Discussing the subject, an old professor used the word secularization to describe what was happening to cultural life and the world view of people in Yogyakarta these days. He contrasted development in the city with the outlying area of central and east Java where “people still clung to Mataram”, and tradisional ways and beliefs still held sway.” He thought that personality of the previous sultan, Hamengku Buwono IX, and the hisroritical process that unfolded during his reign, explained to a
large extent the opening up of the town to national life. With its having become a national city—th capital of the revolution, the seat of the first Indonesian University—all kind of people hed flocked to Yogya, and many of the local notables subsequently left for Jakarta after the recognition of independence by the Ducth.
The sultan set the exsample for Java. The times had changed, Java had become part of Indonesia, and its people had better orient themselves to the new centre. In becoming a modern politician, actively propagating the Orde Baru party of Golkar, and being selected for the vice-presidency (1973-78), he emphasized his national orientation, while the vestiges of the old regalorder of Yogyakarta were rapidly giving way to that of the state, especially when depelopment, communications, and capitalist penetration became intensive in the 1970s, the culmination of a process that had long been gathering strength.
The professor added that he worried about how Javanese civilization, as he saw it, was was now crumbling, there being no market for printed Javanese; that a rapid simplification of the language was coming about with high Javanese on the verge f disappearing; and that he perceived a general erosion of supporting institutions, along with a continuous penetration of orthodox Islam, which he called the santrinisasi of culture, in which Moslem principles and ceremonies replace the older ones. He also noted the in compatibilty of the programming of the modern media—tv, video, commercial radio—with traditional styles, that strongly affected the taste and choices of the young who, as they grew up, lost touch with the culture of older generations.
The only signs of hope he saw was the persistence of the languages as ritual idiom of the speeches, of tradisional marriage ceremonies, of the Javanese adress at solemnities, of wayang performances and kethoprak plays, so that people were obviously not totally alienated from kejawen forms, but he doubted whether kejawen was still alive and observed beyond ceremonial occasions. Accordingly, he left kejawen had been usurped, and survived as a mere external decoration.
It is worth scruinizing the above argument and reflecting on such words as “secularization”, “kejawen” and ‘outword decoration” the combination of the latter two especially struck me as odd. It is posible to see kejawen merely as form? I had always understood it as way of the perceiving, of the viewing the world, that informs certain externals, but certainly not the other way round. To me kejawen is at the heart of Javanese civilization, and although it is not a relegion by itself, it belng to an “enchanted” way of life that does not distinguish between the sacred and the profane (chapter 7)
In general, kejawen refers to the cultur of the Javanese heart land that centres on the courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Often, it is especially undertood as Javanism, such as the misticism and religious practices assosiated with the philosophy of life, or Javanese knowledge (ngelmu). That normally also has asoteric qualities. It is essential Javaneseness, composed of elements that are held to originate from the Hindu-Buddhist period of the island’s history, in combination with older animistic thought. As a system of knowledge, kejawen is singularly elaborate, containing a cosmology, mythology, and mystical teaching that give rise to a particular anthrophology, or ideas about the nature of mand and society, that, in tis turn, informs ethics and morality while permeating tradition and style of life. In the light of this interpretation, the mere performance of ceremonies in a “tradisional” menner should never be called kejawen.
As the heart of great tradition, Javanism needs its sustaining intitutions if it is to flourish. Mysticism depends on adepts and practitioners, teachers and teaching, innovator, such as Ki Ageng Suryomentaram, and active sects, such as Pangestu. Without all these, it is destined to become a historical curiosity. Yet, becouse of active interest and and reinterpretation, it is still kept alive, especially among older people. Whether it can continue as a vital tradition may, becouse of its marginalization, be questioned. The interest in it expressed among the less educated and the younger generation seem to focus more on its practical and magical aspects than on seeking philoshopical insight and “the perfection of life”. Consequestly, esoteric healing practices thrive at the same time that there is much interest evident in chinese and Japanese therapies, while the mystically inspired art of self-defence (pencak silat) and physical invulnerability are also doing well.
