A Good Person
A good history lesson feels like a good film or work of literature. It enlightens the listeners as it presents characters as humans.
A good history lesson feels like a good film or work of literature. It enlightens the listeners as it presents characters as humans.
Human can mean various things and listing them all here is impossible. An example is having desires, and yet being restrained by ethics. Having ambitions, but also frustrations. Being burdened with fear, grudges and envy, but also strengthened by hope and love.
Figures in such stories may differ from the reader in terms of skin color, religion, sex or social status. They may live in a starkly different age or land. However, readers will be able to relate to them.
Human beings are full of contradictions within themselves, as are communities as a whole. The good traits are intimate with the bad ones. Sometimes their kindness stands out because of fate, opportunities or forced by conditions. At other times, cruelty emerges. A good history lesson exposes all of this.
The world turns into black and white, populated not by humans but by angels and demons.
Not all works of history are enlightening. The worst ones read like politicians talk in various countries. In their speeches and interviews, they only speak of their own or their group’s greatness as well as their opponents’ wickedness. The world turns into black and white, populated not by humans but by angels and demons.
Not long ago, the term “a good person” became popular in Indonesia. It implies an accusation that the political opponents are “not good people”. What is weird about this is that choosing state officials became like choosing a boyfriend or girlfriend or assessing a prospective son-in-law or daughter-in-law. State official candidates’ personal morality, religiosity or piety are considered more important than professional performance or leadership capability.
Before 1965, political debates were not about being a good or bad person, but about competitions of national visions in line with party ideologies. After 1966, political debates were considered taboo. After 1998, political parties lacked visions and ideological commitments. It became easy for political elites to switch parties and coalitions.
The stark dichotomy between being a good person and a bad one is becoming deeply ingrained in our society. It has gone beyond campaigns for presidential, gubernatorial or mayoral elections. The national history also surrounds stories of good vs. evil. Similar stories are a fixed part in our daily life outside of school, ranging from religious sermons and TV debate to social media and movies.
Tales of good vs. evil are extremely dramatized in our TV soap operas. The good people are angelic. The evil ones are truly evil. Before television, stage plays were similar. However, stage plays had limited public reach compared to TV soap operas.
Maybe public life right now has turned into a soap opera. Symptoms include the dominance of a black-or-white dichotomy in public thoughts and language. Grey areas are neglected, let alone other colors.
Let us not debate what the criteria are for good and evil. Not only are these things relative and subjective, but more importantly, regardless of what the criteria are, human history has never been merely about conflicts between good and evil.
They are encouraged to do good for their loved ones.
The world is not a beautiful place if everyone is good. Various good works of history, films and literature are about conflicts of equally good characters. They have a sincere heart but they are not perfect humans. They are encouraged to do good for their loved ones. They can be wrong, reckless and making wrong moves. Consequently, conflicts erupt.
In Indonesia’s official history and public imagination, the Dutch people were pure evil during the colonial era. It is as if none of them were humans. Thus, it requires no assessment on why and how they became evil.
Why did the Dutch want and why were they capable of sailing across oceans for half the globe, under the huge risks of dying along the way, getting lost and unable to go home? Why didn’t the Moluccans, Javanese or Acehnese sail to Europe and colonize it? What social and humanist power enables one version of history and not another?
Such questions are unimaginable in a history lesson too busy telling stories of good vs. evil; let alone one that only lists names of figures and places as well as dates of events.
Since independence, the Indonesian government has been at times overwhelmed by the duties to preserve the country’s unity. It was the Dutch colonial government that established the area, with only a few Dutch people. With only limited knowledge on local nations and languages. How was this possible for them?
When the Youth Pledge was made in 1928, around 90 percent of Dutch Indies colonial government employees were colonized Indonesians. Some joined the colonial army. Others became spies on nationalist activists. This was not different from what East Timor looked like under the Indonesian government.
Were they evil? Their stories could be keys in understanding our colonial history. This is a history of mankind, not of angels fighting demons. Unfortunately, there are hardly any stories about them in our history books. This is similar in film and literature.
From 1965 to 1966, almost a million Indonesians were murdered by fellow Indonesians. Were the killers evil? Or were they good people murdering evil ones? Our national history has never prepared our children to understand history of the era as a history of mankind.
Discussions or studies straying away from the official version were silenced with violence.
History is too busy judging our fellow nationals as good or evil. Three consecutive generations were trained to cultivate poisonous superstitions. Discussions or studies straying away from the official version were silenced with violence.
The 1965-1966 incident was inseparable from the bloody conflict of 1948 in Madiun and Surakarta. The killers and the killed ones were equally humans. They were fellow Indonesians. However, there has been no public enlightenment as to how and why the murders could happen. What pushed them? Was it preventable?
If people are too busy glorifying good people and condemning evil ones, history lessons will turn into brainwashing political propaganda. Evil is all those who are different from the ruling regime.
As regimes change, good and evil become interchangeable. However, if the binary perspective of good vs. evil is maintained, human-focused history teaching will remain a threat. They will be seen as a work of evil that must be eradicated.
TV soap operas are created to reap huge profits for those who make them. However, as public life turns into a soap opera in this republic, what is it for? Who benefits? Who will be the victims? When will this end?
Ariel Heryanto, professor emeritus of Monash University Australia