The Lotus' Chat : Value (2)

"In a joged contest event, a comedian was invited and asked the audience, 'What is perfectly adorable, as good as new, and has seven tiny dents in it ...?'

Shook their heads but smiling, the audience wanted to know what it was.

'Snow White's hymen,' replied the comedian."

"We are not dwarfs!" the Lotus exlaimed. "So, we can see Value from various perspectives, from Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience, Sociology, even Economics. And from an economics point of view, we can start by asking questions—as policy makers start—for example, 'Is there a 'culvert' between 'financing' the new capital and 'funding' the banners?'

Economics is a wonderful discipline say Dino Levy and Paul Glimcher. It is based on clear and precise definitions, axioms, and mathematical formulas. In many cases, economic theory has been successfully used to inform policy, predict human behavior and structure the financial system. In the last 300 years, there has been a tremendous advancement in economic theory; from the revolutionary ideas of Daniel Bernoulli, David Ricardo, and Adam Smith through the theories of Vilfredo Pareto, Paul Samuelson, John von Neumann, and Oskar Morgenstern, to the more recent approaches of Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, and Amos Tversky, and many others. However, one of the most fundamental notions in economics is that the basic aim of economic theory is to make predictions. Economists acquire observable behavioral data and through well-defined theories create predictions. What they care about is how well they can predict. As a discipline they are not interested in understanding the underlying mechanisms of why the predictions were at a certain level in a given situation. Although they acknowledge that human behavior is a result of neural activity, they remain agnostic to the actual mechanism within the nervous system responsible for those behaviors. Similar to the behaviorism community in psychology in the 1940s, economists in general are not interested in the 'black box.'

On the other hand, if we are neuroeconomists, will very much interested in the 'black box' and we want to understand what is the underlying neural mechanism for the instantiation of value and choice. We strongly believe that taking this approach offers certain advantages. First and foremost, having more data than less is always beneficial in trying to understand any given mechanism. Second, understanding the neural mechanisms of value and choice will set physiological boundaries on any economic theory. A theory that does not take into consideration these boundaries will be a priori false, at least at some level of analysis. Moreover, adding these boundaries into the current economic theories will, we believe, make the theories more accurate in their predictions. Third, if the instantiation of all behavior rests in neural activity, then understanding the underlying mechanisms of choice will help us build novel theories that are based not upon arbitrary axioms but natural axioms that are the result of the general and basic physiological principles governing neural activity and hence behavior.

In this perspective, in many cases, the choices we make influence other people's well-being and other people's choices will influence our well-being. There are several other human behaviors that also require the ability to prefer others’ benefits and increased utility at the expense of one’s own benefit. These kinds of behaviors are collectively known either as altruistic behaviors or other-regarding preferences, and in many cases there are driven by moral beliefs. When people engage in these sort of decision problems they must evaluate and compare the costs of giving something away, which could be a material reward, time, or even physical work, to the value they derive from the abstract notion of doing something good or preventing something bad from happening to other people or, in some cases, the value derived is in the form of an abstract goal, principle, or belief.

Paul Samuelson and his colleagues proved almost a century ago that any decision-maker who is internally consistent in their choices behaves, during the period in which they are consistent, exactly 'as if' they were employing a single fixed common scale for the representation of value. That is, if a chooser is rational, there is at least one utility function (the function that states how the objective value is transformed to internal subjective value representation that guides the choices of that particular individual) that can describe her choices. Second, if a decision maker demonstrates nonconsistent preferences, i.e., behaves in a non-rational way, one could exploit this by taking away money from the non-rational chooser, even when the chooser carefully and precisely makes decisions with full information.

So, returning to the 'culvert' question, it might me that there will be responses that says, 'There is no connection!' or 'That's impossible!' or 'That's slander!' or maybe there will be he who shed tears like Evita Peron delivering 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' using Madonna's stunning version, or the enchanting version of the late Sinead O'Connor, singing, 'And as for fortune, and as for fame, I never invited them in, though it seemed to the world they were all I wanted.'

And forgive me if I respond by quoting a colleague who said, 'You've got a swollen head syndrome!'

Natural law theory says that humans can only live well if they recognise the goods that are natural for humans and understand how those goods generate the obligations and the permissions that together characterise the system of practical guidance that we call morality, say David S. Oderberg and Timothy Chappell. Let’s say you think you’re funny, Sally Hogshead gives an example. As far as you’re concerned, a sense of humor is one of your best traits. There’s just one problem: Nobody else thinks you’re funny.

This is indeed a problem. Humor is a two-sided exchange. It’s a feedback loop between you as the joke teller, and your audience. Humor doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not enough to only consider how you see yourself. You must also consider how the world sees you. If nobody else thinks you’re funny . . . ​well, you’re probably not funny.

Humor is in the eye of the beholder. So are likability, leadership, and a range of other subjective qualities that are rooted in the perception of others. You get a vote, but your listener has veto power.

For example, you might see yourself as lovable, but if the world sees you as a coldhearted curmudgeon, there’s a disconnect. You might think that you’re respected or independent or practical, but if nobody agrees, you’re out of luck. You might see yourself as good with kids, but if small children cry and run to the other side of the street at the very sight of you, there’s a disconnect (as well as a serious impediment to any career aspirations you might have of becoming a birthday party clown).

By looking at yourself from the outside in, and systematically measuring the effect you have on your listener, you can improve results. Whether you’re a comedian or a kindergarten teacher or a crisis negotiator, you can become more successful by understanding how the world sees you and hears you and responds to you.

Many basic goods theories hold the following two claims, says Christopher Tollefsen. First, the foundation of human action is in the practical grasp that all genuine agents have of the basic human goods, that is, in their grasp of basic opportunities for human flourishing. Different goods theories give somewhat different accounts of what these basic goods are, but the lists generally include human life and health, knowledge, excellence at work and play, friendship, integrity and practical reasonableness. The claim is thus that in some sense or other all agents have an awareness of these goods as to be pursued; such knowledge is not merely for the few, but is part and parcel of ordinary human agency.

The second claim is related to the first. The basic goods are deemed desirable by agents because they offer the promise of human well-being; agents have a practical understanding that they would be better off for participating in the basic goods. And all of these because, 'we are no dwarfs!' And Allah knows best."

There was a sign that the dawn had approached, the night would turn into a new day, the Lotus then sang,

Gimme, gimme, gimme a man, after midnight

Won't somebody help me chase the shadows away?

Gimme, gimme, gimme a man, after midnight

Take me through the darkness to the break of the day *)

Citations & References:

- David S. Oderberg & Timothy Chappell (Ed.), Human Values: New Essays on Ethics and Natural Law, 2004, Palgrave

- Sally Hogshead, How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination, 2014, HarperCollins Publishers

- Tobias Brosch and David Sander (Ed.), Handbook of Value: Perspectives from Economics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology, 2016, Oxford University Press

*) "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnignight)" written by Benny Andersson & Bjoern K Ulvaeus

[Part 1]

Bahasa

The Lotus' Chat : Value (1)

"In a country, which was under a funny regime, in a laboratory funded by the regime, a scientist transformed a white tiger into a white horse. Seeing this, the overseer frowned. Knowing this situation would bring some troubles, the scientist tried to calm him, 'Don't worry, it's in a stable condition!'"

