The meaning of independence

Benny Susetyo, Malang

On Wednesday, Indonesia will celebrate its 60th Independence Day. Several generations have experienced various ups and downs in the process of building a nation out of Indonesia. The bad times Indonesia has experienced as a nation should serve as valuable lessons for us all.

Sadly, we still find it hard to learn from experience; in fact, we have almost never learned from experience or are frequently unwilling to do so. We are reluctant to learn from history, which often leads us to repeat the same mistakes.

A great nation is one that should be capable of "rereading" its history and making it the basis of its behavior. Studying history is the best way to reflect on the direction in which the country should be heading. It provides the foundation for nation- building. The country's history of injustice and colonialism should open our minds to the fact that this nation has to be built on the solid foundations of humanism and justice.

The Indonesia of today often forgets about these values as a result of the conduct of its elite. They frequently act in the name of the entire populace while in reality acting solely in their own interests. Indonesia is facing a crisis of values. Various areas of national expression have been reduced to mere materialistic values, which solely serve the logic of economic growth and political stability.

Redefining our Indonesian status means that we should view it from a new perspective in the context of global politics that tend to be oriented toward liberalism. The market ideology and neo-liberalism have converted the state into an institution that is no longer able to play a decisive role in determining its own future.

Global interests often dictate our policies. Indonesia should now realize that it is a mere tiny bolt in a global industrial power that dominates the life of nations. The state in the conventional sense no longer possesses its original power as its sovereignty is frequently circumscribed by the owners of capital.

Therefore, we are apt to forget: What is the nation already independent from? What are we independent for? These two fundamental questions reflect the unfinished work of independence. While we are independent, we in reality have only gained our freedom from conventional colonialism.

Reading history with a new paradigm means daring to say that as a nation our awareness remains critically weak. It is still founded on historical ties valued by the outgoing generation. The cohesion of our nationalism is not strong either as the younger generation do not feel the nation's unity to be part of their struggle.

Capitalism and its control of the media has changed the way of thinking in the world community so that life on earth is seemingly determined by what can be perceived by the five senses only. Men are intoxicated, losing their awareness of being human beings as their choices are now dictated by the media.

Technology has reduced the sovereignty of individuals, communities and even the state to systems that are built in a virtual framework. It is this virtual world that has overwhelmed sovereignty with technological systems merely to legitimize modernization. Modernity, wherever practiced, has disrupted the collective spirit and solidarity, which had previously united the nation.

For this reason, we should avoid attaching importance to history in the old fashion, by only looking at independence as a story of war and struggle. Without diminishing the merits of those involved, this myth will only blind us by physical prowess while in fact independence is the fruit of thought.

The state's basic orientation should be restructured in order to enable us to promptly respond to global changes. Independence should be able to make this nation more creative by producing opportunities for building strategic economic ties with, for instance, China and India. These two powers should at least be invited as strategic partners to establish a balance in the world economy, which is now dominated by neo-liberalism.

Independence has hitherto been a "myth". This needs to be changed into a framework for overhauling the nation's culture. Otherwise, the nation will be trapped in an attitude of glorifying past history without the courage to see it in the present context.

By adopting a new outlook, the nation's independence will not just be an abstract ideal that can only be understood by the older generation while ignoring the younger one. The nation's courage to contextualize history will give rise to a new Indonesia that is truly independent, not only from classical colonialism but also from neo-colonialism.

The writer is executive secretary of the Indonesian Bishops Conference.