"In a public affairs office, there was a notice written in large letters:'THE FLY DOESN'T WANT TO DEBATEHE IS CURRENTLY BEING SAVEDNO DEBATE'""Local values such as 'musyawarah' [mutual consultation], 'Gotong-royong' [mutual cooperation], 'kenduren' [festivity], or 'slametan' [a kind of ritual for salvation], the aim will be difficult to attain if the community is not actively involved. Decision making in 'Musyawarah' will be difficult if there is no guarantee that the rules of the game are fair and clear, so we all can participate looking for the common good. So, in a society that has agreed to embrace democracy, if people do not participate, such democracy is not a democracy," Sansevieria carried on, opening the intelligence records."How we interract with others, to learn from our actions, need participation in all spheres of our life, and also, to make decisions. Decision making is a thoughtful process of choosing among a variety of options for acting or thinking, say Austin J. Freeley and David L. Steinberg. It requires that the decider make a choice. Life demands decision making. We make countless individual decisions every day. To make some of those decisions, we work hard to employ care and consideration; others seem to just happen. Couples, families, groups of friends, and coworkers come together to make choices. Every profession requires effective and ethical decision making, as do our school, community, and social organizations. In this context, Ethics is a set of constructs that guide our decision making by providing standards of behavior, telling us how we ought to act.Further, Freeley and Steinberg say that we all make many decisions every day. To refinance or sell one’s home, to buy a high-performance SUV or an economical hybrid car, what major to select, what to have for dinner, what candidate to vote for, paper or plastic, all present us with choices. Should the president deal with an international crisis through military invasion or diplomacy or just bringing an iPad? Is the defendant guilty as accused? The Daily Show or the ball game? And upon what information should I rely on to make my decision?Certainly, some of these decisions are more consequential than others. At our best, we seek out research and data to inform our decisions. Yet even the choice of which information to attend to requires decision making. A magazine named you 'A New Hope.' Congratulations! Its selection was based on the participation of 'A No Hope' in the creation of history. Through blogs, online networking, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, and many other 'wikis,' knowledge and 'truth' are created from the bottom up, bypassing the authoritarian control of editors and publishers. We have access to infinite quantities of information, but how do we sort through it and select the best information for our needs?According to Freeley and Steinberg, the ability of every decision maker to make good, reasoned, and ethical decisions, relies heavily upon their ability to think critically. Critical thinking enables one to break argumentation down to its component parts in order to evaluate its relative validity and strength. Critical thinkers are better users of information, as well as better advocates.Colleges and universities expect their students to develop their critical thinking skills and may require students to take designated courses to that end. The importance and value of such study is widely recognized.Competency in critical thinking is a prerequisite to participating effectively in human affairs, pursuing higher education, and succeeding in the highly competitive world of business and the professions. Michael Scriven and Richard Paul argue that the effective critical thinker are raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely; gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively; comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards; thinks open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems. Scriven and Paul also observed that critical thinking 'entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.'Debate in a classroom, is an exercise and as a mode of thinking and behaving uniquely promotes development of each of these skill sets. Public debate—the word 'public' refers to people in general, and it means being connected with social and state life, the opposite of being individual and private—in Democracy is a process to turn people into more active participants by involving them in the decision-making process. People‟s opinions, interests and expectations are expressed in Public Debate on an issue that concerns the whole or part of the society. A powerful ground for an understanding of efficient citizenship and a functioning democracy, therefore a powerful democracy, emerged by active participation. So, either legal and constitutional guarantees that will enable free public debate, or society that are tolerant and respectful of differences is also required to fulfill all of these functions.Since classical times, debate has been one of the best methods of learning