"And again, I'm still here," said the Lotus. "Tick tick tick, says jeng Titiek, the rain is ticking; hopefully I can pick, then tick it. And do you know what I'm ticking? The Djanger, yep, the Djanger dance. Actually many interesting things you can find in Bali, but the Djanger made me more interested rather than mystic Leyaks myth—yes indeed, they do exist, as in another Indonesian islands, but I have not enough literature to prove it, besides, they are not the intention of my discussion. 

Well, according to I Wayan Dibia and Rucina Ballinger, 'Djanger' means 'being off-center.' It refers to the chaotic periods when this dance was at its peak. The dance dates to the late 1920s by I Gde Dharna in North Bali, but reached a peak in the 1940s and 1950s during the revolution against the Dutch, and before the attempted coup in 1965, as a tool for messages from various political parties. Yes, Djanger has experienced a dark side, because of its popularity, during the dictatorship of the 1960s, Janger began to be staged in the activities of various political parties, including the Communists, often involved a lot of propaganda and art. After this period, Djanger was declining, then recovered after entering the next Dictatorship period, around the 1970s. So, will there be another period of Dictatorship in Indonesia? If someone has ambition and no one has the heart to stop him, who knows!

History is the story of events, with praise or blame. 'History is the story of events, with praise or blame. 'In history lies all the secrets of statecraft,' says Confusius. Benjamin Frankling says, '... three can keep a secret if two of them are dead ....' You and you alone are the best person to keep your own secrets. Clifford Geertz writes about interesting history about Bali in 19th century. He mentions, 'The writing of this latter sort of 'history depends most critically upon the possitbility of consttructing an appropriate model of socio-cultural process, one both conceptually precise and empirically based, which can then be used to interpret the inevitably scatttered and ambiguous fragments from the archaeological past. There are a number of ways of doing this. One can draw upon what is known about comparable, but more thoroughly studied, developmen'tal sequences elsewhere-in the case at hand, those of pre-Columbian America or the ancient Near East, for example. Or one can formulate, on the basis of a far-ranging historical sociology, ideal-typical paradigms that isolate the central features of the relevant class of phenomena—the approach made famous, of course, by Max Weber. Or one can describe and analyze in some detail the structure and functioning of a current (or recent) system that one has some reason to believe bears at least a familial resemblance to those one seeks to reconstruct, illuminating the more remote by the light of the less.'

Why ten or twelve pairs? Dibia and Ballinger do not state the reason. But numbers don't lie, right? Maybe yes or maybe not, the important thing is, what do behind the numbers tell? The truth, or falsity?

For as long as humans have walked the earth, they have needed to show numbers, says Gabriel Esmay. Farmers count crops and animals. People track time. Merchants track goods. Builders measure structures. So, people of the past created number systems.

Back to the Djanger dance, djanger refers to the female dancers. Dibia and Ballinger suggest that before the early 1980s, one would be hard pressed to find a female musician or dalang. The role of women in Bali is traditionally one of housekeeper and mother and they have little leisure time to pursue other interests. The 1980s brought much change in the artistic world, with collaborations and meetings between performing artists from all over the world. Women were seen as a viable creative force and female gamelan musicians and puppeteers are becoming more common as their new artistic roles are given more credibility.

Gender roles in Bali are closely defined and delineated. The patriarchal culture ensures that women conform to expectations. Aside from regular household duties, women spend a great amount of time making temple offerings and in ritual activities. They do not have a lot of leisure time, and this is a problem in sustaining women's gamelan groups.

The boys, called Kecak, chattering words such as kecak, byang and byuk and tease the women. The boy's gestures are distinct to Janger: arms move rhythmically in front and fingers flutter; elbows rest on knees, heads on hands; fists smack palms; shoulders shrug. The girls, by contrast, sway their bodies back and forth, twirl their fans and shift their heads from side to side while singing. Sometimes a play is inserted using stories such as Arjuna Wiwaha, Gatutkaca Seraya, Sunda Upasunda and Legodbawa.

At first, Janger and Kecak dancers wore everyday clothing. Shorts, shirts with epaulettes, shoes and socks for the boys could be seen in the 1930s in a similar form called Stamboel. The girls would wear kebaya or long-sleeved blouses. Over time, then both began wearing temple clothes. The distinctive girl's headdress (petitis) is a modification of the wedding crown. Today, most Janger-Kecak dancers wear a gilded cape (saput), headcloth (destar), large neckpiece (badong) and kain (long cloth) made out of traditional Balinese woven cloth. The Janger girls wear gilded cloth from chest to ankles, beaded velvet neckpieces and leather armbands.

Djanger is more of a choral than a dance form. 10 to 12 pairs of boys and girls face each other on the stage area, the boys seated cross-legged, the girls sitting on their heels. The girls' songs originate from those used to bring Sanghyang dancers into trance, although the words have been greatly altered. The songs are often about love, although there also have been songs about patriotism, sports and about building peace in Indonesia during the turbulent post-Soeharto era. Often girls tease the boys, asking them 'where their handsome boys have been lately?'

Why 10 or 12 pairs? Dibia and Ballinger do not state the reason. But numbers don't lie, right? The important thing is what do the numbers tell? The truth, or falsity?

For as long as humans have walked the earth, they have needed to show numbers, says Gabriel Esmay. Farmers count crops and animals. People track time. Merchants track goods. Builders measure structures. So, people of the past created number systems.

The Great Pyramid has stood in Egypt for over four thousand years. It is the only wonder of the ancient world that is still standing. Of course, no modern tools were used. But the builders were not alone. They had math and number systems to help. Egyptian symbols were glyphs, or pictures, that were carved into stone. Just like today, 10 was a key number. Glyphs were carved many times to show larger numbers. To show the number 50, the glyph for 10 was carved five times.

Later, Egyptians started writing on papyrus, an early paper made out of plants. The system did not use place value. So, symbols could be written in any order. But still, Egyptians used the symbols to do math. They could add and subtract. They could even multiply and divide. However, there is one thing that was not found on it—a zero! Egyptians had no symbol for zero.

Roman numerals are sometimes still used today. Still, there is no symbol for zero. And there is no easy way to write large numbers. So, other systems have been more widely used.

Babylon’s number system used only two symbols. But, many numbers could still be formed. As in Egypt, symbols were carved to write numbers, and there was still no symbol for zero. Yet, there was one big difference between the systems. The order of the symbols in Babylon’s system mattered a lot. It was the first time, place value had been used.

The modern number system is made possible by nothing. Well, it is made possible by the concept and symbol for nothing—zero. It uses place value. And zero can be used to show a place with no value. This system was formed in India around AD 650. But, it was the Arabs who first brought it to Europe. The Hindu‑Arabic system changed all of this. It is based on groups of 10. The digits range from 0 to 9, like the digits used now. By using digits and groups of 10, all numbers, small and large, can be written more quickly. Soon, people saw how helpful this system could be. Ancient groups of people needed to express numbers. So, they made symbols that worked for them. We owe much to the people of the past. Place value, symbols, and zero paved the way for how we use numbers today. And number systems are still changing.

Computers use a number system that is based on groups of 2, not 10. The binary system has just two digits: 0 and 1. Computers use it to store data and solve problems. So, no matter what a user types, computers change it all to 0s and 1s. Number systems have changed before. Will they change again? Many people now believe that we should use groups of 12, not 10. But one thing is clear. However, numbers are written or shown, we will always need them. By the way, where was number 3?

In mathematics, we find Value, in computer science, we find Value, in Semiotics, there is also Value, likewise in the fields of Economics, Marketing, Investing etc., with their respective meanings.

