.

People collectively looked up to the sky and prayed that that fate that so rarely made sense would be on their side for once: “It’s called fate. Who knows?” The imagination creates room to validate a belief in the ever-mighty fate: to console oneself with fanciful justifications.

Thus, amid the severe poverty that hit not only Indonesia but almost all of Southeast Asia at the time, a thin social class that enjoys “the miracle of fate” was born: nouveau riches who enjoy air-conditioned sedan cabins and luxurious halls but are terribly alienated from gloomy social reality. Of the series of presidents who reigned over a short period of time, only Abdurrahman Wahid dared to openly criticize the House of Representatives as nothing more than a kindergarten filled with childish people who could not bear their moral responsibility with emotional stability. Not a few among

them were caught sleeping soundly in meeting halls, skipping plenary sessions, watching porn videos in sessions or marking up budgets for tours taking them abroad.

Years went by and, as countries shaken by the monetary crisis have rebuilt themselves one by one, Indonesia remains stagnant. We are just too busy politicking, even today! The people, forced to rely on politics, even to just calm their hearts or shop for vegetables, have no choice but to break through the shackles of imagination in search of possibilities that may help them move from their stymied lives.

This is an old story for those of the millennial generation who have come of age in recent years and can observe the social media with a critical eye. However you wish to look at it, this story is not about “them” or about a generation “that is not ours”. This is about us, once upon a time.

It needs to be acknowledged that the imagination of a nation bounds not only temporary periods but also the contemporary era that covers all ages and every generation. It may have many names, but the trigger is similar, namely a massive stumbling block or social disaster and hopes born immediately of mankind’s understandable wish and will to stay alive.

Study required

The Ratu Adil and Satria Piningit concepts look like the ends of dangling threads that we have yet to knot and may even be called cultural debts. They were the spiritual treasures of Nusantara ethnicities. Scholars and intellectuals have the duty to proportionately understand the definitions of such mystical concepts and turn them into cultural knowledge that is logically and rationally understood. We are used to wasting noble concepts and using them for political issues when our basic needs have been fulfilled.

Why do we need to study and teach these concepts properly? For centuries, these concepts have lived in controversies of unclear definitions, depending on the interpreters’ taste and interpretation time that may be affected by economic, social, political and cultural realities.

Political opportunists tend to use widespread public misunderstandings to play with charming narratives filled with lies, even though the concepts reflect the spiritual system of the beautiful languages of Indonesian ethnicities, especially the Javanese, of a just and prosperous country that is gemah ripah loh jinawi (abundant in natural wealth). (Kurnia JR, Writer)

Editor:

ratu adil