ABRI's persistence

ABRI's persistence

From Republika

The Armed Forces' (ABRI) persistence in maintaining a presence
in the People's Consultative Assembly/House of Representatives as
well as their dual function role is very impressive. In fact, the
appointment of ABRI's representatives to the legislative body is
convincingly contradictory to the 1945 Constitution and contrary
to the principles of democracy. Also, its dual function role has
become a much debated issue lately. The people are, in general,
of the view that ABRI should return to its basic task, i.e., to
defend the state. The perseverance of ABRI to stay in the
legislature reminds me of the development of technology written
by Armahedi Mahzar in his introductory remarks of the book
Teknologi Dalam Sejarah Islam (Technology in Islamic History,
[Mizan, 1993]).

The summary of the story is as follows:

In the beginning, technology is a small tool which serves as
an extension of a man's hand. It helps the man in his work. And
being a tool, it succumbs to man's will. It does not have its own
power and it works only with the help of the man. Therefore, we
can call such a tool a suborganism. We take for example a knife.

A man then develops technology, building a machine consisting
of a number of tools arranged in such a way that it can be more
beneficial to mankind. Thus, the machine is no longer an
extension of the man's hand but has become an extension of the
man's body as a whole. At this stage, not only the tool has to be
adapted to the man but the man must adapt himself to the tool.
This applies primarily when a machine has a source of energy not
of man, such as a horse cart. This combination of man, animal and
machine creates a new organism called a paraorganism.

After a time, the engine will change into a machine. This
happens when the engine gets a source of energy which is
nonorganic, such as water, air, wind or fire (fuel). At this
stage, the machine can work without too much energy from man. The
more sophisticated the machine, the less intervention of man is
needed. Now the machines are almost similar to natural organisms,
hence they can be called semiorganisms. Then, these semiorganisms
multiply with the help of man. They gets more sophisticated by
combining them, also with the help of man, to become groups of
machines that cannot be controlled by just one man but by a group
of well-organized men. In this case the semiorganism changes into
supraorganism the size of which exceeds the man-organism.

When the technology is in the suborganism stage, it serves as
a loyal servant to man. In the paraorganism stage, it changes
into a friend of man. As a semiorganism, it is no longer a friend
but has become a foe to be conquered. In the supraorganism stage,
it becomes an entity very similar to a master, that must be very
carefully managed to always benefit mankind. Failure in this
strategy and man will inevitably become a servant of technology.

So technology keeps developing with the ages, which is quite
evident from practical life. Whether this technological
development can be analogized with development experienced by the
Armed Forces depends on our individual interpretation and
evaluation.

But we only have one hope: that whatever the case, technology
must benefit the whole people and democracy as mandated in the
1945 Constitution.

SUHELMI NURUSMAN

Jakarta