A philosopher loves a distinction as much as any other theorist, says Christine Tappolet and Mauro Rossi. When asked what value is, philosophers are likely to point out that this question splits into several distinct ones depending on what is considered. In common parlance, talk of values is often about what is deemed good, such as when we say that knowledge or justice are values, which ought to be promoted. Talk about values is also often talk about ideals that guide one’s actions, such as when we maintain that democracy and autonomy are Western values, or when we speak of reliability and integrity as someone’s personal values. Ideals, things that are considered to be good and, more generally, substantive claims about values, are important topics in philosophy and ethics, but they are far from the only ones. The prime focus in the philosophy of values is on more abstract questions. Philosophers commonly distinguish between evaluative concepts, evaluative judgments, evaluative sentences, and evaluative facts.

We'll carry on to discuss such topic of 'Value' in the next part of this session, bi 'idhnillah."

Sepucuk surat yang wangi

[A fragrant letter]

Warnanya pun merah hati

[The color was pink as well]

Bagai bingkisan pertama

[Like a first gift]

Tak sabar kubuka

[I couldn't wait to open it]

Satu, dua, dan tiga

[One, two, and three]

Kumulai membaca *)

[I started to read]

Citations & References:

- I Wayan Dibia and Rucina Ballinger, Balinese Dance, Drama & Music, 2004, Tuttle Publishing

- John Coast, Dancing Out of Bali, 2004, Periplus

- Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali, 1980, Princeton University Press

- Geoffrey Robinson, The Darkside of Paradise: Political Violance in Bali, 1998, Cornell University Press

- Gabriel Esmay, The History of Number Systems: Place Value, 2017, Teacher Created Materials

- Tobias Brosch and David Sander (Ed.), Handbook of Value: Perspectives from Economics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology, 2016, Oxford University Press

*) "Surat Cinta" written by Ida Laila

[Part 2]

Bahasa

The Lotus' Chat : Silence

"A lecturer called one of his new students and asked, 'Why is your paper completely blank?'

With a straight face, the student responded, 'Sometimes, Silence is the best answer!'"

"And getting here, getting hither, here I am again," Lotus carried on, "still, sitting cross-legged on the pond, waiting for the Moon, who hasn't arrived. I can see clearly from here, out there, some men, who were bare-chested, wearing black pants, covered in black and white checkered cloth up to their knees, had just finished performing the amazing wild Kecak, 'Monkey dance', a chattering male chorus 'cak cak cak'. From here I can see, the White Monkey is crossing the embers.

The modern form of kecak, now seen by virtually every tourist. A smaller version of the hissing, chattering male chorus had previously been part of a ritual purification dance form known as sanghyang. In 1931, Walter Spies was serving as technical advisor for Island of the Demons, a German-made film about a village threatened with destruction by Rangda, the witch. Together with Wayan Limbak, an artist, they had the idea of expanding the kecak chorus and combining it with a plot drawn from the Ramayana, creating what is now the standard version. The result was a purely secular dance quite different from anything in the previous Balinese repertory. As I have seen, kecak was also being incorporated into janger dancing.

When the performance was over, and even though Noise could not disappear completely, or although several surveyors may conceal the truth, Silence is still wanting to share. Always ringing in my mind, the words of the Divine, 'Do your standing and prostating, in the last-third part of the night, because I will come.'

When Silence arrived, she became an antidote to worries. Worry, of course, has long been critical to our survival, says R. Reid Wilson. Our cavemen ancestors who took leisurely strolls down by the stream, enjoying the pleasures of a beautiful fall morning, were eaten by the saber-toothed tigers—not dinosaurs, 'cause they were mainly vegetarians. Their genes were lost. Our paranoid, 'there could be danger around any corner', 'defender of the family tribe' ancestors lived to procreate, passing on to us that ever-present protective mode of worry.

Wilson then suggests that some degree of worry is actually good for us, for it can help jump-start us out of our denial, and it can drive us to prioritize our tasks. Most important, worry is designed to be an initial response, as Step One in the problem-solving process. It should initiate our efforts to find solutions by triggering our analytic process: evaluating the current situation, generating response options, choosing among them, selecting one, and then implementing it. When this progression works well, we get to conclude our analysis with a message like, 'I’m worried about finishing this project, and now I’m going to take action. This is how I’m going to get it done—here’s my plan.' See, that’s the usefulness of worry.

What happens if we don’t place our worries within the problem-solving process? When we start paying a high emotional cost for unnecessary worry, and when our worries pop up in our minds too frequently, then those thoughts hurt us. Worry leads to anxiety. The more we worry, the more anxious we will become, whether it’s about family, financial issues, work or school, or illness. If we don’t address this type of worry and find ways to control it, we will continue to be anxious.

And worry will absolutely inhibit our performance. During any project, we should focus our attention on the task. But when our attention keeps getting redirected toward unhelpful worry, we become selfabsorbed. 'How will I do? What if I fail? That will be too painful for me. Must avoid failure!' These are compelling thoughts, and anyone would have trouble disengaging from them.

The world is getting louder, because emergency vehicles have to be loud enough to break through the surrounding din, the volume of their sirens is a good proxy for the loudness of the overall environment. We know; it’s cliché to muse about the loudness of life. We imagine that people have always expressed the same exasperation.

Emily Thompson looked to early Buddhist texts that describe how noisy life could be in a big city in South Asia circa 500 BCE. She describes 'elephants, horses, chariots, drums, tabors, lutes, song, cymbals, gongs, and people crying ‘Eat ye, and drink!' In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the deities grew so tired of the noise of humanity that they sent a great flood to wipe us all out. Just over a century ago, J. H. Girdner cataloged 'The Plague of City Noises,' including horse-drawn vehicles, peddlers, musicians, animals, and bells. If there’s such a thing as a perennial grumble, noisiness might be it.

And yet something right now is different from at any time in known history. These days, it’s not just loud. There’s an unprecedented mass proliferation of mental stimulation.

All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating. Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies, says Tam Hunt. Ultimately, all matter is just vibrations of various underlying fields.

Everything in life is vibration.” So goes the pithy and poignant, though possibly apocryphal, Albert Einstein quotation. Whether or not the master said it, the frontiers of modern physical sciences are showing the statement to be true. Which raises a question: If this is the nature of reality, can anything be perfectly still? Is there even such a thing as silence?

Our conception of silence isn’t the total absence of sound. It isn’t the total absence of thought. It’s the space between and beyond the auditory, informational, and internal stimuli that interfere with our clear perception and intention. Quiet is whatever someone thinks quiet is. There is such a thing as silence. It’s brimming with life and possibility. It naturally inhabits a universe where everything is pulsating, oscillating, and buzzing.

Noises cause stress, especially if we have little or no control over them, explains Mathias Basner. The body will excrete stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that lead to changes in the composition of our blood—and of our blood vessels, which actually have been shown to be stiffer after a single night of noise exposure.

'Learn to be silent,' Pythagoras advised his students. 'Let your quiet mind listen and absorb the silence.' Some say Pythagoras was the first person to fulfill the formal vocation of philosophe, 'a lover of wisdom.' Pythagoras meant something specific by the term 'wisdom' : 'understanding of the source or cause of all things.' As he saw it, attaining wisdom required 'raising the intellect to a point where it intuitively cognized the invisible manifesting outwardly through the visible,' reaching the point where it could become 'capable of bringing itself en rapport with the spirit of things rather than with their forms.' Pythagoras pioneered understanding of numerical proportions and the five regular solids in geometry, still foundational concepts in modern-day math. He invented a system of musical tuning wherein the frequency proportions between notes are based on a three-to-two ratio—a system that many scholars consider uniquely harmonized with proportions in nature. Pythagoras was the first person to divide the globe into the five climatic zones that are still used in meteorology today. He correctly identified the morning star and the evening star as the same planet, Venus. He is widely believed to be the first person in recorded history to teach that Earth is spherical rather than flat.

