"One day, a Minister of State Secretary, while accompanying the President to lunch, said thank you.'Speak up, Mr. Minister, I can't hear a thing,' cried the President.'Pardon me Mr. President, which talk? I've forgotten it sir,' said the Minister quietly.""Why do we speak?" Sansevieria continued to open the note that made her walk backwards. "Yep, you're right. We talk to remove wax from our ears. The pretty doctor says that our ears automatically clean them when we talk, chewing or moving our jaw. So we speak, to get rid of dirt we hear, stuck in our ears. And can you imagine, if dirt compiled in your ears? Your hearing wolud reduced and you appear to be unresponsive to the situation around you, even though in fact you are 'unable to hear' and experiencing tinnitus.Additionally, we speak to allows us to form connections, influence decisions, and motivate change. Without communication skills, the ability to progress in the working world and in life, itself, would be almost impossible. It is impossible to make chimpanzees speak, in the sense of uttering words, says Jean-Louis Desalles. Though we share 98 per cent of our genome with chimpanzees, there are still certain morphological diVerences between them and us, one of which lies in the structure of the larynx.Human beings take every advantage of the combinatorial possibilities that it offers. Very few of the millions of sentences we speak in our lifetime are identical with one another. In that respect, our system of communication really is unique among living things. What human beings are really doing during all these hours they spend talking or listening to others talking must be a question of great interest for anyone who tries to make sense of human nature. Telling stories is without a doubt a behaviour that marks of our species from others. Our ability to recount past experiences and events, including imaginary events, is unique to us.Why then, we talk with gestures? Speech is inseparable from gesture. Gesture orchestrates speech, says David McNeill. For an individual speaker, embedded in context, his or her cognitive Being is a gesture–speech unity. Language is dynamic through a dialectic with gesture, and takes on life with it. Behind this dialectic, gesture has been in language at the start. At the origin, language was a unity of gesture and speech. If for some reason it is suppressed, the inner gesture, imagery in actional form, remains and leaks out though some other part of the body. Gesture language viewed as structure and as Energeia—language as an 'embodied moment of meaning' and fuses them. The effects are felt far beyond language and into every corner of life.And why we are hesitate to speak up? There is a moment when you consider chiming in with your opinion on an issue that is important to you, says Loretta Malandro. You clear your throat and get ready to speak, but then you hesitate. The conversation moves on, and you withdraw back into the safety of your thoughts. You just missed an opportunity to stand out.Political dynamics in the workplace can make it difficult for you to take the leap and say what’s on your mind. Our hesitation to speak up is generally due to two things: (1) our overestimation of the risk it could pose to our job security and career advancement and (2) our fear of looking bad—being criticized, devalued, or worse, dismissed as insignificant. When you give up your voice, you give up your vote.But why, we were not created to sit? Being a chair manufacturer it was a very unpleasant experience when I realized that humans were not created to sit: humans were created to walk, stand, jog, run, hunt, fish and to be in motion; when they wanted to rest, they laid down on the ground, says T.M. Grimsrud. This Grimsrud's tatement is probably not valid anthropology, Edward Tenner suggests. If there were a natural way to sit, we would not have so many chair designs with radically different principles, from kneeling to reclining. No wonder artists almost invariably portray Adam and Eve standing in paradise. Before the fall, we were indeed upright. Standing is in many ways a healthier position than sitting, especially sitting in chairs, which tend to rotate the pelvis forward and increase the load on the spinal column by about 30 percent. Prolonged sitting at work has been shown to shrink the spine and swell the feet temporarily.The history of the traditional chair goes back some 5000 years. The conception we have today of the correct sitting position is probably derived from the Pharaohs, even though the work we carry out while sitting has nothing in common with the sovereign’s role or their need to be admired by their people. The Pharaohs