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)