Thursday, June 28, 2007

ELIMINATION OF A GENERATION

26 June is commemorated as the International Anti-Drug Day. According to the latest survey, around 1.5% of Indonesia population are inflicted in drug abuse. However, the result number in this survey, does not show the real problem in the society and the number may increase when we consider the actual drug abuse in community. In every major cities in Indonesia, drug problems become the main element in moral and physical decadence especially among youths. Even this problem has penetrated small town which for long time considered as drug-free area. Government along with evry social elements have drained a lot of resources trying to solve this problem but uptill now, the number keep on growing instead of falling.

There are many factors why Indonesia has to face such a hugh problem. for many years, Indonesia was considered as the transit area between The Golen Triangle area of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar to East Asia and Australia. But now, Indonesia has become one of the mai producer in Asia especially for drug in Amphetaminae class and ecstasy. Indonesia's geographical situation which close to Mallacan Peninsula and Australia has give the advantage as the bridge between the two region which in result, to cut the production cost, the production is resettled in Indonesia. The loose border control has make it easy for the international narcotic network to smuggle their product in and out Indonesia.


The factor above is only the external geograpical element of the problem. Internally, the obstacle to eliminate drg abuse are more complicated. Strong effort has been shown by Indnesia government - institutionally. But it is a common knowledge in the society that most of drug lords are backed by persons in the army and the police corp. Even in some cases, drug lord whom jailed for years stil able to control his business from inside prison. Tis fact show us that even punishment system in Indonesia is not strong enough to strangle drug network in Indonesia. and also this is the proof of how corrupt is law enforcement in Indonesia. This reality will lead to unimplemented policies of the government. So many cases where persons inthe enforcement agencies are inflicted in drug abuse either as user or dealer. The persons inflicted were not stricted in low rank level but also up to the high rank level.

So much so, the permissive behaviour in the community only worsen the problem. In urban area where the life complexity is higher than in the rural area either in composition wise or in economical demand, the permissive attitude has become common phenomena. It is so easy to rive an issue from a simple one to a more complex one. And also cultural differences between ethnics which comprise urban population make communal control loose.

In a polpulation where poverty an unemployment rate are so high as Indonesia, te economic burden has become the main factor to psh drug abuse and drug trafficking. Betwen youth in Indonesia, it is easy to earn money in drug business where they could easily get the supply and consumer among themselves.

Hugh amount of money is circulated in drug business in Indonesia itself. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent ach year in drg consumption in Indonesia which if this money is invested in education will surely give a better standard of educationas well as cheaper education in Indonesia.

If the drug problem in Indonesia ould not be solve or at last reduced, in a decade, one generation of Indonesian will loose their ability to compete in international market. it is not only government's responsibility to solve this problem but everyone shold joint forces to destroy drug network in Indonesia.




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Saturday, June 23, 2007

Indonesian Press

Democratic life in Indonesia is not as develop as we expected in the recent decade.Since 1998, Indonesia has undergoing the period known as 'The reformation Era'. This era was started by the down-falling of Suharto after his 32-years reign. However, after almost a decade of reformation in every aspects of livelihood in Indonesia, not much of significant change can be observed. Of course, there is much of differences in what we had a decade ago but for common or 'grassroot citizens', life is as harsh as beforew. Number of poverty still increasinf either in stastic value and in real life fact.
Living cost is increasing fast due to de-subsidiziation policy of Indonesian government. This policies are taken to fulfill the necesity to reduce government burden in their fiscal responsibility but most of the time government release their policies in the wrong moment. It is important to reduce subsidies either to reduce government cost or to make people become accustom to a real global price which by the could increase their income itself.