Marginalization, downward mobility, or loss of meaning seem to caracterize the intitutions that support kejawen. The wayang, that is essential to keeping the mythology alive, attracts smaller crowds than before, and has the image of being awfully old-fashioned in the eyes of youth. Interestingly, many good performances are staged in Jakarta now, but more the esense of ceremonial decoration than as a living manifestation of the kejawen philoshopy of life. It is true that some people still write books about the connexion between the shadow play and human psychology, also that good pupeteers (dalang) can command considerable sums for their performances, but the younger people, whor formerly were entrhalled bye these arts, are now more intereted in the trashy movies and videos.
The youtful public stiil flocks to kethoprak, but th widespread experimentation and innovation going on in that branch of theatre already demonstrate that it is no longer a guardian of Javaneseness, but rather, at times, a partial commentary on the current events, a satirical potential that it shares with never forms of dramatic art. These letter are invariably staged in Indonesian, a language that is also taking over in Jakartan kethoprak.
The production of belles-lettres in javanese has long ceased to exist in any commercial form: literature is written in Indonesian, and so are the newspapers. What’s more, the production of intertaiments pulp (comics, dime novels, magazines), that was sometimes printed in Javanes until about twenty years ago, is in the national languages now, event the strips that are based on the wayang stories. The national school system has greatly contributed to Indonesian’s spread, and among those who read and write, Javanese just remains—what is has always been for most—an oral language that is not important in school; only two hours a week are taught and it is no examination subject.
In the old days in Java, people listened to the wayang, the theatre, poentry readings, philoshopical discourse, and each other, and there were few who wrote histories, moral commentary, and mystical treatises. Even at that time, much of such writing centred on the courts, but for a long time now this tradition has been fading away. Again, few yougster have any interest at all these old writings, and even if they were to be attracted to thisgreat tradition—wich it once was—they would find themselves unable to read the Javanes script. Consequenstly this expression of kejawen—its moralistic, mystical and religious literature—is rapidly losing its social relevance. The tradition lingers on among the dwindling band of elder. It is dying by attrition.
It is not only than the courts have lost their function as living centres of kejawen—the kraton of Surakarta being its last heavily defended bastion—but they have not felt complled to adopt an alternate role, as modern patrons of high culture. The study of Javanese attracts hardly any students at the universities, the recent centres of Javanalogy appear still-born, the art schools experiment and innovate, old monuments remain for tourists only, the archives are in a mess, or acsses to them difficult, and the museums are in a sorry state. Government is preoccupied with progress, with the future: the only relevant part of the past apparent to them is the heroism of the revolution and the coming to power of the present dispensation.
There is little to sustain kejawen and its hold over the minds of the majority; as an encompassing civilization of the heart land of Javanese culture its seems to be destined to live on as an oral tradition on th countryside, still carried on by some puppeteers and mystics, but out of touch with life in the cities, the crucial centres of high culture. The towns of Java are opening up to Jakarta, a process that has already far advanced in the case of Yogyakarta, and exposes them to a capital-produced culture that is at best a new Javanese-Indonesian hodgepodge with a secular taste, free of moral, wise, or deep dimensions, in wich elements of the past are crearly recognizable, but that lacks its orderly patterns (Chapters 3 and 8).
Kejawen, and the civilization shaped by it, constituted a moral order, with a profound religious element. For the individual mystica this meant being serious in his laku (ngelakoni, or the following of an ascetic regimen in order order to be in step with cosmic rhythm and destiny; for other, the realization of a wise and aesthetic life conforming to morality and careful of decorum. For all, it meant self-mastery, restraint, and accommodation to a cultivated, preferably tranquil, style of life that culminated in the virtuosity of the literati and the wisdom of the king. Idealistic as all this may sound, nevertheless in provided orientation and direction.