used the throne with a high back when they were to govern or receive the admiration of their people. They sat with very straight backs and at right angles—90° at the hip, knees and ankles. The seat was horizontal. This symmetrical sitting position emphasized their divine origin.Chairs even have a social life. Yet chairs can stand for social disorder as well as order. For better or worse, chairs have moved around the earth as though they had walked on their own legs, spread not only by the Spanish friars we have noted, but (for example) by medieval Nestorian missionaries in China, by early modern Portuguese traders in West Africa, and by French and other diplomats in the Ottoman Empire. The famous Golden Stool of the Ashanti, the embodiment of nationhood, was even enthroned on a chair of its own. Chairs carry us, and we carry chairs.However, we are still not quite happy with our chairs. Neither authority, nor conversation, nor wit is the object of today's chair; the chair is still the object of unease. Chairs are suppose to provide comfort, and it's so comfortable that we don't want to give up our seats to pregnant women or those bringing their young children, to the senior or those disabilities, who have had to go to the trouble of getting on the bus we're on. All of this because, indeed, sitting is comfort but brings anxiety. Therefore, we should not have to sit for long.Thus, why Jakarta is the most important to Indonesia? Jakarta has a long historical record, far longer than the sheet I'm spreading. One interesting historical note, told by Jean Gelman Taylor. Her study describes a colonial society that was formed in Dutch settlements on the coasts of Asia and that evolved for a brief period into a ruling caste in the Indonesian archipelago. Taylor tells us that when the Dutch navigator Comelis Houtman first put in at Jacatra [Jakarta, is represented as Batavia when it was a Dutch city and as Jacatra for the Sundanese town of the pre-1619 period] on 13 November 1596, the town was a minor port lying across the mouth of the Ciliwung River on the northwest coast of Java. Its inhabitants, principally members of the Sundanese ethnic group and numbering several thousands, lived within a bamboo enclosure; there was a small settlement of Chinese traders and arrack brewers outside the wall on the north side.The first years at Jacatra passed peaceably enough. Towards the end of 1618, however, agents of England's East India Trading Company were also assigned land and privileges in Jacatra, and Jan Pieterszoon Coen, then second-incommand for the Dutch Company in Asia, determined to establish supremacy over the town. Late in 1618, then, Coen withdrew to the Moluccas to assemble a fleet that was to destroy the Jacatrans and Bantammers and their English allies.On 23 December 1618, while the Dutch compound at Jacatra was under siege from the groups leagued against the VOC, a roll call had been taken by senior merchant Pieter van den Broeck of all residing within its walls. Already the Dutch were showing characteristics that were to be enduring features of their settlements in Asia and for which they had no precedent in their native city-states in the Netherlands: they were owners of slaves and took concubines from among the local women. Thus those answering to the roll call, some 350 in all, were found to include both free and slave Asians, as well as European merchants, settlers, women, and soldiers. These were the key elements of colonial society throughout Company times.All Company officials in the East were subordinate to the hierarchy at Batavia, as Jacatra was renamed following Coen's destruction of the town. It was from Batavia that appointments to the subsidiary settlements were made and general orders issued, and it was to Batavia that officials looked for transfer and promotion. All senior boards of the VOC in Asia were located in Batavia: the governing Council of the Indies, the supreme court, the chief bookkeeper's office, and warehouses. If we now look at the civilian ann of the Dutch East Indies Company in Asia from the bottom up, we find at the lowest level copyists and clerks. In the early years of Batavia they were quartered at the Castle that replaced the original Dutch compound. They ate at a common table, for it was as a bachelors' society that the settlement was first run. Their hours were long and exacting, taking no more account of the climate than of the food they ate or of the heavy woollen clothing they clung to.In theory, a clerk possessed of diligence and wit could move up the ranks of the Company to assistant and then bookkeeper, and by degrees to junior merchant and then merchant. He could next