But from time to time, the real problem in Indonesia is corruption rate which consider as one of the highest in the world. Many effort has been done either by government or by any element of community to find the solution to get rid of this problem but none of it could give a significant impact. this is due to that corruption has become part of our culture so, it is rather hard to broken the chain of corruption in Indonesia.
The one that make reformation moving in slow phase is the role of press. Although there are some media which has tried to take the role of public informer and educator to democracy but this role is still not the dominant part of their responsibility to the public. By law, government hand has been a little bit tied up by the elemination of force liquidation of media and licensing. But capital control still became the major cause of self-restriction in Indonesia media. because of their necesity in capital some media have sold their ideality as the public informer and educator to democracy.
There are so many cases where media had put down an issue because of their capital bargain position. the issues might relate directly or indirectly to the capitalist behind the media or someone who are close to the capitalist. When the issues are put down, public will loose their awareness of the issues which will lead to the condition where public pressure become weak and the legal action or solution of the issue will be considered as unnecessary by the policy maker due to public ignorance. In contrast with major media in developed countries, most of media in Indonesia is part of a company which their main business is not in media but in different field. This fact has cause that the flagship company will not able to risk their main business only to maintain the ideality of a fragment of their organization.
Ideally, press should become the bridge between government interest and public interest. However, when press lose their space to move freely, their role as the bridge for both side will lose its meaning. Press position as the third power in democracy should give their true benefit to the public. But in Indonesia, this role will put media in a dilematic circumstance.
Apart from their dilematic position to become trult free, Indonesian media also has to face the fact that most of news content is not substancial. Indonesian public give more interest in issue related to entertainment and the illogical field of supernaturality.
There are some reason for this fact. The first reason is that Indonesian public has have enough of political of any nationalistic drama which do not give them any direct benefits. Most of the political drama in Indonesia has been going on and on without any real solution which make public has to use all of their emation and concentration on the issue just to find out that by the end the result will be far from their expectation. By this reason, Indonesian public would prefer entertainment issues which would not require much attention to it.
The second reason is that culturally, Indonesian public is an agricultural public which is logically will give more attention to their surrounding. And also the low education has made Indonesia public prefer illogical issue which give them diversion of their real life problem. And because of this reason, Indonesia public give their biggest interest in news or program related to supernaturality.
By the end, without a free press and a logical public, reformation in Indonesia will face the fact that it is useless to keep on their movement into democracy.



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Sunday, June 10, 2007

POLITICAL INDONESIA

It’s been nine years since Suharto’s falling in May 1998 and Indonesia started the new era of civil life. Preceding Suharto’s falling from his 32-years reign, Indonesia had become one of the worst countries hit by monetary crisis turbulence in 1997 and this economic phenomenon had changed Indonesia in every aspects of its life, in positive way and in negative way.

Nine years and four presidents later, Indonesia still struggles to overcome the damage done by this crisis. Politically, Indonesia now is miles away from a decade ago. Ok, we might not as democratic as what so-called the champion of Democracy, USA, because we are not a liberal state. But we are in the right track to start for a much more democratic life. A free election, freedom of speech, freedom to gather, and many other freedoms, now, have become a practical discourse in Indonesian daily life, not just a theoretical discourse as before.


Of course, life has changed a lot in the last decade. The last time Indonesia had more than three political parties was in 1973, but now more than forty political parties participate in two general elections after 1998, in 1999 and 2004. The increasing number of political parties in Indonesia shown that seed of democracy has grown rapidly but this circumstance also creates more problems where the winning party will have a little chance to win the election as the sole winner. To form a strong government the winning party should form a coalition power to have a proper parliamentary support in each and every policy it will make.

This reality force the new president to think more of his or her political support from a fragile coalition than to think of the actual necessity when it is time to choose person in his or her cabinet. The political bargain in forming the new cabinet may cause instability in the cabinet itself because we cannot put aside the possibility of double loyalty of the person chosen to fill the position in the cabinet. In one hand, the person has to pledge of loyalty to the president and the state but in the other hand he or she also has to show their loyalty to his or her party. And this double loyalty in one point will face the person in conflict of interest.

We can observe this kind of political bargain in the recent cabinet reshuffle. Most of the people chosen are politicians from party which is part of the ruling coalition. Their political support is more important than their capability to run the government.

The other thing is that more than fifty percent of people taking part in active politic in Indonesia have relation with the old regime. This relation influenced their way of thinking and acting in political stage. We might see a lot of new faces in national level but in regional and local level, the faces are the same. They might in different vehicle but they are the same person.

In real life situation, regional and local level politicians have more effect and interest to common citizens because these people are the one who interact directly with grass root community. So, whatever political decisions made in the national level, the implementation still rely on much to these people. And most of the violations are happening in this level and most of the time out of reach of our spectacles.

Again, the political reality in Indonesia is not a pleasant scene especially for them who have no claws in it. But still, we can expect that in the near future some more of positive changes will happen in Indonesia. At this time, Indonesia is still in transition period especially in political concern. Many among the people are still dreaming of the golden era in the past when everything was certain as long as people did not try to disturb the power and it’s hegemony or if the person was part of the power. In the past, stability and certainty only on the surface but below the surface, the float of unjust swept away freedom and justice.




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Monday, June 4, 2007

WHAT IS MAN?