The loss of this order is perhaps best illustrated in the rapid vanishing of the mastery of high Javanese, of kromo. That language imposes order, as it were. It sets the ego apart, regulating a person’s station in life vis-à-vis others, attributing honour, governing expectations and obligations. As such it is simbol of urbanity and the morality that goes with it; it expresses beauty and virtue. It contrasts with ngoko, the language of equality that ignores hierarchical order, that does not need ‘God’ or king, that can be spontaneous and unrestrained (siegel, 1985:15-53).
The present generation in town is almost ignorant of kromo. Or known little of it. Fearing loss of face becouse of clumsy use of language, they prefer to express themselves in Indonesia in situations of inequality, while speaking a mixture of low Javanese and the National languages among themselves. They are no longer interested in the trapping of hierarchical social older, and, together with the self-contraints and aestheticism of kromo, the mandatory good forms and etiguette (tatakrama, unggah-ungguh) are on their way out. What remains is alittle tradition, popular and folkish, spontaneous and alive, syncretizing and open to the future. Freed of the cultural leadership of an exemplary centre, local traditions may proliferate, while the last vestiges of Javanese civilization are rapidly relegated to the museum—if they survive at all—and frozen into harmless folklore. Stripped of its past and the moral context to which it once belonged, life in Yogya, it is correct to say, has secularized and oriented itself to a new order with little or no moral content.
The situation brings to mind the precedent of Mexico. With the are rival of the spaniards, the great tradition was decapitated, but five hundred years later the local styles are still remarkably ‘Indian’, in the major urban centres, another civilization has replaced the earlier one, and a Hispano-American culture does exercise its influence on local life, but it does not drive out language and customs, while having to content itself with the Indianization of Catholicism and other ‘great’ ideas. The older Javanese culture also seems to exist at a remove from life, withering more slowly in the aoutlying areas than in the foci of modernization and progress, making place for local tradition that will henceforward orient themselves to a new, encompassing culture that is severely short on moral content. Moral life will remain local life, the language will live on, but whether that will be so in five hundred years must be doubted.
The Javanese countryside is now being rapidly penetrated by a money economy, and by the state administration, by and Indonesian school system, by the mass media, and by new fashions and commodities. The system of production has changed beyond imagination over the past twenty years, reinforcing class differences and social diversification (Booth, 1988; Husken, 1996). As a result, Indonesianization will be more rapid and disruptive in Java than hispanicization once was in Mexico, cutting people loose from their local and moral moorings, creating an ethical vacuum that may or may not be filled by Islam in itss struggle against religious indifference.
Morally, Indonesianization has little to ofter (chapters 8 and 9). The ideas of duty to social place and obligation to elders and superiors have now been superseded by money, and the example of the parvenus who symbolize an amoral order of bunsiness in wich corruption naturally ensconces itself. The exercise of power has also been freed from moral contraints and dominates the practice of justice. Supercificially, it looks like the restoration of Javanese hierarchical relationships, but the impression false, becouse they no longer have any moral authority. Secularization indeed!
The vanishing of a social order which was expressed in kromo, selfcontraint, and cultivated manners, bring a style of life to the fore that uses ngoko, that is more spontaneous and less bound by etiquette. It fits the small people, the plain wong cilik, who were held to provide the great contrast with the cultivated and accomplished priyayi. Liberated from the oppressive weight of hierarchy, these former apparently enjoy their new-found freedom and certainly do not complain about the loss of kejawen. Their popular culture is not vertically oriented to leadership of court or presidential place, but finds its moral direction parents, respected elders (sepu, wong tuwa), and religious leaders (kiai, guru), all of them people who are near and known.
Yet, ingeneral, the moral contens of relationships is diminishing at present, and this is not becouse of the disappearance of the self-respressive feelings of sungkan in facing superiors, or an erosion of the gratefulnees due to others (utang budi) for help received. People still feel obliged to each other, but now they can often choose to pay for services, thus evading the ethical burdens of reciprocity. At the same time, the circle of people with whom they interact is rapidly expanding. This is due to physical and job mobility, the ease of travel, and the broadening of their mental horizons by the mass media and modern education. This spreading out of contacts also means that these tend to become less intensive, that there is less time available for their cultivation, and that a fair measure of anonymity colours interaction in town.
