Stories from Cananga Tree (9)

"Uncle asked his nephew, 'If I gave you two cats and another two cats and another two, how many would you have?'

'Seven,' his nephew replied.

'No, listen carefully ... If I gave you two cats, and another two cats and another two, how many would you have?"

Again, came the reply, 'Seven.'

'Let me put it to you differently,' the uncle added, 'If I gave you two apples, and another two apples and another two, how many would you have?'

'Six,' the answer came according to mathematics.

'Good,' the uncle responded, 'Now, if I gave you two cats, and another two cats, and another two, how many would you have?"

But still, the reaction was, 'Seven!'

'O nephew, where in the heck do you get seven from?!' the uncle annoyed.

'Because I've already got a freaking cat!' replied his nephew."

"Since Indonesian Reformations in 1998, a good and clean government has been an aim. It seems that the theme: Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme (KKN)—corruption, collusion, and nepotism—will open a battle cry. A broad definition of corruption, which can incorporate collusion and nepotism is the misuse of public office for private gain. Nepotism is expected to be out, according to the Reformation, but still, it has pushed deeper," Cananga went on while looking at a portrait of what the media called 'Adorable': both hands of General 08 holding Abah's arms. Oh, it turns out that the most adorable person among the adorable ones is Abah!

"Dinara Safina writes about Favoritism and Nepotism in an organization. Favoritism, from the Latin word 'favor' meaning 'mercy', has the sense of unfair and prejudicial patronage of minions in office to the prejudice of common cause. Favoritism in state and social life appears more often than not as to passionate patronage of pets (favorites) and their appointment to superior positions despite their having neither capabilities nor experiences necessary for such duties. Therefore, a favorite is a person being in the confidence of his chief and affecting his solutions to move up the career ladder thanks to a sense of having been chosen.

The term 'favoritism' is closely intertwined with such notions as nepotism (from the Latin word 'nepos', 'nepotis', meaning 'grandson, nephew') as well as cronyism (for instance, employment according to the principle of old university ties) granted to relatives or friends regardless of their professional values. Foreign Words Dictionary reports nepotism to be the official patronage of relatives and right guys, i.e. cronyism. It is implies that favoritism and nepotism take place in such cases where a patron vested with power pushes forward a favorite or nepot to move up the career ladder irrespective of their experience, knowledge, services, and advances.

In Safina’s opinion, the consequences of favoritism and nepotism can be: personnel demotivation; personnel apathy, loss of self-belief and abilities; social alienation, the feeling of being needless in the organization; permanent fear and negative anticipatory thinking (fear of demoting from the position being occupied, rightsizing, etc.); dismissal of high-potential co-workers desperate to occupy the desired position because it is already occupied by a favorite; manpower policy inefficient solutions e.g. assignment to a position those employees who do not deserve it at all by their moral and professional criteria; restriction or lack of competition about promising projects or senior positions among the co-workers; irresponsible behavior on the part of favorites and nepots given their certitude 'I won’t be punished because I’m a pet or relative'; favorites’ unrestrained behavior putting at hazard economic security of the organization activities; destructing the foundations of the teamwork; creating weak ('unhealthy') organizational culture characterized by intrigues and mobbing’s flourishing, i.e. psychological and in some extreme cases physical terrorizing by favorite in view of his sense of impunity; a favorite’s negative influence upon managerial decision making is evident in the fact that the fauvorite issuing from his interests imposes upon chief his considerations about who must be either employed, contracted, closed a transaction or not, etc. Safina considers that the advancement of favoritism and nepotism taken as a whole puts at hazard organization development.

Favoritism and nepotism keep down effective competition for superior positions and impede high performers’ career progress which turns out to be one of the reasons for the 'brain drain' in a country. Certainly, talented scientists, highly-skilled professionals and entrepreneurs leave the country for a variety of reasons among which are unfavourable institutional environment for business operations, low level of labour remuneration, inadequate equipment, lag in technology and unfavourable working environment. Favouritism and particularly cronyism facilitate corruption. Hence, the inference should be drawn that favouritism and nepotism adversely affect organizational and economic development.

