A Nation of Values

KOMPAS/ALIF ICHWAN

A woman observes a mural painting of the state symbol of Garuda in Pasar Minggu, Jakarta, Sunday (2/2/2020). This mural intends to remind people of the importance of the values of Pancasila to the life of the nation and the state.

Pope Francis considers nature to be his best teacher. “Rivers don’t drink their own water; trees don’t eat their own fruit; the Sun doesn’t shine for itself; a flower’s fragrance is not for itself. Living for each other is the rule of nature. We are all born to help each other.”

Men are born special, with the mission of preserving the universe. Their soul is like the sun that spreads compassion in an upward motion in the sky. If the light dims, the world will enter the night; humanity will plunge into the valley of animal instincts. Look inside and see how high our degree of humanity is.

Does leadership not prioritize the interests of one’s own family? Does the House of Representatives not make laws that benefit itself? Does the government not create policies and deploy personnel for the interests of its own supporters? Do officials not create policies that benefit their own companies and networks? Do corporations not carry out tax fraud, murder the weak and destroy the environment for their own benefit?

Human beings are indeed social primates. Within them lies instinctive predispositions to develop domineering relations, preserve hierarchical social structures and conform to superior entities. In primate communities, all relational imbalances are accepted naturally to ensure the hereditary survival of relatives bound by genetic kinship.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

The logos of political parties are displayed at the General Elections Commission (KPU) office, Jakarta, Wednesday (22/1/2020).

It is understandable why the global community tends to prefer authoritarianism as their standard choice of political system. Democracy is a mere exception, emerged once in a while by experiments of little success. Even in the era of democracy, the politics in many countries are still trapped in superficial democracy.

Achieving healthy democracy requires the fulfillment of socio-cultural, economic and political conditions that enables and necessitates adjustments of the democracy model to prevailing socio-cultural, economic and political conditions. Bernardo Arevalo (1999) believed that the failure of democracy in a number of countries were because their political software (culture) still preserved feudalism (authoritarianism), even if the hardware (procedures) has adopted democracy.

A believe-morality system is the fundamental variable of culture. In a democracy, the legitimacy of power cannot must rely on morality instead of “violence/coercion”. This morality can be sourced from traditional (supernatural) religious values but must crystalize into a civil religion, where the universal values of religions can merge together. It can also be sourced from secular (moral) ideas that are promoted to a “sacred” position and accepted by all citizens as “sanctified” values. In the context of Indonesia, this civil religion is named Pancasila.

Regarding how to develop a civil religion, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Emile Durkheim have differing views. For Rousseau, a civil religion must be created and injected by the state onto its citizens. Whenever there are citizens who are seen to have run against the civil religion’s imperatives, there is no other choice for the state but to remove them. Consequently, the civil religion is prone to state manipulations to silence critics and the opposition.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

A man dips his finger in ink after voting at the TPS 71 polling station in Cempaka Putih subdistrict, Ciputat Timur district, South Tangerang, Banten, Wednesday (24/4/2019).

On the contrary, according to Durkheim, a civil religion can grow voluntarily based on people’s innate capacity. Various communities (religious, residential, school-based, work-based, media, cultural, organizational and political) actively sow citizenship values in their own communities while being involved in cross-religion and cross-cultural interaction and communication that strengthen intercommunity integration based on agreed-upon values. In a healthy democracy, the state’s version of civil religion must be checked with the people’s version of it to ensure a healthy synthesis that is spared from manipulations of those in power.

Bringing forward prerequisites of civil religion is not impossible. Humans are special primates and the only creature capable of creating, accepting and acting on the basis of faith (religious, spiritual or ideological) and values (ethics and morality). Therefore, humans not only conform to nature but also – through nurture – can transform nature into culture.

Due to a compass of faith and cultural values, natural freedom are transformed into “civil freedom” with the encouragement of primal instincts. Personal power and interests are limited by collective will and common virtues. The spirit of kinship is expanded from tribal communalism to nation-based and humanitarian solidarity.

If democracy is celebrated through tyranny of oligarchies, strong capitalists will invade the legislation process, feudalism will drown meritocracy, communalism will paralyze national solidarity and empathy towards diversity will fade. These are signs that our dimensions of humanity are dissolving. The nobility of our beliefs and values has slumped in line with state organizers and citizens’ poor adherence to the moral imperatives of our civil religion (Pancasila).

KOMPAS/WISNU WIDIANTORO (NUT)

YUDI LATIF

Religious communities do not sow values diligently and are instead swept away in power struggle. Education is mired in instrumentalism and neglects the cultivation of citizenship values. Media owners are racing one another for ratings by destroying public civility. The elite separates politics and ethics like oil and water.

Businesspeople see economy as value-free, destroying the boundaries of rules and decency in the hunt for profit. The nation’s biggest crisis is a crisis of values. Without the strength of values, all achievements will not mean anything. If collective progress and happiness are our goals, we must lift ourselves up from animalism into humanism by glorifying values once more.

YUDI LATIF, National Alliance Expert