“Wot Ogal-Agil”
Being sincere and honest is not easy. Even the most honest man can lie if he is emotionally devastated by a difficult situation. This is what happened to figures like Prabu Yudistira in the violent war of Bharatayuda.
Once upon a time Durna, the powerful priest of Kurawa, ran amok. The Pandawa troops could not defeat Durna, a divine man. Therefore, Batara Kresna asked the Pandawa king, Yudistira, to tell a lie that Aswatama, Durna’s son, had died on the battlefield. Yudistira was known to be honest. It was impossible for him to lie. Finally, he gave in, declaring that Aswatama was dead, but what he was referring to, in fact, was an elephant named Aswatama.
Durna did not believe the news on the death of his beloved son. He went on to probe Yudistira, because he believed Yudistira had never lied. Yudistira replied that Aswatama had indeed died, even though actually the one that died was Aswatama, the elephant.
Hearing Yudistira\'s words, Durna lost his spirit of life and was easily killed by a warrior from Pandawa, Destrajumena. Likewise, in a chaotic situation, honest people can easily be tempted to lie.
Politics of lies
Indeed, lying can easily emerge, let alone in a chaotic political situation. Lying has become normal in daily politics. In the online Republik magazine (30/10/2018), senior Swiss journalist Constantin Seibt wrote that there was almost no politician who does not lie.
The reason for this, said the famous philosopher Hannah Arendt, was that no one considered politics to be responsible for the truth. Understandably, the essence of politics is not to express reality, but to change reality, and nothing is more effective for that purpose than lies.
Therefore, it is not surprising that, despite being overwhelmed by doubts, voters still consider the lies by the politicians they support as truth. Meanwhile, politicians never give up fighting for untruthful agendas, against the facts if need be. If the political opponents are angry, it will be even better and beneficial for their politics.
According to Seibt, the history of political lies is relatively young. It only spread in the 20th century, along with the spread of the media. Fascist and communist parties are champions in the politics of lies. They not only want to get a grip on humans but also on facts. Knowledge, theory, historical data, economic statistics, all must be mastered for the sake of their political power.
For totalitarian parties, all facts are political. Those facts must be controlled, created in new design, or even eliminated. The basis of this type of political propaganda is ideology.
Nowadays, propaganda or the politics of lies is increasingly spread through other ways. The basis is no longer ideology, but a strategy that creates opinions on the facts. All facts are turned into opinions. Opinions are processed cleverly, so that they are no longer personal opinions, but opinions that create loyalty. Over time, this all leads people to no longer ask questions as to which analysis or political actions are correct, but whether "you are for or against us".
Production of lies
It is no secret that the champion in the politics mentioned above is US President Donald Trump. Under the Trump administration, hoaxes have spread faster and become more frequent. In May 2018, writes Seibt, Washington Post issued a very detailed and thorough list of lies circulating on social media. Trump was mentioned to speed up the tempo of the lies. In the following months of June and July there were an additional 970 false news items, or 16 lies every day.
Every time it was considered a false fact, Trump simply said: "You have an opinion, it\'s beautiful; I have an opinion, it\'s also beautiful." "I am a consistent genius." While confirming his belief, he expresses confidence that the people also think so. That is exactly like Jose Mourinho in the world of football. "I am the special one," Mourinho said, regardless of whether Chelsea or Manchester United performed poorly under his care.
It appears there is no need to relate facts, but personal opinion. So, to his followers, Trump nonchalantly said, "Don\'t read the newspaper, all the news can immediately be double-checked to your president."
Such a model turns out to be inspiring for fascist and populist politicians. The proof is that, in that way, Jair Bolsonaro, who openly admires and uses Trump\'s recipes, won the Brazilian presidency. Autocratic rulers like Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan use the same recipe and are effective in controlling power.
How could the Trump phenomenon happen? Thomas Assheuer in his article, Why Trump is Not a Liar (Die Zeit, 30/8/2019), answers that question very clearly and succinctly. Trump enters politics in accordance with his origins. Initially, he was not a politician, but a businessman and billionaire who was a bit eccentric. Politics is carried out as he runs his business that is indeed successful.
Therefore, said Assheuer, Trump considers language or words his personal property. He treats the property of language and his words the same way he treats the property of buildings or land. As money is entirely his, so are the language and words he uses.
For him, words are symbolic capital, which he can run according to his will. He puts the words into business, and invests them in new business fields, which could develop his political power. Those words are like money to him. With money, he can shop anywhere. Now in words, he could shop for power and consume his political power.
In Trump\'s mind, words are fluid, like market prices. They can go up today, down tomorrow. One time Trump could call NATO a pile of rubbish, another time he said, "NATO is great". Once he mocked Kim Jong Un as “little rocket man”, on another occasion he praised the North Korean leader as a “great statesman”. Trump thinks, as symbolic capital, the turnover of words is like a velocity of money. He uses words as situational investment in the political market.
In any situation, he tries to get the benefits of his language and words. If the words sell well, it means he will reap more fame, a quota of power.
For Trump, words amount to political investment. That is the reason why he refused honestly and loudly when he was accused of lying. In his belief, the criteria of being correct and lying are not guidelines that can be simply imposed to judge the sentences that come out of the mouth of a president.
The criteria of being correct or lying come from other areas of activity, namely the moral domain, which is totally different from the political arena. In the eyes of power, business or politics, morality is seen as the discovery of those who lose. Morality will not "buy" people anything; it is not profitable.