and applying the principles of critical thinking. So, if Democracy, in the minds of societies, perceived to be a set of techniques consisting 'only' for the election of administrators, it means that individuals were perceived as 'passive citizens of democracy' rather than 'its real actors'.In its essence, Democracy is, a method about by whom, how and in what way a state and a society will be governed. Louis XIV may have said, 'L’état, c’est moi,' but he knew what a state was: a legal person rather than a physical one says Alan Ryan. It was the state’s all-encompassing authority that he embodied in his own majestic person. It was on the state’s behalf that he was obsessed with the need to know whatever could be known about the resources of his kingdom and the lives of his subjects so that he could better manage their lives and resources for their own welfare.In its essence, Democracy is, a method about by whom, how and in what way a state and a society will be governed. Louis XIV may have said, 'L’état, c’est moi,' but he knew what a state was: a legal person rather than a physical one says Alan Ryan. It was the state’s all-encompassing authority that he embodied in his own majestic person. It was on the state’s behalf that he was obsessed with the need to know whatever could be known about the resources of his kingdom and the lives of his subjects so that he could better manage their lives and resources for their own welfare.Monarchy is one of our oldest and most enduring political entities. It has existed in many forms and permutations over all areas of the globe and under many names and guises, including Polynesian ari’i rahi and ariki, the Yang di-Pertuan of Malaysia, Sapu of the Inca, the Oba in West Africa, and temporally from the ancient era to today’s constitutional monarchs. While there are those who would seek to put an end to monarchy, as ‘an outmoded and outdated institution’ or would even label it, as Jeremy Paxman famously did as ‘mumbo-jumbo’, there is little doubt of its significance in terms of academic study, as a central element of civilizations around the globe from its earliest societies until the present day, says Elena Woodacre.Power, law and religion are the fundamental aspects of rule which define the monarch’s role. The monarchy is located within their dynasty, court and realm. Ceremonial, representation and display are the means through which the ruler demonstrates or affirms their role with regard to aspects of power, law and religion to the dynasty, court and realm. The nexus at the centre wherein the crown sits represents that intense locus wherein all the elements meet. In monarchy, rulers are necessarily male and that monarchy is a innately patriarchal institution where only men can access and exercise power. However, even when the ruler is male, we must not assume that they were the sole locus of power. In the most fundamental form, a ruler can be defined as one who has recognized authority over a group of people and their territory.While the assumption is that the office of ruler automatically confers great power upon the holder, we can also easily think of monarchs who are effectively powerless, like today’s constitutional monarchs. At the other extreme is the nearly unlimited power wielded by monarchs such as the Tsars of Russia; Catherine II of Russia (r.1762–96) stated that ‘The Sovereign is absolute; for there is no other authority but that which centers in his single Person’. While Catherine defended the necessity of the absolute power of the Tsar and the utility of monarchy as a means to govern her vast realm, political theorists from the ancient world to the modern era have debated the extent of power that a ruler can exercise and the limitations of the royal prerogative.So, where does the power of the ruler come from? Parkinson suggests that the basic characteristics of man, considered from a political point of view, men have always (since being recognisable as men) lived in groups of some kind, family groups or tribes. The young of the human family (born singly, for the most part, not in a litter) are helpless for an exceptionally long period, needing protection and care for many years, and indeed, maturing very slowly. The authority of age merges into the parental authority. Although primitive people often fail to recognise paternity, developing communities have all come to see in it a heightening of the authority of age in the special relationship between father and child. It is this relationship which provides us with our basic notions of authority and discipline. Nearly all our common terms of respect are derived from it. We have thus the words ‘Sir’ (Sire), ‘Monsieur’. Psychologists break up the idea of respect into the three elements of wonder, affection and fear. The child thus feels for his father some wonder at the ability of an older person to do what the child cannot ; some affection for an older person whose intention is at least to ensure the child’s survival; and some fear of an older person who may punish the child by smacking its head.In its development, there