All this strongly supported by contemporary schooling that offers a strak contrast with Javanese ideas about the guidance of children. What is highlighted in the Tamn Siswa ideas of the 1920s, for instance, are the moral exemplariness of the school environment and the stimulation of initiative by “encouraging the pupil from behind”. These days, however, the guiding ligh provided by overworked and underpaid teachers is not shining brightly, as school schedules are directed to Development, its required technical and mathematical skills, to the neglect of the human sciences. This situation is aggravated by the Indoneziation of the teaching of the humanities that facuses all the pupil’s attention on national history and Jakartato the exclusion of the students’ own cultural environment. His home languages in hardly subject worthy of attention and he is trained in a second language; the teaching of history by-passes the growth and achievements of civilization, while dwilling at length on fighting and political events; relegion perishes in dogma, Arabic, and legalities; morality is the glorification of and obedience to the Pancasila state; the reading of literature is not stimulated and local culture is not tought. Also, the cramming of the school schedule and competitive ways of work, still stressing rote learning more than comprehension, kill creativity, imagination, human and moral development, while producing bland Orde Baru babies who are not very curious about life, and tend to political indifference.
In spite of its Indonesia orientation, national school education does not seem to make students particularly eager to identify with it. Their world is becoming an open one, penetrated by the mass media and entertaiment industry, both stimulating an outward directedness but offering little focus. Attention diffuses and everybody begins to follow his own taste and preferences in a confusing urban setting were people had better look out for themselves if they want to survive. The cultural symbols of the young are furnished by pop stars and life-style propagition, movies and disco, Donald Duck and Garfield, rock music and soap opera.
In these youngsters’ lives, their parent tend to become less important than they were for their elder generation, especially as mother now often work outside, finding part of their satisfaction and necessary money there, and thus exercising less pressure on their children. This leave room for the young to pursue a greater degree of moral and economic independence at the same time that the relative vagueness of existence in wider society stimulates the safety and identity function of family solidarity.
In contras to kejawen ideal of social organization, modern life seem to lack a compelling ethical orientation. Its tendency to exprees relationship in terms of money result in a higher degree of individualization other people becoming indiffernt equal for whom one no longer stoops in passing. As a result, the practice of tenggang rasa (I), of being considarate of others, is suffering. While people, also the young, are mostoften still coutous of onthers, their way of acting is purposive and fast. They know what they want and do not waste time with beating around the bush and the demontration of shyness that were once caracteristic.
In the ethical vacuity of modern urban life, religion appears to flourish. By actively joining in organized, congregational religion—primarily Islam, but prothetantism and chatolicism are also thriving—people, young and old alike, may restore part of identity and the feeling of righteousness in a general social life that offers little to cling to other than the fleeting symbol of mainly western mass culture; the measure of religious enthusiasm is impressive. That Islamicization will maintain its momentum for a long time to come seems unlikely, though. School almost seems to do everything possible to deprive religion of its positive aspect, rountinizing it to the point of insipidity. But the onslaught of mass and consumer culture may also dull the senses to what is often held to the contain the deeper, more essential dimensions of existence. For the time being, religion is modish, with rapidly increasing numbers of people fulfilling the requirement of the baj, wich demonstrates, at least, the success of development, and the fact that it is fashionable to have been to Mecca.
So, when analyzing the dynamic of culture in Yogyakarta, we may note that the high—cultural component of Javanese civilization in swiftly on its way out. If that the couse of the pessimism of the informant at the end of the first chapter when he observed that the young people had lost their Javaneseness, than he may be right, but it is correct to equate Javaneseness with kejawen? Member of the younger generation still most often find themselves primarily Javenese and only then indonesian—in contrast, sometimes, to an older generation that lived through the time of nationalism and revolution. Their identity is grounded in a little tradition of Javaneseness that becoming mixed with national component and competence in indonesian. Becouse of the mass media, they develop a taste for the plastic forms of the international consumer culture that is devoid of depth. This may make religion attractive for many, becouse life In a’disenchanted’ world that is devoid of meaning is not conducive to inculcating the sense of security that is provided by a grounded cultural identity. How this identity is going to evolve in the interplay between ngoko culture, indonesianization, a weakened sense of nationalsm, foreign-styled mass culture, monetarization, and Islam, is impossible to foresee, but that it will retain a distinct Javanese flavour is safe to predict.
