Seeing Indonesia's violence in Arendt's light

By Harry Bhaskara

JAKARTA (JP): The destruction of buildings by a mob in East Java last week during huge rallies in support of beleaguered President Abdurrahman Wahid is only the latest example of public violence, displayed consistently since the country was hit by a crisis four years ago.

Other violence may be lighter in scale but continues unabated, and this is not small in significance to the life of the people. People turn violent at the slightest provocation, street brawls are the rule rather than the exception, people have been robbed at their homes and in side streets with violent attacks, trains enroute are pelted with rocks and petty thieves are burned on the spot.

Why does violence continue to rule in this country?

"When politicians perceive politics as a source of earnings, the result will be fraud, greed and violence," said Haryatmoko, a lecturer at Jakarta's Driyarkara Institute of Philosophy in a discussion here over the weekend.

The Jesuit priest based his statement on a book by the prominent Jewish writer Hannah Arendt, who wrote Human Condition in 1958.

In its highest development, politicians would no longer look at politics as a source of income nor as a mere tool to defeat their enemies, but as a means to turn into practice the principles of freedom, egalitarianism, justice and solidarity, he said.

The discussion at Bentara Budaya in Central Jakarta on Feb. 9 focused on Arendt's thoughts on political morals and was attended by about 100 people, most of them students.

Absent in Indonesia today, he said, was political ethics. "Whoever is in power would think they will be annihilated once their opponents seize power. This is a proof that there is no political ethics at all."

Under the 32-year New Order repressive rule, he said, people had been reduced from human beings to commodities; they had not been taught to think critically. Public dialog had been sidelined.

Politics, said Haryatmoko, "could be practiced as an art".

Raising fuel prices, he said, could be done with persuasion and dialog to make people understand why the government should take the decision.

Karlina Leksono-Supelli, the speaker in the discussion, complimented Haryatmoko's point.

The military makes assessments of "win" and "lose" reports prior to an operation, she said. What is shocking is that there are two columns in such reports referred to as the "win" and the "lose" columns.

The "win" column refers to the number of people that would possibly be killed in the operation and the "lose" column to the amount of equipment that would possibly be damaged.

"Here human beings are treated as mere figures," she said.

Arendt refers to this phenomenon as "thoughtless" activities, Karlina said, further asking why this was so widespread.

"When these people are brought to court, the answer will always be: "I only executed an order," she said.

Responding to whether political ethics could be upheld in a society laden with a culture of violence, Karlina said people had to start from themselves.

"But this will be hardly enough," she hastened to add.

People tend to overlook the fact that words used in daily conversation are the epitome of a culture of violence, Karlina said.

"Look at the way we talk, look at our popular culture reflected in television comedies (ketoprak); the words are full of violent messages," she said.

Another participant asked whether political ethics could overcome violence. From a Machiavellian angle, Haryatmoko replied, political ethics could not stop violent behavior because morals would not be an issue.

Karlina said violence is often linked with the military, but civilians are no less familiar with it.

"The phrase 'you are different from me', is so inherent (in everyone) and we are not aware of the fact that it is a form of violence," she said.

She went so far as to say that grouping people according to their racial or religious lines, such as Chinese-Indonesians, indigenous Indonesians, Muslims or Christians, is a form of violence.

Citing another book by Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), she said evil could come from a civil servant working behind his desk. He does not need to be a monster.

Eichmann, who was charged with killing six million Jews, was a sound man whose only obsession was efficiency, Karlina said.

In an answer to a question about how to stop violence, Haryatmoko listed, among other things, the upholding of justice, enabling self-expression since childhood, placing more priority on literature in the curriculum, doing away with the segregation of schools along religious lines and the need to get rid of habits to settle disputes in "familial" ways.

"Impunity will give way to violence and violent action is actually a mute communication par excellence," he said.

Karlina said she once surveyed the textbooks of primary school students, especially civics. Her impression, she said, was that the books prevented children from becoming autonomous individuals, making them alien to the idea of pluralism and render them incapable of solving conflicts.

"The result is the attitude of 'the generalizing of others', looking at others as no more than a mass of people (rather than individuals with personalities)," she said.

These individuals are prone to committing violent behavior, she said. "What they should have learned is about how to convey differences in words," she said.

Another participant asked, is violence second nature to human beings? Violence is committed by all beings, Karlina said, when the need of self-defense arises.

"In the case of human beings, the difference is that we can always rethink our actions. Other beings cannot do so," she said.

The writer is a journalist of The Jakarta Post.