So ferdi;) seems to have this hit on communication programs, something I regret since he’s one of the supporting agent behind my being where I currently am [though I’m to go very soon]. But I’m not about to tell him of advices like what other communication associates might provide.

Despite of him being quite lazy and sorts, I still believe that this guy has a great potential to be a great artist. There’s always this certain feeling when you meet an artist, and I’m sure you’re quite aware of it. As a fellow artist wannabe, I seriously think about this matter for quite some times now in the spare moments of my waking days [which counts almost 24 hours except for the weekends].

It’s really not an easy thing to change the culture of an individual, and it’s greater still to change a nation’s culture. Especially since Indonesia, as we may be well aware of it, has no grand narrative to put its whole stakeholders into a cohesive society. It’s a highly difficult thing to do, but not impossible.

This may sound quite stupid, but Indonesia has been living under strong tyrannical rule that forced its dissidents to live cohesively. The regime was toppled, as well as the iron fists that held it with care. And in the light of so-called democracy, it would take another generation to have us finally understand the nature of freedom.

But, let’s not go that far yet. Culture is not all about things, and it’s not about ideologies. Culture is a way of living. People doesn’t really give a further thought to how they live what life they live. For them, it’s taken for granted and all about surviving today. The high level of uncertainty produced anxiety and stress, and too much of this will render people ignorant.

Since Indonesia is a high-context society where everything is ritualized, where doing the activity held higher reward than the content of the activity, and where thinking to change the contents held higher punishment than not doing the activity; then we should take this into account when we’re to produce some effective communication.

In a high context society, with highly inter-dependent self concept in it, Indonesia is pretty much blind to the contents of a certain ritual. Everyday life is already hard enough, and they just have a so-and-so mind capacity that they can’t really spare a moment to think further about their life.

I think the solution to this is about promoting a single key theme in a certain ritual with a contemporary fashion that is currently, commonly accepted. Something like, for instance, traditional wedding ceremony was designed to inherit cultural messages, traditional virtues to the newlyweds. Across cultures, there are similar codes saying about the same thing, and I guess this could be the start of a grand narrative.

Pancasila, in the yester ages, tried to do this. I’m sure you remembered how P4 said that Indonesian culture is based on the apex of traditional cultures, which implies that these similar codes across cultures are the foundation of it. This very idea is not necessarily a grand fallacy; it’s just that in the light of pluralism, it’s quite stupid to enact it once more.

So there are similar –and some universal, moral codes in traditional cultures that shared a certain ethnical reference to their respective cultures. These codes are supposedly interchangeable just like Lego blocks of a nation. Across cultures, there are just so and so commonness you could do, except if you transcend and see things from an outsider’s perspective.

IMHO, we could always put a new meaning around these moral codes. My example was traditional wedding ceremony. One interesting about it is that it promotes traditional means of domestic welfare and sorts. Perhaps a bit traditional or primitive in the light of post-modernism, but at least it used to work.

To put the motion back into the wheel, I think it’s best to re-animate the values in our daily life. It would be highly primitive to popularize traditional wedding ceremonies in its royal state, but we could always try to do it the other way, if you get my meaning.

Oh, and yeah, don’t forget that our current traditional rituals were used to be rituals of the royalties. It became popular after Islam came into the picture. Islam and its traditional virtue of equality helped people in giving them more dreams to make. Back then, people don’t really envy it when royalties wed, but it’s another thing when their neighbor wed. This should be taken into account as well.

Well, I’m sure by now you have a stream of ideas into mind, so spill it out bud.

Lurino signing out.