are several means which arguably provide the basis of the monarch's power, all of them can be traced back to either law, such as being the rightful heir under the laws of succession, or religion, such as one who has been divinely selected to rule, or both. These legal and religious elements are vital tenets that confer legitimacy on the ruler and provide the cornerstone of their power and authority.One element linked to the power of the monarch is charisma, says Woodacre, with regard to the rule of the Roman emperors, from Augustus onwards. Yet charisma has a distinct link to the divine. Max Weber defined charisma as 'certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.Derives from the sacral nature of monarchy–a sense that the sovereign has a connection with the divine, there is a spectrum between rulers: from those who were considered to be divine or living gods on one extreme, like the Egyptian pharaohs, to a religious association that does not (necessarily) mark the sovereign out as divinely appointed or sacred, such as Elizabeth II of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s role as the titular Head of the Church of England. The line between divinity and humanity for rulers could well be blurred. In South Asia, for example, while the divine aspect of monarchy was boosted in some areas by an association with the god Rama and the cult of Devaraja, Morrison has noted that ‘truly deified rulers are rare’. However, Kershaw has noted that in Cambodia, there was an idea that the ruler was a ‘being who was himself, or could eventually become, divine’.Rulers also could be seen as blessed by the gods with supernatural abilities or magic, particularly in Africa, with examples such as the Lovedu queens who represented the Earth and had a mystical ability with regard to controlling rain. In a similar vein, ancient Japanese rulers were credited with the ability to ‘solicit supernatural power’ to ensure a successful rice harvest.‘Dynasty and succession’ clearly speak to dynasty, court and realm with particular consideration of how a ruler is drawn from their dynasty to rule. Geevers and Marini argue that it is more than just a family or kin group, putting forward the interesting concept of dynasty as an iceberg where ‘a minority of living family members are visible, while a host of deceased and unborn ones remain hidden’. This concept is quite useful in considering the eternal aspect of dynasty—that it is about more than its current members or the ruler on the throne, who can be seen in this way as merely caretakers of the dynasty’s fortunes and titles. Dynasty forms a key bulwark of support for monarchy, and yet intradynastic rivalry can also cause the destruction of the family, allowing another dynasty to usurp their position. This rivalry stems from the notion that many, or all, of the members of the dynasty are also potential claimants to the throne, which can increase tension within the kin group. It also ties in with the notion of how a dynasty self-defines, who is considered to be part of the group, and who is considered to be eligible for the throne. Whether or not women were eligible successors for the throne, they have always played a central part in the creation of dynasty.In creating a nobility, the monarchs prepare the way for their own downfall. Nor is the process avoidable. Their own children and grandchildren form the basis of the nobility, their own generals and advisers form its successive accretions, their own conquests accelerate its growth. With a nobility thus brought into existence, the monarch is faced with potential rivals for power. If he disperses them among distant provinces, they will seek to gain independence. If he keeps them at hand, they will plot against him when not actually quarrelling with each other. Inevitably, the line of kings will be broken at some point by the succession of a child, a saint or an imbecile. When that moment comes, the nobles will try to seize power. If they fail to do so collectively, at the centre, the result is Feudalism.""Oh by the way, I'm sorry, the time for this session is over, we'll continue on the next session, bi' idhnillah!" said Sansevieria when she was given a sign that this session would be continued. And while waiting for the later session, she sang,Jelas bedo yen dibandingke[Obviously different when compared]Ora ono sing tak pamerke[I have nothing to show off]Aku ra iso yen kon gawe-gawe[I can't even if you make it up]Jujur, sak onone *)[Honestly, it's as is]
Citations & References:
- Austin J. Freeley and David L. Steinberg, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, 2009, Wadsworth Cengage Learning
- Reyhan Sunay, The Importance of Public Debate in Democratic Regimes, 2012, European Scientific Journal
- Alan Ryan, On Politics: A History of Political Thought from Herodotus to the Present, 2012, Liveright Publishing Corporation
- Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Russell E. Martin and Zita Eva Rohr (Ed.), The Routledge History of Monarchy, 2019, Routledge
*) "Ojo Dibandingke" written by Abah Ala