This is a article with topic “The Cultural Process In Yogyakarta” make up written Neil Mulher in the book Inside Indonesian” if you want add the complete, pleace saw it.
large extent the opening up of the town to national life. With its having become a national city—th capital of the revolution, the seat of the first Indonesian University—all kind of people hed flocked to Yogya, and many of the local notables subsequently left for Jakarta after the recognition of independence by the Ducth.
The sultan set the exsample for Java. The times had changed, Java had become part of Indonesia, and its people had better orient themselves to the new centre. In becoming a modern politician, actively propagating the Orde Baru party of Golkar, and being selected for the vice-presidency (1973-78), he emphasized his national orientation, while the vestiges of the old regalorder of Yogyakarta were rapidly giving way to that of the state, especially when depelopment, communications, and capitalist penetration became intensive in the 1970s, the culmination of a process that had long been gathering strength.
The professor added that he worried about how Javanese civilization, as he saw it, was was now crumbling, there being no market for printed Javanese; that a rapid simplification of the language was coming about with high Javanese on the verge f disappearing; and that he perceived a general erosion of supporting institutions, along with a continuous penetration of orthodox Islam, which he called the santrinisasi of culture, in which Moslem principles and ceremonies replace the older ones. He also noted the in compatibilty of the programming of the modern media—tv, video, commercial radio—with traditional styles, that strongly affected the taste and choices of the young who, as they grew up, lost touch with the culture of older generations.
The only signs of hope he saw was the persistence of the languages as ritual idiom of the speeches, of tradisional marriage ceremonies, of the Javanese adress at solemnities, of wayang performances and kethoprak plays, so that people were obviously not totally alienated from kejawen forms, but he doubted whether kejawen was still alive and observed beyond ceremonial occasions. Accordingly, he left kejawen had been usurped, and survived as a mere external decoration.
It is worth scruinizing the above argument and reflecting on such words as “secularization”, “kejawen” and ‘outword decoration” the combination of the latter two especially struck me as odd. It is posible to see kejawen merely as form? I had always understood it as way of the perceiving, of the viewing the world, that informs certain externals, but certainly not the other way round. To me kejawen is at the heart of Javanese civilization, and although it is not a relegion by itself, it belng to an “enchanted” way of life that does not distinguish between the sacred and the profane (chapter 7)
In general, kejawen refers to the cultur of the Javanese heart land that centres on the courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Often, it is especially undertood as Javanism, such as the misticism and religious practices assosiated with the philosophy of life, or Javanese knowledge (ngelmu). That normally also has asoteric qualities. It is essential Javaneseness, composed of elements that are held to originate from the Hindu-Buddhist period of the island’s history, in combination with older animistic thought. As a system of knowledge, kejawen is singularly elaborate, containing a cosmology, mythology, and mystical teaching that give rise to a particular anthrophology, or ideas about the nature of mand and society, that, in tis turn, informs ethics and morality while permeating tradition and style of life. In the light of this interpretation, the mere performance of ceremonies in a “tradisional” menner should never be called kejawen.
As the heart of great tradition, Javanism needs its sustaining intitutions if it is to flourish. Mysticism depends on adepts and practitioners, teachers and teaching, innovator, such as Ki Ageng Suryomentaram, and active sects, such as Pangestu. Without all these, it is destined to become a historical curiosity. Yet, becouse of active interest and and reinterpretation, it is still kept alive, especially among older people. Whether it can continue as a vital tradition may, becouse of its marginalization, be questioned. The interest in it expressed among the less educated and the younger generation seem to focus more on its practical and magical aspects than on seeking philoshopical insight and “the perfection of life”. Consequestly, esoteric healing practices thrive at the same time that there is much interest evident in chinese and Japanese therapies, while the mystically inspired art of self-defence (pencak silat) and physical invulnerability are also doing well.
