Are we a selfish people in decline?

JAKARTA (JP): One afternoon, my friend Joko arrived with a troubled look on his face.

"Do you know Lifebuoy soap is Rp 950 now? It was only Rp 450 before," he said. "My God, I think one day I will have to bathe by rubbing my body with a stone!"

I laughed and then teased him.

"Come on, you should be ashamed because I can smell you from miles away. Admit it -- you haven't had a bath today?"

"Ya!" he laughed, also joking. "What can I do? I have to be thrifty, right? Bathing is a luxury compared to eating."

We were joking, but the monetary crisis has hit university students like us, especially those who live far from home. We have to spend our money carefully to make ends meet and we are squeezed to purchase even basic necessities.

Along with my roommate, Evi, I am shocked by the increasing amount of our monthly shopping bill, a trend which actually began in October. We formerly spent around Rp 30,000 monthly to buy things like powder, lotion, shampoo, sugar, coffee, and tea.

Now it costs us at least Rp 40,000, and sometimes more, even though we make sure to buy only what we really need. For us, the difference of Rp 10,000 is enough to affect what we eat for several days.

Thank God Evi and I are not heavy users of cosmetics!

Our new pastime is spending a long, long time -- sometimes hours -- in the store, checking every shelf to compare prices and mulling whether we really need the item.

Quality is not so important anymore; we are thankful if we can just meet our needs. Sometimes, we have to make a sad trip back to an aisle to return something deemed "unnecessary", which I did last month with my favorite conditioner.

But these shopping trips have given us something to laugh about. We dissolve into uncontrollable giggles when we remember the peeved look of the shop assistant after we visited the dairy section three times, and still didn't buy anything.

We laugh even harder when we recollect the strange glances of other shoppers when we parked our trolley in a corner and tried to calculate the cost of our purchases. Or, rather, whether we had enough money to pay for them.

This is why we feel sadness and jealousy when we read reports about people rushing to shops to buy up goods. We have the same fears as these hoarders, and it might be said that our concerns are even greater.

But what can we do?

If anything, the monetary crisis has illustrated how we, the Indonesian people, have declined. Where has our social concern gone? Instead, our selfish interest is only to save ourselves.

This lack of concern for others may also be the cause of our willingness to listen to gossip. This is strange from us, who consider ourselves among the most sympathetic and kindest citizens in the world, or at least that is what I have heard since I was a little kid.

What are we? Where are we going? We can blame our problems on the free trade era, or globalization, or the rapid development of technology.

But I think we had better look at ourselves.

Maybe we are wrong. Have we really taught humanitarian lessons to our children? Do we teach them to care about other people, instead of needlessly prying into their private affairs?

We as a people are headed for the bottom of the sea because of our own selfishness. Look how we buy dollars in the hope of saving ourselves. It may well keep our personal bank accounts healthy, but it could plague the future we owe to our children.

Do we realize that every dollar we buy undermines all the rupiah we gained? It reduces the wages we earned over decades, denies the sweat of our hard work, has millions wondering about their future, and leaves many more wondering where or when their next meal will come from.

Several of us are scheduled to graduate this April, but we are so frightened about what the future holds. I believe thousands, even millions of other students feel the same way.

We, the younger generation, do not deserve to have the burden of our country put on our shoulders. Rightfully, we should help our elders and eventually take over their positions to make this a better country. Instead, it seems this right is already denied us.

-- Chadijah Mastura