The case of Trump describes amazingly what an economically rational human is. Quoting Josep Vogl, a cultural scientist, Assheuer said, economically rational human types like Trump "sort things in the world not according to the categories of right or wrong, good or bad, fair or unfair, but according to criteria of being profitable or incurring losses". Thinking about the world and politics in terms of market criteria must endanger humanity.
That was what was heavily criticized in the writings of Karl Marx during his youth. According to Marx, in essence, the market changes the world and makes objects and things of the world abstract, so that they lose their initial value and nature and are reduced to merely their exchange value.
Stripping off other than economic values is what Trump does with language. Words are changed into explosives like money. He deregulates language, by negating its meaning and communicative credibility. For Trump, words are a political currency and must comply with only one grammar rule, namely the desire to be in power.
Trump has succeeded in expanding the paradigm of market competition to an unexpected domain, namely that of language. The language politics conducted by Trump have proven that language can be currency. With this, Trump has also shown the power of such a liberal economic system. Trump is a liberal ego that can strip language of its essence as a means to carry out communication, cooperation, and achieve mutual understanding. So, according to Assheuer, Trump wears the mask of Darwinism in terms of language use: What is right for him is what is profitable in the competition of life.
Insincere society
False news and lies turn opinions into truths, disarming the meaning of language as a means of communication and mutual understanding, betraying moral criteria about being right or wrong, investing false words to foster power, becoming liberal egos that can arbitrarily negate opponents. All of that is also spreading in our political world around the 2019 presidential and legislative elections.
Possibly so far we may not understand the root of the problem. The analysis above may open up our awareness that these problems occur because of the undermining of economic liberalism in our democracy, which also tends to be liberal. Politics simply and pragmatically likes to use words and language to gain, maintain or expand power.
We have "moneyed" words and language to trade interests in the field of political business in order to generate as much profit as possible. In this situation, talking about what is good and bad, right and wrong, will only end in defeat.
How difficult it is in such a context for the press to carry out its journalistic duties. Press figure Jakob Oetama realized this in early 2000, when he explained his thoughts at a seminar organized by Basis magazine in Yogyakarta. On that occasion he wrote a paper: "The Difficulty of Communicating in an Insincere Society" (Basis, May-June 2000).
He disclosed insincerity in communication within our society. This insincerity makes it difficult for us to mutually feel what Siegel calls shared values, a shared frame of reference or shared common reference.
This insincerity occurs as a result of the legacy of autocracy, feudal culture and system repression before reform. The inheritance has led to wrongdoings, the misuse of power and economic incentives. Interestingly, Jakob Oetama noted that wrongdoing and misuse were accelerated not only because of the power that tended to be corrupt, but also because of an economic motive, avarice. He said, "We are reaping the fruits of the autocratic system and the enactment of the market economy in the wrong system." This system is the culprit of insincerity.
The insincerity has spread everywhere: "People are carried away to get used to living in an engineered atmosphere. Not only politics and the economy, also the state ideology and the value system of society are affected by engineering, also religion and the joints of the shared life."
According to Jakob Oetama, the reform has opened a Pandora’s box that stores all of them. With reform, all of our society\'s insincerity and engineering are discovered.
It is proven that insincerity and engineering trap us in an insincerity of words and language with the fabrication of lies that twist the truth. It is precisely in such circumstances, we are increasingly under the pressure of the moral imperative to uphold sincerity. Because, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant said in his moral thinking: A liar damages human dignity in his personal self. And lies are the disposal and elimination of human dignity. "
It is clear that lies do not only damage other people or the community at large but also the liar himself and his dignity. That is presumably the wisdom contained in the Javanese proverb: Ajining dhiri ana ing lati, one\'s self-esteem is in his words or remarks. Unfortunately, we now even damage ajining dhiri with our lips and remarks, by making and spreading baseless news.
We know that lying is a moral no-no, especially from a religious perspective. So, no matter how difficult it is, morality and religion must not despair in their fight against lies and insincerity. In this situation, we may want to turn to the teachings of the Javanese poet Raden Panji Natarata.
In his work, Serat Kancil, Panji Natarata wrote about wot or the shirathal mustaqim bridge. According to the belief and faith, in the hereafter everyone must give an account for each of their actions in the world. One day, humans must cross the bridge to heaven, and under the bridge lies hell. The bridge is thinner than a single hair.
Javanese people call the shirathal mustaqim bridge wot ogal-agil, a bridge that is rocking back and forth. Honest human beings easily pass the wot ogal-agil to heaven and happiness. Conversely, bad persons immediately slip and fall into hell.
Panji Natarata wrote, uwot shirathal mustaqim ana ing tutukmu samane kang sanyata, which means that the shirathal mustaqim bridge is actually already on your lips. Therefore, slipping into hell or entering heaven is determined by our lies or sincerity in the world today. Hell or heaven is not a matter of the future. Hell or heaven, according to Panji Natarata, demend on the words that proceed from our mouths today.
Therefore, it is time for us to stop spreading lies and insincerity. We must strive to prevent our political and economic lust from conspiring incessantly to produce and market lies. History teaches that the product of such lies will surely be a democracy that is misused and characterized by wrongdoing. Indeed, lies easily lead democracy to a system of oligarchic, totalitarian, even dictatorial governance. That is the political hell we must work to avoid.
Sindhunata, Journalist, Guarantor of “Basis” Magazine, Yogyakarta.