An existentialist is someone who focuses his or her mind merely in the pursue of his or her sole purpose in the world. Many renowned philosophers define the term existence. Most prominence of these philosophers is Jean Paul Satre. Satre proposed his superb terminology of existence precedes essence. His opinion, human comes to the world without any pre-conception of his purpose in the world. His essence is solely built by his existence. Human define his/her own reality.



Existentialistic view of human reality come in opposition of the traditional believe which has come way back since the Greek era where human existence comes after his or her essence already there. In this believe, human already has a purpose even before he or she exists.

Hard core existentialists such as Satre, Hegel, etc denied the existence of God where as other existentialists such as Paul Tillich, Gabriel Marcel, and Martin Bauber who their existentialism based on Christian theology except the existence of God. However, both atheistic and theological existentialists share the same themes and tenets in their existentialism. The choice of believe or not believe of God is a personal choice.

Apart from atheistic and theological existentialism, the third group is the agnostic where in this side; they do not claim to know or not knowing the ‘great picture’. The existence of God for agnostic is something beyond human comprehension. And because of this reason the pursue of explanation of relation between human and God has little interest for them.

In his Essay In Existentialism, Satre said that if man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward he is something, and he himself will have made what he will be. In this sense, it is not God or any other thing will responsible for human action but it is man himself responsible for what he does and become. Later Satre argued that human consciousness is the one which responsible for human action from the choice he made regardless any consequences will follow. Human is condemned of his free choice and he himself will receive the consequence of his choices. Following Satre’s guideline, man could only be what he be when his consciousness leads him to a state where man decision becoming reality.
Consciousness in Satre’s term is a being for-itself where as being for-itself, consciousness may change into what it is not. However, further, Satre divide consciousness into two as positional and non-positional. Positional consciousness will create man awareness of his surrounding because it will put consciousness in relation of its surrounding. In the other hand, non-positional consciousness is only being conscious of man surrounding.

Satre stressed his existentialism in the subjectivity of man since man is the one who form and build his purpose. But he did not deny the objectivity of man where man tend to think of something based on other thought rather than purely rely on his own thought. And this reality creates clash of freedom where one’s being become object of another subjectivity. In this case, although a man is responsible of his own choice, the choice he made is under influence of other’s gaze. And man’s existences become ‘in-itself’ or object rather than the subject of authority.

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Friday, June 1, 2007

SURPLUS OF MEANING AND EFFECTIVE HISTORY

In philosophy, there are two branches which try to explain the relation between the past and the present/future. They are Paul Ricoeur’s theory of ‘surplus of meaning’ and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s theory of ‘effective history’.


Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) is a French philosopher and anthropologist. He proposed that the ‘semantics’ career of a text would last longer than its ‘semiotic’ status. A text becomes the trace of the past in the present and future from which people in the present and future can try to experience the past. An event in the past will become a discourse in the future which can represent the past. The ‘surplus of meaning’ of a text arise when the text distanciated from its author and its original context.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) is a German philosopher. He proposed the theory that between the past and the present, a dialogue is exist. The present belongs to the past just like a listener belongs to a speaker. The meaning of the past is not complete without the present. The past continues in the present with an incomplete meaning. The people in the present could see into the past through the text until the limit of the horizon.

After trying to understand Paul Ricouer’s theory of ‘surplus of meaning’ and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s theory of ‘effective history’, I find that what we know as present is the result of the past. The present prepares the ground for the present to exist. However, the past itself will not be complete without the works in the present as Gadamer said in his theory. The continuity of the past depends on the interpretation of the people in the present. The way they interpret works of the past is effected by how they receive their understanding of the past itself.
The works in the present are not merely the repetition of the works of the past but they are the outcome of the present’s creation in interpreting the past. Through time, the meaning of works of the past keep on folded and folded. The ability of the present to re-create the meaning of the past is also folded by the modification of tradition passed from generation to generation.
When we observed the work of the past, we try to re-create the meaning of the object observed and try to re-define the meaning of it. The result of the re-creation and re-definition in the present will never be the same as the result created by the people before us because the atmosphere of the re-creation and re-definition is different.

As the past does not bring its complete meaning itself to the present, it will never appeared completely to the future of it because the effort to re-create and redefine the work will never recovered the true meaning of the work. The result of these efforts will always be the modification of meaning which will prepare the ground for the future works.
In the other hand, the present itself will not be complete without the work of the past because without the past, the present will not have its root in our consciousness. This root is important to state the position of the work of the present in our consciousness. The present is the reflection of the past but it is not like our reflection in the mirror; the reflection of the past in the present is distorted by the modification of tradition.

