Focus on the State

Kompas

Radhar Panca Dahana

In the past few years, I have seen, heard and felt a considerable change in the "discursive" world or conversations among people.

Usually, when I naturally "joined" an atmosphere and spontaneous get-together with a group of people in one city that I visited, I gained knowledge about what was happening within them in their lives. Whether it was a group of meat traders, pedicab drivers, street vendors, up to scavengers, thugs, or app-based motorcycle taxi drivers.

The content of the chats were diverse in the cities or provinces that I visited. There was a gradation or differences between morning, evening, and midnight chats. All talked about their lives. It was so real, almost nothing sad or melodramatic, but generally was encouraging or at least "laughable". It means that whatever situation was experienced by a person or group, when it was discussed together in a relaxed manner, it became comedic, whatever the situation was.

The extent of knowledge and deep understanding I got was immeasurable. More than what I had gained from lecture halls, seminar pulpits, or discussions with observers/experts, especially in the mass media. This experience was truly enjoyable. Except later this year.

Topics change in a fluent way, seriousness comes in turns, all of them suddenly become critics, even cursing so that the differences (which were once easily softened) thicken, even freeze into a dividing rift. Humor and comedy are gone, tragically becoming a melodrama, life is lived out of vigilance because the world seems to be full with a kind of collection of threats. Not only for strangers, but also friends, relatives, or close family members.

The topics now revolve around politics, with lots of fake news being accepted as truth. They no longer talk about their lives, their families, jobs, fortunes, or the world of everyday lives. All are less attractive with this new theme, a trending topic called politics.

I feel alienated because I see that they have also been alienating each other with themes, terms, problems, and even unfamiliar forms of analysis. Politics is like a success which is alienating the public from the reality of their own life. Politics is not only the commander, but he has become a need, even basic need, to become the life itself.

This expression might be hyperbolic. It is no problem, this type of language is needed to strengthen understanding among people who do not recognize the problem in question or are already immune to simple formal expressions even if they are logical. So, in the situation above, everything will become legitimate when it gets a kind of "right" legitimacy in its political dimensions/interests, regardless of the origin of that legitimacy.

There is no need to examine, test, or verify it because in today\'s Indonesian politics, the political goal -- in fact for access to power -- is the most authoritative legitimator of whatever truth which is created in achieving that goal. Therefore, not only logic -- say -- Machiavellian theory that can be twisted for that purpose, but also rationality in religion, culture, customs, even academics can also be deceived for the same purpose.

KOMPAS/ADITYA PUTRA PERDANA

Customers enjoy coffee on Feb. 22, 2019 at a cafe in Semarang, Central Java. Cafes are a popular venue for meeting and discussing, including business and political issues.

I grimaced and got increasingly bitter to watch, hear, and feel online motorcycle taxi drivers or janitors who were resting on fried snacks and coffee also imitated "logic games" and seemed to be rhetoric with diction and semantics from the political workers. Even though of course, when they mentioned one term, which etymologically let alone terminologically, were wrong, they still used it bravely as indiscriminately as scientists, experts, or observers in various media. Even though maybe the level of error was not much different.

I lost friends, small people who have thus far been brothers. Those who have lost the focus of real life authenticity. I began to lose joy, as well as happiness because living in a relaxed way, humorously, and meaningful, has also been eroded and run out faster than coffee that was no longer sweet.

Devil’s barrel of politics

I do not know whether the above reality is in the hearts and minds of politicians, especially the elite when they are so busy twisting words, diction and semantics or the distortion of logic in the political contestation -- which seems to be the war to grab the power -- lately. Is there a relation of the meaning and significance between the "political war" and the alienated people. Isn\'t in that relation and significance, political meaning and purpose is stored, even -- supposedly -- democracy idealizes it?

Indeed, bitterness actually begins with the association of "discursive stalls" of our political elite. From the actions or behavior to the utterances (parole) that they play, it does not find life or the substantive world (langue), in the sense that it is full of values that glorify humans, public, or small people in particular. They spin around, playing the devil’s barrels within themselves and their groups. They create a habit, which finally becomes a kind of "tradition" of politics that often denies, even insults its main subject: constituents. Maybe some have killed the existence of these constituents as subjects, replacing it with new subjects that are considered representatives of themselves.

This tradition is not a culture, but sociofact also mentifact, a part of what I call cultural products. How can the level of our nation\'s culture today, for example in the political dimension, be measured from its products. A measure that you can value yourself to prove that what we frequently glorify, be proud of, even considered as the main nation\'s arsenal, is not as beautiful as its jargon or propaganda.

No, it is not at all the same as examples of cultural products that we have considered as our belonging today, such as: Borobudur, kecak dance, La Galigo\'s great literature, shadow puppets, even a craft of carved chairs or pottery. All of them are produced by "other" cultures, ancestral cultures, not us.

Our current culture, like the political example above, has a gloomy product, even to a certain extent embarrassing and destructive, instead of being constructive as it should be. Almost all of our cultural works lately, whether called modern, high tech (based on Industry 3.0, 4.0, whatever), or those based on tradition are nothing more than immitation if not plagiarism from the work of other (foreign) people or ancestral work.