Marginalization, downward mobility, or loss of meaning seem to caracterize the intitutions that support kejawen. The wayang, that is essential to keeping the mythology alive, attracts smaller crowds than before, and has the image of being awfully old-fashioned in the eyes of youth. Interestingly, many good performances are staged in Jakarta now, but more the esense of ceremonial decoration than as a living manifestation of the kejawen philoshopy of life. It is true that some people still write books about the connexion between the shadow play and human psychology, also that good pupeteers (dalang) can command considerable sums for their performances, but the younger people, whor formerly were entrhalled bye these arts, are now more intereted in the trashy movies and videos.
The youtful public stiil flocks to kethoprak, but th widespread experimentation and innovation going on in that branch of theatre already demonstrate that it is no longer a guardian of Javaneseness, but rather, at times, a partial commentary on the current events, a satirical potential that it shares with never forms of dramatic art. These letter are invariably staged in Indonesian, a language that is also taking over in Jakartan kethoprak.
The production of belles-lettres in javanese has long ceased to exist in any commercial form: literature is written in Indonesian, and so are the newspapers. What’s more, the production of intertaiments pulp (comics, dime novels, magazines), that was sometimes printed in Javanes until about twenty years ago, is in the national languages now, event the strips that are based on the wayang stories. The national school system has greatly contributed to Indonesian’s spread, and among those who read and write, Javanese just remains—what is has always been for most—an oral language that is not important in school; only two hours a week are taught and it is no examination subject.
In the old days in Java, people listened to the wayang, the theatre, poentry readings, philoshopical discourse, and each other, and there were few who wrote histories, moral commentary, and mystical treatises. Even at that time, much of such writing centred on the courts, but for a long time now this tradition has been fading away. Again, few yougster have any interest at all these old writings, and even if they were to be attracted to thisgreat tradition—wich it once was—they would find themselves unable to read the Javanes script. Consequenstly this expression of kejawen—its moralistic, mystical and religious literature—is rapidly losing its social relevance. The tradition lingers on among the dwindling band of elder. It is dying by attrition.
It is not only than the courts have lost their function as living centres of kejawen—the kraton of Surakarta being its last heavily defended bastion—but they have not felt complled to adopt an alternate role, as modern patrons of high culture. The study of Javanese attracts hardly any students at the universities, the recent centres of Javanalogy appear still-born, the art schools experiment and innovate, old monuments remain for tourists only, the archives are in a mess, or acsses to them difficult, and the museums are in a sorry state. Government is preoccupied with progress, with the future: the only relevant part of the past apparent to them is the heroism of the revolution and the coming to power of the present dispensation.
There is little to sustain kejawen and its hold over the minds of the majority; as an encompassing civilization of the heart land of Javanese culture its seems to be destined to live on as an oral tradition on th countryside, still carried on by some puppeteers and mystics, but out of touch with life in the cities, the crucial centres of high culture. The towns of Java are opening up to Jakarta, a process that has already far advanced in the case of Yogyakarta, and exposes them to a capital-produced culture that is at best a new Javanese-Indonesian hodgepodge with a secular taste, free of moral, wise, or deep dimensions, in wich elements of the past are crearly recognizable, but that lacks its orderly patterns (Chapters 3 and 8).
Kejawen, and the civilization shaped by it, constituted a moral order, with a profound religious element. For the individual mystica this meant being serious in his laku (ngelakoni, or the following of an ascetic regimen in order order to be in step with cosmic rhythm and destiny; for other, the realization of a wise and aesthetic life conforming to morality and careful of decorum. For all, it meant self-mastery, restraint, and accommodation to a cultivated, preferably tranquil, style of life that culminated in the virtuosity of the literati and the wisdom of the king. Idealistic as all this may sound, nevertheless in provided orientation and direction.