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T.S ELLIOT AND TRADITION

No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. This literary observation is proposed by T.S. Elliot in his essay ‘Tradition and The Individual Talent’ published in 1917. Tradition, according to Elliot, is a price of great labour. People in the present do not have tradition just like that but they have to gain it with the effort to understand the tradition itself. Tradition is something that passes down toward generation boldly because each generation will try to learn and understand the tradition from they has in their historical sense.

Elliot described in his observation that in any work of art, there must be the trace of the work in the past. And also to analyze a work of art, we should put it side by side with the work from the past. We do this thing not to judge which one of them better than the other but to compare and to contrast one to another aesthetically because from the very beginning there is already a structural order of art in every culture. The aesthetic value of a poem which we try to compare and contrast is purely about the poem itself, not then life of the poet.
The work of art in the present is only the continuation of the existing order of art. If we try to measure the work of art without the previous work, we could not find the real value of that work because the value of a work of art is in its position in the simultaneous order of art in tradition. The work of a poet in the present contains the poet’s appreciation toward the works of the earlier poet. This appreciation is the result of the poet’s historical sense. The historical sense which the poet has is not only deal with the pastness of the past but also the presence of the past in the present. The historical sense of the artist is the result of his knowledge upon the work of artists in the past and his experience in his youth period.
The poet could takes he past as his standpoint in creating his work. The poet should be aware that the order never changes; the existence of the art itself never changes but the material to build the art always changing. An artist should always aware that he should become the part of this order; he will never stand alone as an individual in art. That is why an artist should have a good knowledge about this order, about artists who came before him. He should sacrifice himself, his personality to acquire his position in this order.
The good criticism of art should always put the work of art as the main point of analysis in its criticism, not the artist’s life. A good work of art will always apart from the artist’s life. The artist should be able to create his work as his manifestation of his observation. The better the artist, the more he depersonalizes his work. The good criticism will show the work in the present’s position in the existing order of art. The good criticism will try to find the race of the work in the past in the work of the present.
The mind of the artist just becomes the media to produce the creativity of art without making any obvious influence in it. In his mind, an artist will treat the emotion he discovers from external world to transfer in his work. The work of art is the artist’s creativity to materialize his observation toward the world. The emotion that he put in the work is not his personal emotion but it is the emotion that he extracts from the outer world. If an artist able to gather more emotion in his work, the work will be better. He artist should be able to arrange and organize the emotion in his work to make it more artistic.

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF READING

Phenomenology is the study of phenomena in which ‘phenomena’ refers to things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings of things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the object of the experience. Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy which studies consciousness as a result of human intuitive experience toward any object of their life. Phenomenology puts the intuitive experience of phenomena as its basic of analysis and tries to find the essential features of experience and the essence of what has been experienced by human beings.


Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was considered as the founding father of phenomenology. He was the pupil of Franz Brentano (1837-1917) and Carl Stumpf (1848-1936). The main concept which had given by Husserl was ‘intentionality’ which explains the relationship between mental acts and external world. This term describes that the main characteristic of consciousness is that it is intentional. The way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world. He borrowed the term ‘intentionality’ from his mentor, the philosopher and psychologist, Franz Brentano.

Every mental phenomena or psychological act is referring to a certain intentional object. The intentional objects are the manifestation of psychological consciousness. This difference as being an intentional object and an intentional object will distinguish the physical and psychological activities. This argument is very important since the key point of experience is that it refers toward an object. The consciousness gained from experience is the consciousness of an intentional object.

In this essay, I will try to elaborate some theories dealing with the phenomenology of reading in which it tries to explain about how the readers gain meaning of a literary text. This theory is part of the reader-centered approach where the reader is the one who fold the meaning of a text. Writing as ‘grammata’–the writing form, printed form of literary or graphic mark of pages –is not the accomplished fact of meaning. Writing as ‘grammata’ is the potential of meaning and it is characterized as the phenomenological expectation of meaning and required to become the object of he readers’ consciousness, literary text will only b the phenomenological expectation of meaning of literary text. The act of reading is a mental process since the figure in the text will become imaginative figures in the readers’ mind.

According to Georges Poulet (1902-1991) a literary text is the combination between author’s consciousness and reader’s consciousness. Literary text is not only an object of a single subject but it belongs to two subjects, the author and the reader. This means that meaning of a literary text does not exist if it is only in a book without anybody reading it. The meaning of a literary text is modified by the reader’s consciousness from the first meaning which is folded by the author’s consciousness. He supported his argument further; that all books are as dead objects until someone reads them. The book needs the reader’s consciousness to exist. The existence of a book is not only in itself but also in the reader’s mind.