Why did Pythagoras see silence as the key to wisdom? Why did he require his inner circle of students to spend five years not talking before beginning their formal studies? There’s no known record of his exact thinking on the topic or the specific rationale behind the requirement for members of the inner circle of the school. But let’s see if we can home in on his reasoning. In meditation retreats, extended times in nature, and other periods of contemplative practice in silence, we’ve gotten some clues. Silence, of course, forces us to face ourselves. Without distraction, we have to learn how to deal with our own internal noise. This enables us to tune in to what’s really happening both within ourselves and outside ourselves. In the absence of judgment and conjecture and performance, the mind turns magnetically, like a compass, toward the truth.

But we don’t want to imply this is an easy process. In profound silence, we first burn through heaps of habitual patterns and thought forms and fantasies and ambitions and lusts and delusions. In silence, we’ve both felt an intense desire to run away, to do anything to fill the space.

To get comfortable with deep silence is to sit in a room alone with all of these discomforts and pull energy away from those parts of the brain—like the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex—that specialize in protecting and decorating the distinct sense of 'me.'

You must have heard the maxim 'Speech is silvern, Silence is golden,' or 'Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity'. While the talk of silver and gold, of time and eternity, might sound like a comparison—as if one were more valuable than the other—that’s not necessarily how we understand it. Just as silver is a precious metal, time is a holy mystery. Yet time is a mystery that we human beings measure and manage, in practical ways, in the course of our day-to-day lives. Speech, like time, is immanent. And silence, like eternity, is transcendent.

Today, amidst the mass proliferation of mental stimulation, it’s clear that we’re facing a deficit of silence. Throughout the world, spiritual and philosophical traditions emphasize the balance of speech and silence as a state of flow between the worlds. While religious traditions often hold that written scriptures—like the Bible, Quran, and Buddhist sutras—are sacred, the vast majority also recognize the sacredness of the space where words and concepts dissolve into unknowing.

Many of the great religious and philosophical traditions don’t just look to silence as a path to wisdom. In the deepest contemplative practices across traditions, we find a recognition of silence as the essence of wisdom itself. Rumi called silence 'the voice of God' and all else 'poor translation.' Black Elk, a great visionary medicine man of the Oglala Lakhota people, asked, 'For is not silence the very voice of the Great Spirit?' The Tao Te Ching says that 'the name you can say isn’t the real name,' and analysis of the Kabbalah speaks of the 'silent, fertile void' as the 'Source' and 'the divine womb of all being.'

Silence is often described as the absence of sound, yet it’s also a very powerful sound. We spend a lot of time looking for happiness when the world right around us is full of wonder. To be alive and walk on the Earth is a miracle, and yet most of us are running as if there were some better place to get to. There is beauty calling to us every day, every hour, but we are rarely in a position to listen.

Even if we try to be in the present moment, many of us are distracted and feel empty, as if we had a vacuum inside. We may long for something, expect something, wait for something to arrive to make our lives a little bit more exciting. We anticipate something that will change the situation, because we see the situation in the present moment as boring—nothing special, nothing interesting.

The basic condition for us to be able to hear the call of beauty and respond to it is silence. If we don’t have silence in ourselves—if our mind, our body, are full of noise—then we can’t hear beauty’s call.

And finally, as you can hear the call, you can find the Value.

We'll talk about the Vakue on the next session. Bi 'idhnillah."

Wulandari hadn't appeared yet, so before moving on to the next session, the Lotus sang,

As I watched your vision forming

Carried away by the moonlight shadow

Stars move slowly in a silvery night

Far away on the other side *)

Citations & References:

- Robert Pringle, A Short History of Bali: Indonesia's Hindu Realm, 2004, Allen & Unwin

- Reid Wilson Ph. D., Stopping the Noise in Your Head: The New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry, 2016, Biblica

- Justin Zorn & Leigh Marz, Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise, 2022, Harper Wave

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise, 2015, HarperOne

*) "The Moonlight Shadow" written by Michael Gordon Oldfield

Bahasa

The Lotus' Chat : Noise

"After a family meal one night, three generations are sitting around chatting. Four-year-old granddaughter is sitting on her grandfather's knee. She asks sweetly, 'Grandpa, can you make a noise like a frog?'

Granddad replied, 'What?'

The granddaughter again asked, 'Can you make a noise like a frog?'

Granddad said, 'Why do you want me to make a noise like a frog?'

The granddaughter replied, 'Well, last night Daddy said that when you croak we can all go to Disneyland,'" the Lotus started the talk, after saying Basmalah and Salaam.

"Well, here I am," said Lotus, "sitting on the pond waiting for Wulandari, the Moon. Currently it is 'Sanja', the Balinese say, the half-dark time after the sunset. I can see clearly from here, there, Pura Tanah Lot, home to the ancient Hindu, the Sanja is starting to change. But where is Wulandari, she hasn't been seen yet? Has something happened to her?

Anything can happen. 'Lightning could strike!' said Brad Pitt when he met that fascinating doctor. 'Everything that can happen, does happen, said Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw when talking about 'the Quantum Universe'. 'Many problems are far too difficult to solve in a single mental leap, and deep understanding rarely emerges in 'eureka' moments,' they say again.

Cox and Forshaw suggest—when reviewing why E=mc2—that distances in spacetime are invariant, which means that there is consensus throughout the universe as to the lengths of paths through spacetime. Physicists are very demanding of their fundamental equations, for they insist that everyone in the universe should agree upon them. As good scientists, however, we must always acknowledge that nature has no qualms about shocking us, and reality is what it is. Anything that exists presumably exists in spacetime, and so when we come to write down an equation—for example, one that describes how an object interacts with its environment—then we should find a way to express this mathematically using invariant quantities. Only then will everyone in the universe agree.

Cox and Forshaw further say, 'A good example might be to consider the length of a piece of string. We can see that although the piece of string is a meaningful object, we should avoid writing down an equation that deals only with its length in space. Rather, we should be more ambitious and talk about its length in spacetime, for that is the spacetime way. Of course, for earthbound physicists it might be convenient to use equations that express relationships between lengths in space and other such things—certainly engineers find that way of going about things very useful. The correct way to view an equation that uses only lengths in space or the time measured by a clock is that it is a valid approximation if we are dealing with objects that move very slowly relative to the cosmic speed limit, which is usually (but not always) true for everyday engineering problems. An example we have already met where this is not true is a particle accelerator, where subatomic particles whiz around in circles at very close to the speed of light, and live longer as a result. If the effects of Einstein’s theory are not taken into account, particle accelerators simply stop working properly. Fundamental physics is all about the quest for fundamental equations, and that means working only with mathematical representations of objects that have a universal meaning in spacetime. The old view of space and time as distinct leads to a way of viewing the world that is something akin to trying to watch a stage play by looking only at the shadows cast by the spotlights onto the stage. The real business involves three-dimensional actors moving around and the shadows capture a two-dimensional projection of the play. With the arrival of the concept of spacetime, we are finally able to lift our eyes from the shadows. All of this talk of objects in spacetime may sound rather abstract but there is a point to it. '

And now, Sanja has left, the Night comes to accompany me. And passing through the spacetime with the Night, I don't need to use Cox and Forshaw's explanations, because in the end, all the conclusions come down to 'Sunnatullah', even though they explain it in 'scientific explanation'.