expect to act as administrator of one of the Company's warehouses or be sent to head one of the other settlements. Later he could be raised to governor of one of the more important settlements such as Ambon or Malacca. With good health and luck the fonner clerk could then be transferred back to Batavia as councillor and eventually even become governor-general. In fact some did. Governors-General Hendrik: Zwaardecroon, Jacob Mossel, Johannes Thedens, Abraham Patras, and Reynier de Klerk, in the eighteenth century, started as either ship's boy or soldier, switching to the civilian, clerical service when they arrived in Batavia. GovemorGeneral Antonio van Diemen took this route in the first half of the seventeenth century.It was only the Dutch who held the highest posts. Civilians signed renewable contracts committing them to five years of service. For some, the confines of Batavia were the confines of the world. Seventeenth-century Europe was a battleground for politics and religion. Many of those signing the five-year bond of service as Company soldiers were displaced persons and the destitute. They were often in poor health before they undertook the sea journey to Batavia. In the seventeenth century the voyage could last as long as ten months. It has been common to suppose that the Company's soldiers were men of low character in addition to being poorly educated and without resources. Such a view starts principally with Coen. Writing to the directors in 1628, he complained of the soldiers' laziness, stupidity, and smutty language. Soldiers were always the largest European component in Dutch settlements in Indonesia. One can only conjecture that little in the way of European civilization was transmitted. Bereft of formal education, stemming from the deprived of Europe, soldiers could not pass on a typically Dutch bourgeois culture to their wives, mistresses, or children.Slaves constituted a large element in the population of Company settlements. Many of the men were household slaves or were engaged in crafts and retailing on their owners' account. Others were employed as valets, honor guards, and musicians. Some slaves were paid a small wage in addition to their rations, and a few salaried slaves were able to purchase their manumission. Others were released as acts of piety by their owners, either following the slave's conversion to Christianity or to confonn to a provision of the owner's will. Most slaves died in servitude, undernourished, ill-housed, and ill-clothed. Punishments were harsh, the most ferocious reserved for striking an owner or overseer.From the first, the Malay language was used by the Dutch to communicate with the many peoples they encountered, although Portuguese was often spoken in the seventeenth century. Official correspondence between Indonesian rulers and Company officials was often conducted in Portuguese, and Portuguese could also be heard on the streets, in the markets, in church, and in the households where European men kept Asian mistresses.The cast of characters as it appeared in the 1618 roll call is now complete: soldiers and civilians from many parts of Europe; free citizens; Asians, all lumped together as 'blacks'; and women, whether Dutch, inhabitants of the archipelago, or from India. These were important elements of the urban population throughout Company times. Three groups are missing. One is the Chinese who settled in Batavia in great numbers only after it had become the hub of VOC power in Asia. The other two are still invisible; they spring from groups named above. The first of these are the Eurasians, or Mestizos, who derive from unions between European and Asian. The other, the Indonesians, are more difficult to identify. They emerged as a cultural category from among the peoples of Batavia: imported slaves; Eurasians deserted as children by white fathers; and peoples from all parts of the archipelago drawn to the city by the prospect of new opportunities. At the time, this group classified as 'Natives' was by no means homogeneous, for it included Christian and Muslim, and later, people for a while identified separately as Mardijkers.All these groups came together in Batavia and grew from it. In conquering Jacatra, Coen had destroyed the town's original twin centers, the kabupaten, or official residence of the local Sundanese ruler, and the mosque. On Jacatra's ruins he had built a walled fortress, the Castle of Batavia, replacing the Indonesian kabupaten and the Islamic mosque as the new center of authority and prestige. Within the city itself there grew up this special society in isolation from other peoples of Indonesia.Another wall contributing to the society's isolation