The reality of a literary text is gained from the reader’s consciousness. The way in which the reader tries to create the reality is a mental activity. When a reader reads a literary text, the figure of words, sentences, ideas, images of the text will become mental images in the reader’s mind. The way the reader interpret a literary text is influenced by the reader’s consciousness which they gain from their experiences. The interpretation of a reader will be different from others’ interpretation in interpreting the same text because everyone has different experiences which also make them to have different forms of consciousness. This difference also applied in the case that the reader would also give different interpretation from the author since they do not share the same experience.

Wolfgang Iser (1926- ) proposed that an important idea of indeterminacy where inside a literary text there are gaps and blanks which stimulate readers to construct meaning. Furthermore, he said that literary text is two-sided which are phenomenological and neumenonical. The first side of the literary text is that it is appear in the reader’s consciousness after the reader has the experience of reading the literary text and in the other side; literary text brings meaning in itself. In phenomenology, literary text brings in itself the guidelines, clues, specification, and cues to actualize as maximum meaning by reading the text.

Iser described three main points of analysis in his essay ‘The reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach’: the process of anticipation and retrospection, the consequent unfolding of a text as a living event, and the resultant impression of lifelikeness and these points of analysis will explain the relation between reader and text.

When a reader reads a literary text, the reader will reconstruct the world of the literary text by relating every sentence in the text to make a reasonable meaning in the reader’s consciousness. However, a reader cannot materialize the world in the literary text visually, he will visualize it in his imagination. Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) was the one who gives theory that reading is the concretization of meaning. Literary text is not autonomous in the meaning and it is not concrete, it depends on the readers. He argued that the world presented in a literary text is constructed out of intentionale Satzkorrelate (intentional sentence correlatives). Ingarden said that sentences linked up in different ways to form more complex units of meaning that reveal a very varied structure giving rise to such entities as a short story, a novel, a dialogue, a drama, etc.

While reading a literary text, a reader tries to relate a sentence to the next sentence. Through this process, a reader is able to fill he gaps which occur between sentences. The sentences in a literary text cannot fully concretize the visualization of the world in the literary text. In every literary text there is always a gap which should be fulfilled by the reader. If the author gives he full picture in his work, his work can be assume as a bad work of art since this kind of text will lead to boredom. The reader should be given spaces in literary text where they can create the world in their imagination. Their imagination is also part of their consciousness. Iser called the world presented after such act as the virtual dimension of the text. What the reader imagining in the act of reading is only the unwritten part of the text with the guidance of the written part. That is why if in a text there are no elements of indeterminacy, there are no gaps and blanks to fill, the reader will not be able to use their imagination to visualize the world in the literary text.

After reading a literary text, the meaning of the text will be absorbed by the reader’s memory and when the reader re-reads the text, his interpretation of the same text might be different. This thing happens because the reader already has the experience of the world in the literary text and it will effect their expectation in the second reading. The reader will be able to anticipate the relationship between ideas of the text and also there is a probability that the reader’s interpretation will be different because a text has potential of multiplicity interpretation. Meaning of a text is inexhaustible. The multi interpretation of a literary text will never exhaust its meaning. In the act of reading, the reader will connect the time sequence in the text. It will help them to construct the virtual dimension of the text. The process to build the virtual dimension of a text is a living process since the reader should continually try to relate one phrase to another in the text.

The text brings the nature of disturbance toward the reader’s expectation and this will lead to frustration of expectation of the reader. The disturbance can come in the flow of time sequence in the text. The reader will create different visualization of the literary world in every act of reading. The reader’s imagination will concretize this visualization by processing the information given in the literary text. The process of concretization of the meaning of literary text will lead the reader to form ‘gestalt’ of the text but ‘gestalt is not the true meaning of the literary text. ‘Gestalt’ is the result of the colliding of reader’s mind and the literary text. ‘Gestalt’ is merely a configurative meaning of the text.

The reader’s expectation upon the meaning of the literary text will lead them into illusion because he world presented in the literary text is not the true reality. This illusion appears because in interpreting a literary text, reader tend to restrict the polysemantics tendencies to have a valid form of the visualization because according to Wolfgang Iser, the polysemantics nature and the illusion making of the text are opposed factors. If the semantics factor of a text already fixed, then the illusion will be complete.

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