I don't really know about the spacetime, but all I know that seeing the Night, is like squinting at a painting: why, when, how, what and for what. Going through the Night, I'll find three things: Noise, Silence and Value. That's why, the Night fixes up what happened during the Day. Then the next day, there will be something new, something changed.

Walking with the Night, fist thigs first, fear will arise. The fears are varied. Some are afraid of losing, some are afraid of reality, some are afraid of ghosts, and many more. All of this, will produce 'Noise'. Noise is usually unwanted, perhaps, a rejection. We may be spending 99.9 percent of our time worrying about these daily concerns—material comforts and affective concerns—and that is understandable, because we need to have our basic needs met to feel safe. But many of us worry far, far beyond having our needs met. We are physically safe, our hunger is satisfied, we have a roof over our heads, and we have a loving family; and still we can worry constantly.

It is said that Noise is another word for sound. And Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, says that 'Everything begins with the sound.' Further he says that Avalokiteshvara has the capacity to listen to all kinds of sounds. He can also utter five different kinds of sounds that can heal the world.

The first is the Wonderful Sound, the sound of the wonders of life that are calling you. This is the sound of the birds, of the rain, and so on.

The second sound is the Sound of the One Who Observes the World. This is the sound of listening, the sound of silence.

The third sound is the transcendental sound, which has a long history in Indian spiritual thought. The tradition is that the sound om has the innate power to create the world. The story goes that the cosmos, the world, the universe was created by that sound. The Christian Gospel of John has the same idea, 'In the beginning there was the word' (John 1:1). According to the Vedas, the oldest Hindu texts, that world-creating word, a mystic syllable, sacred mantra 'om.' In Indian Vedic tradition, this sound is the ultimate reality, or God. In an Islamic perspective, when Allah created Al-Qalam (the pen), He, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, said, 'Write everything that will happen!'

Many modern astronomers have come to believe something similar. They have been looking for the beginning of time, the beginning of the cosmos, and they hypothesize that the very beginning of the universe was 'the big bang.'

The fourth sound is the Sound of the Rising Tide. This is a symbolic sound. The sound that can clear away misunderstanding, remove affliction, and transform everything. It’s penetrating and effective.

The fifth sound is the Sound That Transcends All Sounds of the World. This is the sound of impermanence, a reminder not to get caught up in or too attached to particular words or sounds.

If you can find silence within yourself, you can hear these five sounds.

Well, that's Thich Nhat Hanh's perspective. Another perspective suggests by Cecile Malaspina. She writes that it has become commonplace to use the word noise, almost with inverted comas, in a host of contexts unrelated to sound, often in opposition to information. It is thus not the din of the trading floor that interests us when we talk about noise in finance, but the uncertainty related to random variations in the stock exchange. Noise has become a concept intrinsic to the statistical analysis of the variability of data in almost every domain of empirical enquiry. Even acoustics can be argued to have fully emerged only during the 1950s, when noise could be represented as graphs of the frequencies and amplitudes of transitory signal changes over time. That these two dimensions of the conceptualizations of noise, as sound and as random variation, speak to each other without being reducible to one another.

Noise always, says Malaspina, appears to occupy the negative place of a dichotomy, be it in that of order and disorder, of physical work and the dispersion of energy in the state of entropy, or of the norm and the abnormal. In other words, noise is at best associated with the absence of order, of work or of the norm—be it the statistical, moral or aesthetic norm—and at worst, noise is identified as a threat to the norm and subversive of work and order: a perturbation, a loss of energy available for work, a parasite. Noise is thus a word that implicitly plays on the whole register of notion, idea and concept and does so by mobilizing linguistic, historical, sociopolitical and not least of all epistemological registers.

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein suggest that noise is a flaw in our 'judgment'. Some judgments are biased; they are systematically off target. Other judgments are noisy, as people who are expected to agree end up at very different points around the target. Many organizations, unfortunately, are afflicted by both bias and noise. A general property of noise is that you can recognize and measure it while knowing nothing about the target or bias. When physicians offer different diagnoses for the same patient, we can study their disagreement without knowing what ails the patient. When film executives estimate the market for a movie, we can study the variability of their answers without knowing how much the film eventually made or even if it was produced at all. Bias is the star of the show. Noise is a bit player, usually offstage. We don’t need to know who is right to measure how much the judgments of the same case vary. All we have to do to measure noise is look at the back of the target. In real-world decisions, the amount of noise is often scandalously high.

So, what is the right level of noise? The right level is not zero. In some areas, it just isn’t feasible to eliminate noise. In other areas, it is too expensive to do so. In still other areas, efforts to reduce noise would compromise important competing values.

Then, exploring the Night, I'll get into the 'Nightlife'. Various activities exist here. But, why should we care about the night, least of all nightlife? Jordi Nofre and Adam Eldridge suggest that fears about the loss of the night sky due to excessive illumination, the loss of nightlife venues or the muddying of the boundaries that separate night and day, have become common subjects of debate and tell us as a good deal about what it is we think the night should be and for whom: a time of play, rest, work or darkness are all equally competing discourses about cities after dark. At the very least, there is little evidence that nightlife even exists beyond a few central streets in most cities, and his own research has found surprisingly little evidence for a clear expansion in night-time employment.

There is little evidence that nightlife even exists beyond a few central streets in most cities, and there is little evidence for a clear expansion in night-time employment. We have perhaps been guilty of assuming that town and city centres in so-called developed Western economies are uniformly open and buzzing twenty-four hours a day and that simply because we can drink, dance or shop at all hours we do so.

As we advance into the night, the options on offer decrease, and the city shrinks and seems to condense itself into a few clusters of streets where we find concentrations of illumination and animation’. Cities often characterised as 24/7 would be more accurately referred to as 24/2. In many cities, it is perhaps true that the night is a time when most people sleep or conduct domestic tasks. The nigh t is expensive, and any sense of social and generational diversity is illusory’.

The urban night remains articulated with fear and risk, but it has equally become articulated with modernity, progress, cosmopolitanism and urbanity. London has had a night-bus service for just over a century, but when the city’s Underground tube network opened throughout the night on weekends in 2016, there was a sense of pride, a feeling that London had finally joined other important modern cities like Tokyo or New York. The ability to shop, visit the gym, attend a night class or have a haircut seems to have become contemporary markers of progress and modernity.

Not only in London, Nihad H. Čengić and Jordi Martín-Díaz presents that the evening and night-time economy in post-socialist Sarajevo has expanded and developed since the end of the Bosnian War (1992–1995). This is due to a combined effect of socialist economic practice and liberalisation policies promoted by international actors who have intervened in the peace-building mission. The Bosnian capital hosted the majority of international organisations operating in the country throughout and after the war, and the presence of numerous international soldiers, diplomats, policymakers and other foreign actors has favoured the expansion and commoditisation of nightlife.

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed a flourishing of night-time leisure in Sarajevo. While in many western European capitalist cities there was a rapid and intense process of expansion and commoditisation of youth leisure during the Swinging Sixties, socialist cities showed profound differences in the conception, meaning and semiotics of ‘leisure time’.