We do not create anything, we only recreate. That is our mainstay today: recreation at all fields, all levels, and dimensions.

Plagiarism basically has a low value, in some cases it is despicable, even in the academic world, it can be classified as a criminal. If the activity is routine or becomes a habit, it will lead to destruction. Some people who plagiarize or routinize modern behavior habits as derivatives of global culture, say, such as competition or contestation for position or fortune, can create destructive actions, which do not only deny the system, betray the law, and damage the normative/ethical life order.

Teenagers or children, who live by looking down, possibly 4-10 hours a day, because of being busy glaring at the LCD screens on their gadgets, will lose focus on the life, in the discipline that must be run, in the world of friends, families, and so on, and become accultural, asocial, even partially immoral.

Some events, that have almost no precedent in the history of this nation\'s culture, now often fill the news media, making us fantasize whether we live in a different time and space. When a husband kills his wife simply because she does not want to serve him, a mother does pedophile act and even kill her own child, girls who are pregnant many times due to incest done by their own biological fathers, as well as children who kill their own parents simply due to trivial things or misunderstanding.

Hundreds of thousands of traffic violations occur every day until they become the norm, even challenge and consider themselves right when they are reprimanded. Perpetrators of collective corruption in many state/government institutions considers honest bosses as "being not in solidarity" and decided not to follow their orders.

What culture have we developed and lived so far? Who pays close attention, takes care, and looks for solutions? Who thinks that a development project to create a strong state actually also builds a strong nation, people with strong character and integrity; building the foundation of all of that: strong national culture.

However, it turns out that the focus from state and government administrators in all its forms and levels, is not on that basic issue. The fundamental thing, the culture, is misinterpreted only in the simplest sense, which is often artificial, even exploitative rather than explorative and creative: creating a kind of storefront to showcase the products of ancestral culture as a hijab of its own cultural dwarfism. That is what happened, for example, when the vice presidential candidates presented a cultural program in the third debate held by the General Elections Commission (KPU) recently.

Culture is understood as celebration or exhibitionist splendor through the program of building an opera house as grand as what is in Sydney, Australia. Or become a source of a creative industry which is nothing but simply an exploitation of financial material potential to obtain an economic surplus. Everything is measured materialistically so that it can be wrapped as a filler for the elite\'s portfolio for the sake of fulfilling their lust for power.

I have felt a tragic situation in the above comprehension. However, I keep trying to be happy so that I can still defend my life and believe that hope is a stove to enable the future to stay on.

Create cultural factories

However, the stove will work properly if the manufacturer is superior and qualified. So, let us examine the factories, technology, and science that are the basis for their founding. Do not let us be too busy with the stoves, as products, about types, shapes, ways of working, process of the functions, and so on. Then, because of confusion, we just copy their manufacturing or become consumers of the imported (product) stove.

We must start talking with science and its biological child, technology, which is the basis of the stove factory. We must start talking about culture and various types of knowledge, wisdom, and traditions in it, thereby enabling us to build factories that produce quality (cultural) products.

We have to stop, for example, exhibiting or showing quotes, theories, or thoughts of foreigners to constitute ourselves and our own reality. We have to start making our own statements, quotes, or theories, research-based or academic works that obtaining international validity. Stop writing poetry, prose, or drama on the basis of Western aesthetics, when our regional literature is so rich with their respective aesthetics.

Build cities and buildings based on architectural technology that is so rich -- even superior -- in our world of tradition. We should no longer play symbols, which sometimes have nothing to do at all with the religion that we embrace for a pragmatic-opportunist goal rather than the purpose of its piety worship.

Let us begin to respect our customs and traditions, where the (five) bases/elements of the culture, namely values, norms, morality, ethics, and aesthetics, originate. Because, in that way we do not only continue -- not merely imitate cultural products -- the noble works of the ancestors, both with new creations and variants, but are also able to use them to address proportionally and maturely the new cultures that come from outside in masses lately.

There is nothing to fear or avoid from all foreign and new products. As taught by the ancestors and traditions, our culture -- which never ceases to develop -- is a powerful tool to deal with, absorb, and conquer the external culture that penetrate in us. It should even become an element that shapes our identity up to our new character, our present identity.

All must be done together at the same time. Especially the elite, in any field, begin to operate their respective local cultures in carrying out their professional activities, based on five elements of culture that are traditional in various rites in our local customs.

By doing this, we will not fall away, plunging into the brink of excessive consumerism, become victims of the greedy interests of other parties and ultimately trust the (strength) of ourselves.

The process will be reversed, even destroying our own state if the elite and state administrators do not take care of the actual culture. Do not (try) understand, but be busy and focus on the exploitation of negative products, up to the level of marginalizing culture as a government activity that only throws away the budget (cost), even though in fact it is the largest investment, far greater than business investment, material (infrastructure), even defense.

This is no longer a matter whether you believe it or not, but simply whether you understand it or not.

Radhar Panca Dahana, Cultural observer