Jakarta in its megalomaniacal, glittering glory

B. Herry-Priyono, Lecturer, Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta

On the opening day of the Jakarta Fair 2003, which is part of the 476th anniversary of the capital city, I was in the commercial district of Kelapa Gading, whose glittering facade had joined the glitter of Jakarta.

A few hundred meters southward, I was startled by a tightly fenced-in area measuring over 17 hectares, where heavy construction was underway. From the boards posted along the fence, I learned that the area is to be a colossal commercial center called Gading Square upon which a glittering world is to be erected: A shopping arcade, the Parisian Walk, the Venetian Plaza, etc.

Moving a few hundred meters eastward, I saw what used to be a public space and a horse-race track also being fenced in. I called a friend with a vast knowledge of Jakarta city planning, and learned that the area was soon to become the Korean Commercial District.

On the way home, my soul was haunted by an echo of a comment uttered by a shocked British friend when he visited Jakarta last year: "My gosh, I have never seen so many children and young people hanging around in mega-malls like in Jakarta; not in London, not in Paris, neither in New York nor in Tokyo." I could not agree more. That evening, my mind was disturbed by the image of an area crowded out by three commercial centers within close proximity of each other.

There is no modernity without a city, but some cities are more phony than others in its pretense at modernity. One such phony city is Jakarta.

I was thinking of the disappearance of so many public spaces, historical sites and conservation areas, and of the many evictions of the urban poor that preceded the mushrooming of mega-malls in Jakarta in the last 10 years or so. More specifically, I was thinking of the psychological makeup that is being created by such an onslaught of shopping centers.

During my six years of study in Europe, I took a chance to learn why and how the great cities of the world, like London and Paris, jealously guard public spaces such as parks, conservation areas and historical sites. Those cities would never replace these public spaces with malls or any other commercial centers, even if the latter is judged highly profitable. It is not only ecology that is evident, but also societal psychology.

Consider ourselves frequenters of mega-malls. We are surrounded by saleable items whose availability is within the grasp of our hands. The items could be anything from dried fish to the latest Ferrari sports car, but everything is there before our eyes, luring us to grab them up.

Frequenting mega-malls is not simply a physical matter of our coming or going. It involves the shaping of both the content and the form of our mental landscape. More than anything else, the imprint of mall life is the crowdedness of immediacy and the mobbish quality of the instantaneous.

The distance between us and the consumer items increasingly disappears. Instead of prudently choosing our purchases, what is happening is that our collective psyche is gradually being cannibalized by the seduction of the items.

It is here that most mainstream economic theories seem to have gone amiss when they say that the consumers' independence is sacred. It is also through this process that the lexical definition of "consumerism" as "the protection and promotion of consumers' interests in relation to the producer" has degenerated into "concocted consumption" in the new political-economic literature. Thus, the adjective "consumerist" has also gradually acquired its vicious meaning.

What has all this to do with Jakarta's spatial and social fabric? The unfettered rise of mall culture which is increasingly commanding Jakarta's fabric of existence seems to have reached an alarming level. It is not the presence of mega-malls that is problematic, but its consumerist orgy that is formed by their unfettered presence.

First, it is a pretense of modernity founded upon a surreptitious replacement of "citizenship" with "consumership". Is it a vice or a virtue? Either way, what arises is this general ethos: If you don't pay for it, it can't be worth anything.

Second, with the crowds of immediacy embodied in the culture of mega-malls comes the celebration of the instant. Again, a virtue or a vice? Depends on the eye of the beholder. But if the beholder has been inculcated in the orgy of the instant, what happens is the reinforcement of the orgy itself -- who cares about the long-term impacts! Glitter needs no justification. What emerges is a generation whose credo is proudly advertised by A Mild cigarette: "I think, therefore I get more confused". This is the making of a generation whose banality is interchangeable with their vacuity.

Third, in this culture of the instant, depth is by definition lack of accessibility; hence the rise of a shortcut way of life as wide as society in scope. With it comes an economy that mainly stands on consumption rather than on the industrious craft of production. The demise of the manufacturing industry that is now besieging the U.S. has something to do not only with the worship of bubble finance, but also with the orgy of consumerism.

Fourth, the way those unfettered mega-malls burgeons is also the poignant story of many disappeared public spaces, historical sites and conservation areas.

We may immediately think of the floods that chronically hit Jakarta, but in reality, the stakes at risk are higher than those that come with the floods.

We repeatedly lament over the demise of public civility, but forget that such demise is by no means unrelated to the disappearance of public spaces. We also lament over the decline of our sense of history, but forget that this can only be secured by the jealous guarding of historical sites.

In the ever-flowing river of history, no one can remain in the past. But Jakarta seems to have blotted out its past recklessly with more orgies of the immediate instant. Instead of giving a sense of history, Jakarta's 476th fiesta may offer only a sense of megalomania.

Jakarta is an orphaned city reflecting itself in the mirror of bogus modernity.

The corrosion of our lives comes not simply from the orgy of violence, but also from the orgy of seduction.