The night is important for reasons beyond whatever market benefits it might entail; there are spaces, places and networks that operate at night to which we feel a sense of belonging, places that are crucial to the formation of our identities, to emerging political movements, to socialising and leisure. Whether referring to the venues associated with minority ethnic communities, or our own local pub, nightlife serves as a context for a range of social, political and cultural movements. When venues or even entire areas are threatened, it feels as if a part of our own biography is being erased. Without wanting to paint an overly romantic picture of the night, maybe there was a time when it did not feel so commodified and so reducible to market-led discourses and rationales.

Over the past two decades, much of the research into alcohol consumption has been written in the context of the expanding night-time economy, which itself tends to focus on urban inner-city areas, Samantha Wilson writes. While research has been undertaken into rural drinking geographies, holiday destinations and drinking at home, very little has been said about public drinking practices in suburbia, especially among young people. Specific sensory atmospheres constituted by smell, light and darkness, sound and temperature are very important to young people’s suburban drinking choices. Young people are not passive to such atmospheres; they are active agents with the capacity to craft their own drinkscapes, drinking practices and drinking experiences.

Recreational settings such as nightclubs have become, since the 1990s, privileged sites for drug use and experimentation among young people. There is evidence that drug use is higher among particular demographics and that club drugs play an important role in youth socialisation.

The economic, social, political, climate and urban facilities influence the way people use cities, both before and after dark. Nightlife has becoming into an industry, as in people who have worked in nightlife—use terms like 'industry night' and ask questions like, 'Are you in the industry?' to negotiate insider or outsider status. 'Civilization has a tendency to repeat its own mistakes,' says Kevin Tucker. 

Then, passing through the 'Noise', I will come to the stage of the Silence. We'll discuss about Silence in the next session. Bi 'idhnillah."

While waiting for the Moon who hadn't been arrived, the Lotus sang,

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain,

coming down on a sunny day *)

Citations & References:

- Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw, The Quantum Universe (And Why Anything Can Happen, Does), 2011, DaCapo Press

- Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw, Why E=mc2 (And Why We Should Care?), 2009, DaCapo Press

- Brian Cox & Andrew Cohen, Forces of Nature, 2017, William Collins

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise, 2015, HarperOne

- Cecile Malaspina, An Epistomology of Noise, 2018, Bloomsbury Academic

- Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, 2021, Little, Brown Spark

- Jordi Nofre & Adam Eldridge (Ed.), Exploring Nightlife: Space, Society and Governance, 2018, Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd

- Kenneth Sebastian León, Corrupt Capital: Alcohol, Nightlife, and Crimes of the Powerful, 2021, Routledge

*) "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" written by John Cameron Fogerty

Bahasa

Aloe's Story about Political Family (4)

"A young usher, who had never before participated in a wedding, asked an arriving guest, 'Are you a friend of the bride or groom?'

'I'm a friend of both,' came the reply.

'I'm sorry, Madam,' the youthful usher replied. 'I'm afraid you'll have to choose a side. I haven't been told where to seat the neutrals.'"

"Let's keep going!" Aloe exclaimed. "Of course, the question will rise, why Dynasties or what causes of Dynastic Politics? One explanation for the phenomenon of democratic dynasties, says Smith, points to the dominance of elites in political life more generally. Scholars of political elites and power have long argued that the ruling class of a society can perpetuate its status over the less organized masses, even within a democracy. In America the most prominent dynasties have shared a more or less common background that might be considered the 'best butter' in American politics.

In Japan, it is common for members of Japanese dynasties to have advanced degrees from the finest universities (or to have studied abroad), and many come from wealthy backgrounds. For example, brothers Hatoyama Yukio and Kunio were heirs to the Bridgestone Corporation fortune through their mother.13 Even in democracies, elite families might continue to dominate the political process simply by virtue of their superior endowments of income, education, and connections. These advantages might arguably give legacy candidates a head start over non-legacy candidates in building a political career.

This type of elite dominance theory for dynastic politics is likely to have the most power in explaining dynasties in developing democracies, where political elites typically enjoy higher standards of living than their constituents and political parties play a smaller role in organizing and financing political competition. In the Philippines, for example, jurisdictions represented by legacy MPs tend to be associated with higher poverty, lower employment, and greater economic inequality. A high proportion of dynasties has also been documented in developing democracies in Latin America, such as Mexico and Nicaragua, and in South Asian developing democracies like India and Bangladesh.

If holding political office brings private rents that exceed what might be gained in other professions, elite families might also try to hold on to power through direct manipulation of the electoral or candidate selection processes. For example, Pablo Querubín finds that term limits in the Philippines do not stop the perpetuation of dynasties—rather, they allow them to spread because politicians tend to seek higher office and get their relatives elected to their previous positions. Pradeep Chhibber looks at dynastic succession in party leadership in India through a similar lens. He argues that dynastic leadership succession is more likely in parties that lack broader organizational ties to groups in society and have centralized party finances in the top leadership. Such personalized parties might be compared to family firms, with incentives to keep leadership and control of the party within the family (as well as knowledge of any financial malfeasance).

Kanchan Chandra makes a similar argument about access to state resources and weak party control over nominations to explain the Indian case, but she considers all MPs elected to recent parliaments, not just party leaders. Chandra tells us that in India, the formal basis of dynastic rule was abolished three times over after India obtained independence in 1947, first with the integration of 'princely states' into the Indian union, then when India severed even a symbolic association with the British crown by declaring itself a republic, and finally with legislation abolishing the system of zamindari, or hereditary landownership. But new dynasties emerged through the democratic process, replacing those that were eliminated. Now, in the twenty-first century, about a quarter of MPs in the directly elected lower house of Indian parliament (Lok Sabha) on average, have had a dynastic background: 20% in the 2004 parliament, 30% in the 2009 parliament, and 22% in the 2014 parliament.

These 'democratic dynasties', says Chandra, are a modern phenomenon, distinguished from traditional aristocracies in one key respect: their dependence on electoral endorsement. In a traditional aristocracy, birth is sufficient to guarantee entry. But in a democratic aristocracy, members must also win elections.

Chandra sugests that these democratic dynasties are the product, not of some cultural predilection for family-based politics, but of the high returns to state office and the organizational weakness of political parties. He then argue that the effect of dynastic politics on democracy is mixed. It amplifies some forms of exclusion while simultaneously creating opportunities for inclusion. But both exclusion and inclusion are products, not of some property intrinsic to political dynasties, but of the institutional environment within which dynastic politics has arisen in India. Dynasties may not arise at all in democracies with differently structured institutions, and if they do, they may well have a different effect on democratic politics.

Dynastic politics in India is pervasive across regions. Constituencies in all of India’s major regions have sent significant proportions of dynastic members of Parlement (MP) to parliament, with some variation in the degree of dynasticism across regions and across elections. In the 2004 and 2009 elections, the North-Western region was significantly more dynastic than other regions. But in 2014, all regions with the exception of the West sent a roughly equal percentage of dynastic MPs to parliament. Further, several constituencies in many regions, as I note later, switch from a dynastic to a non-dynastic MP and back again across elections. Dynastic MPs are elected from both 'general' and 'reserve' constituencies, although there is significant variation in dynasticism across them. Dynastic MPs are also found in significant proportions across gender categories. Finally, dynastic MPs are pervasive across ethnic categories, with variations across them in the degree of dynasticism.

In Indonesia, Zaldi Rusnaedy explained that the emergence of political dynasties' phenomenon is characterized by husbands, wives, children and other relatives of incumbents participate in the political arena, be it regional head elections, legislative elections, or the placement of other important positions. The increasing strength of political dynasties indicates symptoms of what is called, neopatrimonialism, that small regional kings increasingly expand their political power through kinship networks. Zaldi argues that a political dynasty is an effort to perpetuate power by involving family members (up, side and down) to occupy the same or different political positions. Political dynasties occur because incumbents suffer from post power syndrome and status quo, because they do not want to lose their position. This is also done as an effort to cover up 'some ulcers' during the incumbent leadership period, so that if any of 'relatives' were elected, it could be covered.

