"Kompas" and Academic Conscience

Kompas

Haedar Nashir

On 28 June 2019, Kompas celebrated its 54th anniversary. The newspaper has enjoyed a long life filled with joy and sorrow. Age should be proof of a life well lived, instead of a mere number. A long life means the accumulation of blessings through traversing different eras and constantly forging new paths during Kompas’ efforts to fulfill its pledge to educate the nation’s conscience.

Whenever Kompas appreciates the success stories of the nation’s children in scholarship, it is actually fostering the spirit to nurture the nation’s rationale. Rationale is an authentic, inner strength that strives to prioritize human thought, knowledge and civilization through time and space. Kompas and all other media should strive to keep alight the flame of scholarship in the country.

Maturity in nurturing rationale

Indonesians still need to educate themselves to become mature in their behavior and actions, as well as in nurturing rationale. Rationale is the potential of thoughts and ideas in terms of pursuing conscientiousness in daily life, especially in scientific thinking.

That some of us have lost our rationale and reason to short-term political goals and interests essentially indicates a lack of authentic, enlightened rationale. Authentic rationale stems from clear thoughts in the soul, while enlightenment stems from mature common sense.

Lately, the nation’s life has been filled with shallow and noisy controversies. Scholars, academicians and even ulema have been exposed to the post-truth virus that undermines their ability to think clearly, as they are trapped in partisan thinking. Consequently, they are trapped in naivety and shallow thoughts and actions.

When the Prophet Muhammad reminded his followers in his istafti qalbaka speech to seek answers with “a pure heart”, he was essentially instructing them to free their hearts from earthly viruses that shackle their souls. Their verbal knowledge, from A to Z, had not enlightened their rationale. In fact, it had obscured it, like muck on the body.

KOMPAS/HENDRA A SETYAWAN

A banner encouraging the ban on the use of places of worship for political campaign activities is installed in front of Istikqah Mosque in Simpruk, South Jakarta, on Saturday (16/2/2019). The policy is regulated in Article 280 paragraph 1.H of Law No. 7/2017 concerning general elections.

When society in the mythical era – to borrow Van Perseun’s term – relied on classical superstition, perhaps some members of the citizenry and national elite at the time became infected by the virus of contemporary superstition to idolize political choices and power struggles, marked by the primordial narrow-mindedness that smothers rationale, civility and a collective future. The hunt for politics and power kills clarity of rationale and reason in the name of religion, class and interests. Even the highly educated shed their scholarship.

Political life is becoming not only more liberalized, but also filled with the oligarchical tendencies of the political elite and shortsighted statesmanship. It is difficult to put a stop to all practices of transactional politics that holds hostage the nation’s virtues and noble political interests as our founding fathers had established and included in the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution. It is just as difficult to halt the practices of political provocation and behavior, packaged as science, that have triggered conflict, hatred, enmity and uproar to tear asunder the unity of Indonesia.

As politics has become a matter of life and death, even those considered verbally mature can regress into children who lack any clear, objective, fair or authentic rationale. The elite, who are basically selected figures, tend to lose their wise, intelligent and enlightened behavior that is a torch of virtue for others. Instead, many have become trapped in the myopic world of spreading hate, dissention, anger and small-minded fanaticism to those around them. The orientation of thought is an irony between the key measures of life and an era which is growing increasingly unwise. The desire for power has crippled the authentic rationale of the ulema, thereby ruining any possibility of inner ascendance to ulul azmi (most resolute leaders).

A tradition of reading in the name of God will enlighten the mind and be a blessing to the universe.

With increased age, humans should radiate enlightened rationale. Included among this is mature scholarly thinking, which begins with developing reason as God has bestowed through the gifts of “qalbu” (inner spirit) and “akal” (the mind). It begins with spreading a culture of “iqra” (reading) in the nation, which is still far from the reality. A reading culture, combined with an enlightened mind in the form of wisdom in behavior, mindset and action. A tradition of reading in the name of God will enlighten the mind and be a blessing to the universe.

National enlightenment

The movement towards mature scholarship can be a milestone in enlightening the nation’s life. Contemporary life includes the recently completed political contest that has drained the spiritual energy of the nation’s children and made them small-minded, naïve and short-fused. The democracy that should have progressed properly and joyfully as in any other contest or competition has become a raucous war of ideologies and political identities that have been constructed in absolute terms, like in the tale of the Kurushetra War in the Mahabharata.

Civility has been ruined by behavior hardened through political provocations on social media that grew increasingly unruly and unethical, causing the nation’s children to lose their benchmarks of morality and virtue in the national identity of Indonesia, founded on religion, Pancasila and culture of righteousness. The national wisdom that has defined Indonesia’s character, passed down through the generations, has become a mere mosaic of normative rhetoric instead of a “mode of action” in the life of the nation and the state in the real world.

Religious proselytizing and leaders are caught up in the partisan stream of differing interests that are involved in power struggles for obscure objectives. Every claim and accusation, including pejorative stigmatization in the name of religion on both the “right” and “left”, has denied religion the power to enlighten life. Instead, it has been turned into a tool to legitimize absurd conflicts that turns religious communities into leaderless, mindless and dumb masses.

Rise of primitiveness

Primitiveness in religion, ethnicity, regionalism and other exclusive social groupings have reemerged silently to combine with liberal politics since the beginning of the Reform Era, becoming a new cage of steel that shackles the life of the nation. Increasing liberalness in regional autonomy has slowly turned into federalism that strengthens these revitalized primitive boundaries. The words “freedom” and “referendum” that arose in one or two regions during the 2019 elections highlight the short-fused thinking of some people in the country.

We can list the incidents in which law and justice were politicized, often abused for short-term interests, within and without the circle of power. The law was abused by deviating into “sharp against those below and dull against those above”, as well as by its use as a tool in the power struggle between interests. Consequently, the law lost its light of truth and justice, even its essence.

However, conglomerate and oligarchical practices, which prefer to build dynasties and neglect inequality and the suffering of the many, have become a truly serious threat to Indonesia’s togetherness, unity and future.

Conflicts over land and resources are increasingly showing Hobbesian tendencies, in which the most powerful takes all. We are happy to see so many Indonesians achieving success in business and economy as capital to becoming an independent nation according to the philosophy of “the hand that gives is better than the hand that takes”. However, conglomerate and oligarchical practices, which prefer to build dynasties and neglect inequality and the suffering of the many, have become a truly serious threat to Indonesia’s togetherness, unity and future.

KOMPAS/P RADITYA MAHENDRA YASA

Information about the 2019 election is spread through various media, including billboard in Tambakboyo field, Ambarawa district, Semarang regency, Central Java, as seen in this photo taken on Friday (11/1/2019). Ahead of the election, issues surrounding ethnicity, religion, tribe and inter-groups (SARA) were widely used and feared to lead to horizontal conflicts.

All the strategic resources in the nation, including the mass media and civil organizations, must work together to be an effective force in educating the nation’s life towards maturity. Only then can Indonesia, in the dynamics of the current era, become an enlightened nation. We have to enter what Immanuel Kant called the sapere aude, the stage of leaving childish thoughts behind and head towards mature thinking; to become an adult nation in mindset, thought and action, to become a highly civilized group of human beings that surpasses God’s other creatures on Earth.

Haedar Nashir, Chairman, Muhammadiyah