You must have a concept of guilt
You asked Indonesians in your carefully worded letter of Oct. 13: Is discipline possible?. If one turns to semantics, one may find the answer.
There is no special word in Bahasa Indonesia for "guilt". My dictionaries give the translation as kesalahan. But that, from its root, really means "knowing you have done wrong," which is not quite the same thing as guilt. Nor is there a word in Indonesian for "selfishness;" this becomes a bit of a mouthful in Indonesian, translated as mementingkan diri sendiri, which too really means something like "thinking you are higher than anyone else." Again this is not quite what is meant by being selfish. (It is indicative that my trusty thesaurus can also give me four English words with subtle variations on "guilt" and six equally subtle variations on "selfish".
The fact that you have no distinctive words -- let alone an abundance of them -- for the concepts of "guilt" and "selfishness" seems to suggest that these concepts may not be high on the philosophical agenda in Indonesia. And, indeed, anyone who has spent more than a few hours in this fine country knows only too well this is true. It makes no difference whether it is someone cutting in line to get on a bus, or a high-ranking official caught with his fingers in the till. If the concept of selfish behavior and guilty feelings are not there, then the bus rumbles on without you, and the high-ranking official is neither asked to resign nor even dreams that he might offer his resignation pour l'encouragement les autres (for the encouragement of others).
Until Indonesians really understand what it means in conceptual terms to spew diesel fumes into the atmosphere, to throw plastic bags out of car windows, to blast out loud music from obscenely large speakers, to choke rivers with rubbish, to slash and burn, to carry three small children without crash helmets on a motorcycle down a one-way street the wrong way (I saw a policeman -- in a uniform -- do just that the other day) every bleating call for national discipline is as doomed as your own environment.
ROBERT WALKER
Karangasem, Bali