Furthermore, Zaldi said that the historical roots of feudalism and the traditions of kingdoms in Indonesia were other causes of the proliferation of political dynasties. The transformation from the royal era to the democratic era left behind various problems. The reluctance to relinquish the power that 'the grandparents' had as rulers of the kingdom sparked family members to continue that power. Post power syndrome and status quo illustrate that the traditions of feudalism and kingship cannot really be eliminated in our modern political system. These two things then transformed in the era of democracy by forming a modern political kingdom which we later came to know as a political dynasty.

Zaldi also added, the widespread acts of corruption is always associated with the practices of political dynasties, and confirmed by several political dynasties committing acts of corruption. Therefore, several political analysts always associate that political dynasties and corruption a thick tangent point. Political dynasties have a greater potential for committing corrupt acts than non-dynasties.

There are some theories that can be related to dynastic politics. Robert A. Dahl considers political equality to be a defining feature of a democratic political system. At the same time, he recognizes that there is bound to be an unequal distribution of 'political resource'” within any society that, in turn, result in differences in the extent to which individuals are able to gain political influence. This basic fact then begs the following question: What kinds of 'political resources' should determine access to political influence? Democratic theory does not give us a definitive answer to this question. But, a logical consequence of many theories of distributive justice and political equality is that political resources that are not a product of an individual’s actions or decisions should not determine access to political influence. Conversely, if an individual obtains public office by taking deliberate action to increase her knowledge and political skills, this route to power would be compatible with the kind of political equality that should, according to these theories, exist in a society.

What are the normative implications of these theories for dynastic politics? One implication they suggest, says Anjali Thomas Bohlken, is that the mere existence of dynasties in the political sphere does not necessarily violate the principle of political equality. In fact, if those with family connections in politics simply have a greater predisposition towards acquiring the knowledge and skills that allow them to gain public influence, then the prevalence of politicians with family connections in politics may be perfectly compatible with ideals of political equality.

What would be normatively problematic, however, is if individuals with family connections in politics were more likely than others to be able to achieve success in the political arena without climbing up the institutional ladder and acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge on the way.

The question of whether dynasts are able to gain power without proceeding through the 'normal' channels of entry that non-dynasts must pass through has practical implications as well. A politician who is able to gain political office by virtue of family connections alone may be less able to perform their duties well as they lack the skills or background that a politician who has 'legitimately earned' their position might have.

Hendry C. Hart argues that leaders who have gained power at the upper echelons of the political hierarchy by climbing the institutional ladder tend to be of higher quality than leaders who have achieved power through dynastic succession because the former group of leaders need to demonstrate certain orientations and skills in order to take each step up the ladder. Leaders who have taken this route tend to be 'insiders' who become gradually more aware of the 'rules of the game' as they ascend the political hierarchy. These leaders thus tend to have certain orientations that make them effective leaders such as appreciating 'the need for vigorous party organization reaching to the voters' and 'for bureaucratic staff and procedures capable of delivering services and carrying policies into execution'. Since each step in the ladder is competitive, this route to power may also grant the leader more legitimacy amongst other contenders for the post. If this characterization of the institutional route to power is accurate and if dynasts are more likely to be able to avoid the institutional or insider route to political power, it follows that dynasts would also be more likely to suffer a relative lack of political knowledge, skill and legitimacy compared to other politicians.

Patrick French describes Rahul Gandhi addressing a gathering of students in Madhya Pradesh as follows, 'There are three-four ways of entering politics .... 'First, if one has money and power. Second, through family connections. I am an example of that. Third, if one knows somebody in politics. And fourth, by working hard for the people.' This statement by Rahul Gandhi, a self-professed political dynast, reflects a common perception that dynastic ties can serve as a substitute for other modes of entry into politics such as wealth, connections or political experience. While we cannot be sure what Rahul Gandhi intended to convey with this statement, one reading of it is that dynastic ties should serve as a substitute for political experience in becoming an MP, but that family ties are just one way in which an MP can achieve political success without 'working hard for the people.'

What about the age restrictions? In Bohlken's research, the figures on age, suggest what may be constructed as a positive aspect of dynastic politics–that it brings younger people into the national political sphere who is likely to bring along with them new ideas and skills. While dynastic politics is responsible for producing a more youthful parliament, this is not necessarily an unqualified benefit and may even be a cost.

So, no matter how the justification is sought, there are still arguments and proof to disprove dynastic politics. Thomas Pain says, 'But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked, and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.'

And Allah knows best."

The night was getting late, but the party had just begun, and the wine was already being poured. Aloe and Wulandari ended their podcast, and together, they sang a song from the Dayak land,

Tagal haranan duit dan jabatan

[Just because of money and position]

Balalu cinta mu bapindah pilihan

[Then your love changes]

Aku je susah, kalah saingan

[I'm the one who's having a hard time, losing to the competition]

Tasingkir mundur, buhau kan saran ***)

[Knocked backwards, cornered to the side]

Citations & References:

- Claude Chidamian, The Book of Cacti and Other Succulents, 1984, Timber Press

- Linda Brand (Ed.), Cactus and Succulents, 1978, Lane Publishing

- Akshay Chopra, The Magic of Aloevera, 2021, We R Stupid

- Zaldy Rusnaedy, Dinasti Politik di Aras Lokal, 2020, Deepublish

- Kanchan Chandra (Ed.), Democratic Dynasties: State, Party and Family in Contemporary Indians Politics, 2016, Cambridge University Press

- Daniel M. Smith, Dynasties and Democracy: The Inherited Incumbency Advantage in Japan, 2018, Stanford University Press

- Stephen Hess, America's Political Dynasties, 1997, Routledges

*) "Jangan Bicara" written by Iwan Fals

**) "Jangan Ada Dusta di Antara Kita" written by Harry Tasman

***) "Malihi Janji" written by Dian P Angga & Adv Habibi B.A, SH.

[Session 3]
[Session 1]

Bahasa

Aloe's Story about Political Family (3)

"'Grandpa,' the little boy asked as he returned from History private lessons, because the History subject at school will be abolished soon, 'were you, grandma, father, mother, uncle and aunty, in Noah's Ark?'

'Of course not,' replied his grandfather huffily.

'Why weren't you drowned, then?' replied the little boy curiously."

"Now, let's move on!" said Aloe, to continue the podcast session. "So, are there any good side to Dynastic Politics? So far, I haven't found any authors yet to provide a positive review of this topic.

Stephen Hess wrote at length about the history of dynastic politics in the United States, starting from the Adams, Lee, Livingston, Washburn, Muhlenberg, Roosevelt, Harrison, Breckinridge, Byard, Taft, Frelinghuysen, Tucker, Stockton, Long, Lodge, and Kennedy dynasties.

Hess, satirically, wrote like this, 'The Constitution could not be more specific: 'No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.' Yet, in the nearly two centuries since these words were written, the American people, despite official disapproval, have chosen a political nobility. For generation after generation they have turned for leadership to certain families. 'People's Dukes,' Stewart Alsop calls them.