The loss of this order is perhaps best illustrated in the rapid vanishing of the mastery of high Javanese, of kromo. That language imposes order, as it were. It sets the ego apart, regulating a person’s station in life vis-à-vis others, attributing honour, governing expectations and obligations. As such it is simbol of urbanity and the morality that goes with it; it expresses beauty and virtue. It contrasts with ngoko, the language of equality that ignores hierarchical order, that does not need ‘God’ or king, that can be spontaneous and unrestrained (siegel, 1985:15-53).
The situation brings to mind the precedent of Mexico. With the are rival of the spaniards, the great tradition was decapitated, but five hundred years later the local styles are still remarkably ‘Indian’, in the major urban centres, another civilization has replaced the earlier one, and a Hispano-American culture does exercise its influence on local life, but it does not drive out language and customs, while having to content itself with the Indianization of Catholicism and other ‘great’ ideas. The older Javanese culture also seems to exist at a remove from life, withering more slowly in the aoutlying areas than in the foci of modernization and progress, making place for local tradition that will henceforward orient themselves to a new, encompassing culture that is severely short on moral content. Moral life will remain local life, the language will live on, but whether that will be so in five hundred years must be doubted.
The Javanese countryside is now being rapidly penetrated by a money economy, and by the state administration, by and Indonesian school system, by the mass media, and by new fashions and commodities. The system of production has changed beyond imagination over the past twenty years, reinforcing class differences and social diversification (Booth, 1988; Husken, 1996). As a result, Indonesianization will be more rapid and disruptive in Java than hispanicization once was in Mexico, cutting people loose from their local and moral moorings, creating an ethical vacuum that may or may not be filled by Islam in itss struggle against religious indifference.
Morally, Indonesianization has little to ofter (chapters 8 and 9). The ideas of duty to social place and obligation to elders and superiors have now been superseded by money, and the example of the parvenus who symbolize an amoral order of bunsiness in wich corruption naturally ensconces itself. The exercise of power has also been freed from moral contraints and dominates the practice of justice. Supercificially, it looks like the restoration of Javanese hierarchical relationships, but the impression false, becouse they no longer have any moral authority. Secularization indeed!
The vanishing of a social order which was expressed in kromo, selfcontraint, and cultivated manners, bring a style of life to the fore that uses ngoko, that is more spontaneous and less bound by etiquette. It fits the small people, the plain wong cilik, who were held to provide the great contrast with the cultivated and accomplished priyayi. Liberated from the oppressive weight of hierarchy, these former apparently enjoy their new-found freedom and certainly do not complain about the loss of kejawen. Their popular culture is not vertically oriented to leadership of court or presidential place, but finds its moral direction parents, respected elders (sepu, wong tuwa), and religious leaders (kiai, guru), all of them people who are near and known.
Yet, ingeneral, the moral contens of relationships is diminishing at present, and this is not becouse of the disappearance of the self-respressive feelings of sungkan in facing superiors, or an erosion of the gratefulnees due to others (utang budi) for help received. People still feel obliged to each other, but now they can often choose to pay for services, thus evading the ethical burdens of reciprocity. At the same time, the circle of people with whom they interact is rapidly expanding. This is due to physical and job mobility, the ease of travel, and the broadening of their mental horizons by the mass media and modern education. This spreading out of contacts also means that these tend to become less intensive, that there is less time available for their cultivation, and that a fair measure of anonymity colours interaction in town.
