Modern Indonesia fast losing traditional values

Modern Indonesia fast losing traditional values

JAKARTA (JP): Noted social scientist Mohamad Sobary says
social norms, in particular as they inform the political
integrity of state officials, have been eroded in the rapid
process of modernization in Indonesia.

The researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences said
the nation had lost many of its traditional values which had, in
the past, been essential in maintaining the national character
and the integrity of its leaders.

The decay of values had created a state of "mass hypocrisy",
he said, which condoned acts lacking in virtue, such as
corruption. Sobary made the remarks on Tuesday during a seminar
entitled "Reflections and Projections Regarding Nation- and
Character-Building in Indonesia".

The modernization process had transformed the old village-
based norms into the cosmopolitan standards, lacking in any
virtue and capable of ensuring only a mild degree of social
control.

"Corruption in our society began with the corruption of
values," he said.

A weakened system of social control had further weakened the
potency of social sanctions and allowed the degradation of
standards, he said.

"So when a high-ranking state official is found embezzling
one, two or even three trillion (rupiah), he isn't worried about
having insults rain down upon him, because what is the potency of
insults?" he said.

Sobary said that the demise of traditional values had made
people insensitive to manipulation to which, he said, they were
subject. That was because, he said, the new "cosmopolitan"
standards were based more on materialistic-physical realities.

"There's a sense of social solidarity prevailing in a certain
social class such that, when someone falls off his chair, his
friends quickly help him up," he said. He added: "Important
people are not to be shamed."

It had been traditional norms that led Mohammad Hatta to
resign as vice-president of Indonesia in 1951 because of
political differences with then President Sukarno, Sobary said,
adding that today's political culture was blind to such levels of
political integrity.

"Every time a moral voice calls for the resignation of a
corrupt official, with great proficiency people near the
politician defend him, arguing that resigning from one's position
is not part of our culture," Sobary said.

Not a single senior government official had resigned from his
post in the last 30 years, he noted.

"This is the joy, for those in power, living in an age of
insanity, an age devoid of set local norms," Sobary said.

In confronting this malaise, Sobary called for close
reflection on the traditional values of the past.

"We have built everything for the sake of an 'Indonesia of
tomorrow', except character and self-respect. In heading towards
the Indonesia of the future, we have broken the roots of our own
past," he said.

Sobary said one of the forces that could save society was
religion. "I sincerely long for religion, so that religion can
become an effective moral standard," he said.

Sobary expressed doubts, however, about the recent rise of
religious reverence.

He said that certain much-lauded religious activities that had
become popular in the past few years, such as the breaking the
fast in luxurious hotels during the Moslem fasting month of
Ramadhan, might be mere external gestures rather than any
profound religious submission.

He said that religion was often exploited for various
objectives, including social or political advantages.

"It is as if we are all in a common state of national
hypocrisy. And the strange thing is that we are proud of it," he
said. (mds)