The scholarship of politics, however, pays little attention to this phenomenon. It is as if a native ethos—'all men are created equal'—prohibits calling attention to the fact that there are some families who have more talents or more appeal to the voters; who, in short, are far more equal than others at the political starting gate. As John Fischer, one of the few writers to devote himself to this equalitarian blind spot, has written, 'The notion that exceptional people ought to get exceptional consideration—and that their abilities might be transmitted by heredity—is felt to be shockingly undemocratic and un-American.'

Then in mid-twentieth century, suddenly, surprisingly, shockingly, American political fife seemed to be largely peopled by such unique families. They were all around us; we could hardly avoid them—Kennedys, Lodges, Longs, Tafts, Roosevelts. The current United States Senate alone contains eighteen members who are in some manner dy-nastically connected.

This trend may be because public service is becoming a family tradition, as it has long been in Great Britain; or because politics is beaming a “rich mans game” and the dynasties can usually afford to play; or because Americans vote for a son under the impression that they are voting for the father—or grandfather; or because we feel assured that the “People’s Dukes” will keep their hands out of the till; or because there is some ability which can be transmitted through the genes; or simply because the voters have a sneaking weakness for dynasties.'

Hess also tells why he suggests his study, that it 'is in the nature of calling attention, taking note. Its purpose is to bring together for the first time the panorama of American political dynasties from colonial days to the present; to investigate their roles in shaping the nation; and to recount the lives of some two hundred often engaging, usually ambitious, sometimes brilliant, occasionally unscrupulous individuals.'

According to Hess, a dynasty is 'any family that has had at least four members, in the same name, elected to federal office.' The word 'elected' should be stressed, for this elite has not existed through 'divine right' or nepotism. It has been freely chosen. Further, Hess says that 'American political dynasties are fluid, mercurial things. Some will die. Some will be born.' The dynasties have been wealthy, rarely have they been immensely wealthy. Moreover, as a high birth rate has been a dynastic characteristic, their money is apt to be dissipated through dispersion.

Yes indeed that the families of America’s political elite have also managed to produce poets, novelists, scientists, inventors, clergymen, educators, and men of commerce. While the Roosevelts are known now for other talents, they can point with pride to the inventor of the electric organ, an early steamboat innovator, a pioneer conservationist, a New York philanthropist, a radical economist, and a connection with Mother Seton. Four other dynasties also claim important religious figures, yet the dynasties have not escaped their share of insanity, suicide, alcoholism, mental retardation, financial reverses, acts of embezzlement, and sexual scandal.

Most surprising has been the high mobility of the dynasties. Since these families have been well to do and well connected, it might be assumed that the sons would choose to remain in their well-preserved compounds. But greener pastures do not only beckon to those whose grass is burned out. Perhaps reflecting the wanderlust of their nation, political dynasts have been a footloose lot.

Hess then says, there are certain traits that are generally found in all politicians—no matter what their fathers’ profession—for example, ambition, gregarious-ness, energy, often a physical attractiveness, tenacity. Given a 'political personality,' a man may be attracted to public life and the public may be attracted to him. Can such characteristics be inherited? Will a political personality, through genes and chromosomes, produce another political personality? The author is neither geneticist nor biologist and the riddle of nature-nurture is complex. But the latest studies agree that, while personality traits are not inherited in an absolute sense, certain potentials are inherited. 'Biological inheritance,' write Professors Kluck-hohn and Murray, 'provides the stuff from which personality is fashioned and, as manifested in the physique at a given time-point, determines trends and sets limits within which variation is constrained.' Thus a dynasty may start with an inherited tendency, at which point environment comes into play. Many dynasties are founded, or greatly reinforced, by one dominant personality.

In an era when the nation is producing more leaders of inherited social, economic, and political advantage than at any time since the American Revolution, the question of class leadership in a democracy deserves careful scrutiny. 'History,' E. EMgby Baltzell tells us, 'is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.' In countries where a decaying aristocracy retains some degree of governmental control this can create serious problems. But this has not been the American habit. Rather than polluting the political blood stream, the caste-conscious heirs of once potent political dynasties have proved to be harmless and somewhat pathetic. A century after a wise man of humble roots was elected President, one of Abraham Lincoln’s last male descendants was quoted as saying with airy disdain, 'I never take part in politics. None of the family does.'

More than a half century ago Harvard’s president, Charles W. Eliot, wrote, If society as a whole is to gain by mobility and openness of structure, those who rise must stay up in successive generations, that the higher levels of society may be constantly enlarged….” While he felt that the family, rather than the individual, was the important social unit, he was not preaching a doctrine of exclusivity. He was neither snob nor Brahmin apologist. Rather his ideal society envisioned all families as “free starting,” with a fluid aristocracy that made room for “new-risen talent.'

There is interesting things in R. D. Laing's essays about Family, before moving on to the Politics of the Family. He writes, 'We speak of families as though we all knew what families are. We identify, as families, networks of people who live together over periods of time, who have ties of marriage and kinship to one another. The more one studies family dynamics, the more unclear one becomes as to the ways family dynamics compare and contrast with the dynamics of other groups not called families, let alone the ways families themselves differ. As with dynamics, so with structure (patterns, more stable and enduring than others): again, comparisons and generalizations must be very tentative.

The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times. The relevance ofthe dynamics and structure of the family to the formation of personality is unlikely to be constant in different societies, or even in our own.

[...] What function has 'the family' in terms of the relationship of members of the family? The 'family', the family as a fantasy structure, entails a type of relationship between family members of a different order from the relationships of those who do not share that 'family' inside each other.

The 'family' is not an introjected object, but an introjected set of relations.

The 'family', as an internal system one is inside, may not be clearly differentiated from other such systems, to which one can give only such very inadequate names as 'womb', 'breast', 'mother's body', and so forth. It may be felt to be alive, dying or dead, an animal, a machine, often a human protective or destructive container like the facehouse bodies children draw. This is a set of elements with partitions the self is in, together with others who have it in them.

The family may be imagined as a web, a flower, a tomb, a prison, a castle. Self may be more aware of an image of the family than of the family itself, and map the images onto the family.

'Family' space and time is akin to mythic space and time, in that it tends to be ordered round a centre and runs on repeating cycles. Who, what, where, is the centre of the family?

[...] The most common situation I encounter in families is when what I think is going on bears almost no resemblance to what anyone in the family experiences or thinks is happening, whether or not this coincides with common sense.

Maybe no one knows what is happening. However, one thing is often clear to an outsider: there is concerted family resistance to discovering what is going on, and there are complicated stratagems to keep everyone in the dark, and in the dark they are in the dark.

We would know more of what is going on if we were not forbidden to do so, and forbidden to realize that we are forbidden to do so.

Between truth and lie are images and ideas we imagine and think are real, that paralyse our imagination and our thinking in our efforts to conserve them.

[...] One way to get someone to do what one wants, is to give an order. To get someone to be what one wants him to be, or supposes he is or is afraid he is (whetherornot this is what one wants}, that is, to get him to embody one's projections, is another matter.

[..] What we indicate they are, is, in effect, an instruction for a drama : a scenario.'"

"Ok, I think it's enough for this session. We're going to continue this topik on the next session, bi 'idhnillah."

Aloe was going to move to the next session, but first thing first, she'd like to sing Broery Marantika and Dewi Yull's song,

Bukankah ini ku tanyakan padamu oh kasih?

[Isn't this what I asked you, oh love?]

Takkan kecewakah kau pada diriku?

[Won't you be disappointed in me?]

Takkan menyesalkah kau hidup denganku nanti? **)

[Will you not regret living with me later?]

[Session 4]
[Session 2]

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