All this strongly supported by contemporary schooling that offers a strak contrast with Javanese ideas about the guidance of children. What is highlighted in the Tamn Siswa ideas of the 1920s, for instance, are the moral exemplariness of the school environment and the stimulation of initiative by “encouraging the pupil from behind”. These days, however, the guiding ligh provided by overworked and underpaid teachers is not shining brightly, as school schedules are directed to Development, its required technical and mathematical skills, to the neglect of the human sciences. This situation is aggravated by the Indoneziation of the teaching of the humanities that facuses all the pupil’s attention on national history and Jakartato the exclusion of the students’ own cultural environment. His home languages in hardly subject worthy of attention and he is trained in a second language; the teaching of history by-passes the growth and achievements of civilization, while dwilling at length on fighting and political events; relegion perishes in dogma, Arabic, and legalities; morality is the glorification of and obedience to the Pancasila state; the reading of literature is not stimulated and local culture is not tought. Also, the cramming of the school schedule and competitive ways of work, still stressing rote learning more than comprehension, kill creativity, imagination, human and moral development, while producing bland Orde Baru babies who are not very curious about life, and tend to political indifference.
In spite of its Indonesia orientation, national school education does not seem to make students particularly eager to identify with it. Their world is becoming an open one, penetrated by the mass media and entertaiment industry, both stimulating an outward directedness but offering little focus. Attention diffuses and everybody begins to follow his own taste and preferences in a confusing urban setting were people had better look out for themselves if they want to survive. The cultural symbols of the young are furnished by pop stars and life-style propagition, movies and disco, Donald Duck and Garfield, rock music and soap opera.
In these youngsters’ lives, their parent tend to become less important than they were for their elder generation, especially as mother now often work outside, finding part of their satisfaction and necessary money there, and thus exercising less pressure on their children. This leave room for the young to pursue a greater degree of moral and economic independence at the same time that the relative vagueness of existence in wider society stimulates the safety and identity function of family solidarity.
In contras to kejawen ideal of social organization, modern life seem to lack a compelling ethical orientation. Its tendency to exprees relationship in terms of money result in a higher degree of individualization other people becoming indiffernt equal for whom one no longer stoops in passing. As a result, the practice of tenggang rasa (I), of being considarate of others, is suffering. While people, also the young, are mostoften still coutous of onthers, their way of acting is purposive and fast. They know what they want and do not waste time with beating around the bush and the demontration of shyness that were once caracteristic.
In the ethical vacuity of modern urban life, religion appears to flourish. By actively joining in organized, congregational religion—primarily Islam, but prothetantism and chatolicism are also thriving—people, young and old alike, may restore part of identity and the feeling of righteousness in a general social life that offers little to cling to other than the fleeting symbol of mainly western mass culture; the measure of religious enthusiasm is impressive. That Islamicization will maintain its momentum for a long time to come seems unlikely, though. School almost seems to do everything possible to deprive religion of its positive aspect, rountinizing it to the point of insipidity. But the onslaught of mass and consumer culture may also dull the senses to what is often held to the contain the deeper, more essential dimensions of existence. For the time being, religion is modish, with rapidly increasing numbers of people fulfilling the requirement of the baj, wich demonstrates, at least, the success of development, and the fact that it is fashionable to have been to Mecca.
So, when analyzing the dynamic of culture in Yogyakarta, we may note that the high—cultural component of Javanese civilization in swiftly on its way out. If that the couse of the pessimism of the informant at the end of the first chapter when he observed that the young people had lost their Javaneseness, than he may be right, but it is correct to equate Javaneseness with kejawen? Member of the younger generation still most often find themselves primarily Javenese and only then indonesian—in contrast, sometimes, to an older generation that lived through the time of nationalism and revolution. Their identity is grounded in a little tradition of Javaneseness that becoming mixed with national component and competence in indonesian. Becouse of the mass media, they develop a taste for the plastic forms of the international consumer culture that is devoid of depth. This may make religion attractive for many, becouse life In a’disenchanted’ world that is devoid of meaning is not conducive to inculcating the sense of security that is provided by a grounded cultural identity. How this identity is going to evolve in the interplay between ngoko culture, indonesianization, a weakened sense of nationalsm, foreign-styled mass culture, monetarization, and Islam, is impossible to foresee, but that it will retain a distinct Javanese flavour is safe to predict.
This is a article with topic “The Cultural Process In Yogyakarta” make up written Neil Mulher in the book Inside Indonesian” if you want add the complete, pleace saw it.
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