was that fonned by the surrounding jungle. Wild animals were bold enough to come right to the city's outer walls and snatch laborers from the sugar fields. Premiums for captured tigers were discontinued only in 1762. Runaway slaves and hostile Bantammers also made the environs of Batavia dangerous to Europeans. In 1642, women were expressly forbidden to pass beyond the city's limits, under penalty of a fine, because of the risk of attack from 'people lurking in the jungle, ruffians, Javanese, and others of our enemies.' For a long time, then, the city's chief outlet was by sea, which the Dutch dominated and which linked Batavia to Holland and its other Asian settlements.Culturally, Batavia was isolated too. Many of the original Sundanese inhabitants had fled in 1619. All Javanese, the major ethnic group on the island (principally in the center and east), were excluded from the city, and a new population was brought in from many parts of Asia and Europe. Later, when peace treaties had been signed with Bantam and Mataram, the suburbs immediately outside Batavia expanded, and wealthy people began moving further from the city, laying out pleasure gardens for themselves and taking trips upriver. Gradually the web of society that was fonning within the settlement moved beyond it also. This immediate and rapid growth of Batavia compelled senior Dutch officials in Asia to devise laws and institutions that could control the city's inhabitants.The mid-century visitor to Batavia would have noted stone churches rising amidst the Dutch-style houses of the city. All were intended for worship in the manner of the Refonned Church, the only denomination pennitted by the Company's directors in their overseas possessions. At first, public worship had been conducted in the town hall, and the official character thus lent this Calvinist church was further strengthened by the custom of morning and evening prayers in the Castle which all had to attend. Sunday rest, decreed as early as January 1620, stamped Batavia with the externals of a godly city.Batavia's authorities made distinction between European, Eurasian, and Indonesian. While religion was a unifying bond, Asian and part-Asian ranked lower socially. It is true that wealthy, highly placed men could promote their part-Asian sons and that Eurasian men in settlements subsidiary to Batavia, and in Batavia itself in the eighteenth century, did rise to positions of influence and authority.According to orphanage regulations of 1752, clothing was allocated in the following manner. To European girls were given each year: 2 blouses of ordinary bleached cotton; 4 bodices of Chinese linen; 2 chintz skirts; 2 sailor-style kebayas (overblouses); 2 kebayas of Surat cloth; 1Makassar sarong; 3 handkerchiefs; 3 pairs of stockings; 2 pairs of shoes; and 2 pairs of sandals. Every second year they were to receive 1 cotton floral frock and 1 pair of stays. The clothing rations for Mestiza girls consisted of: 2 fine blouses of guinea cloth; 1 coarse blouse of bleached cloth; 3 bodices of Chinese linen; 2 sailor-style kebayas; 4 fine Bengali head veils; 1 fine garment of Indian cloth; 2 handkerchiefs; 2 pairs of shoes; 2 pairs of sandals; and 3 pairs of stockings. It will be noticed that the Mestizas' issue had no article of distinctively European dress, such as the corsets; instead, Mestizas [one of the terms employed by the Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to describe people of mixed birth] received more items of Asian costume, such as the head veils."It looks like I need one more session to deliver Jean Gelman Taylor perspective about Jakarta, Jacatra or Batavia. So, let's move on to the next session, bi 'idhnillah."While waiting for adjoining session, Sansevieria sang,Dan bawaku kesana[And take me there]dunia fatamorgana[mirage realm]Termanja-manja oleh rasa[Spoiled by the taste]dan 'ku terbawa[and I got carried away]terbang tinggi oleh suasana *)[fly high by the atmosphere]
Citations & References:
- Jean-Louis Desalles, Why We Talk: The Evolutionary Origins of Language, 2007, Oxford University Press
- David McNeill, Why We Gesture: The surprising Role of Hand Movements in Communication, 2016, Cambridge University Press
- Loretta Malandro Ph. D, Speak Up, Show Up and Stand Out, 2015, McGraw-Hill Education
- T. M. Grimsrud, Humans were not created to sit-and why you have to refurnish your life, 1990, Ergonomics
- Edward Tenner, Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity, 2009, Vintage Books
- Jean Gelman Taylor, Batavia: Europeans and Eurasians in Colonial Indonesia, 2009, the University of Wisconsin Press
*) "Sebenarnya Cinta" written by Sabrang Mowo Damar Panuluh