Decades of research in political science, economics, and anthropology, says Jone L. Pearce, have demonstrated that nepotism and cronyism are bad for organizational performance. Nepotism and cronyism damage exactly the kinds of social relationships that make for a humane and tolerable workplace and foster organizational performance. There is no evidence that nepotism and cronyism facilitate the kinds of personal relationships I-O psychologists would seek, and there is substantial research evidence (as well as the personal conclusions of anyone who has ever seen nepotism and cronyism in operation in an actual organization) that nepotism and cronyism undermine organizations and the people who work in them. Nepotism and cronyism are bad for employees who are forced to weigh conflicting obligations, they are bad for coworkers who become demoralized when they suspect the worst, and they are bad for organizational performance.

Nepotism can be defined as favoritism towards relatives, usually in the form of offering them jobs, write Rimvydas Ragauskas and Ieva Valeškaitė. In the public sector, it is considered a particularly toxic phenomenon as it goes against the public interest: citizens generally expect that public employees should deserve their jobs, hired according to merit-based criteria. Nepotism breaks the link between employment and meritocracy and can create opportunities for state exploitation. In other words, nepotism imposes costs on a society that can range from unfair competition for employment opportunities to embezzlement of public funds.

Nepotism in the public sector is a salient problem, researchers have provided a body of evidence about adverse micro- and macro-level consequences of nepotism in the public sector. At the micro level, it has been shown that being a relative of politicians or public sector employees gives a sizable advantage in the labor market. Close relatives of public employees and politicians are both more likely to be employed in the public, or even private, sector and earn higher salaries. Nepotism also represents a deficiency of meritocracy, as less qualified individuals, are shown to most benefit from corrupt hiring and career advancement practices.

Researchers have also demonstrated how the effects of nepotism ripple into the broader economy. It can skew distributions of wealth and status, which in extreme cases may lead to social unrest. In addition, it has the potential to lower the quality of public services. Furthermore, it creates negative welfare consequences through wasteful spending or even direct embezzlement of public funds.

Nepotism is more prevalent when public-sector wages are set above an optimal level and recruitment decisions are placed in the hands of individuals rather than, say, hiring committees. For example, research by Geys (2017) demonstrates that electorates prioritize meritocracy over belonging to political dynasties, while politicians tend to prefer family members—even if they are less qualified—when making hiring decisions.

On the other hand, the broader literature on patronage offers several hints towards the possible determinates of nepotism. Researchers have demonstrated that public employment is often higher in less developed regions. Public employment then can be seen as a redistributive policy, which leads to over-employment in the public sector but can alleviate unemployment and economic insecurity problems in less developed areas. A competing explanation suggests that excessive public employment is not a policy meant to maximize social welfare, but rather a rent-extraction device deployed in response to demands by pressure groups. The pressure to create public jobs is higher where other employment opportunities are scarce.

The prevalence of nepotism proposes an alternative narrative, suggesting that the ballooning size of the public sector might result from bureaucrats taking advantage of their position to extract rents. In this scenario, public servants who already benefit from taxpayers gain additional utility by distributing jobs to their close relatives. It is argued that an excess in public employment might be the result of opportunistic behaviour by poli- ticians and bureaucrats who are not reacting to public needs or pressure from lobbying groups but rather are serving their own narrow interests. In municipalities where employ- ment opportunities are scarce, relatives of public employees have fewer alternatives to get well-paying jobs, and bureaucrats feel more pressure to employ them.

Researchers have already demonstrated that patronage leads to overstaffing; lower quality of public services; and even put a drag on economic growth due to wasteful diversions of resources away from productive investment. Similarly, nepotism research has shown that nepotism leads to suboptimal allocations of public sector jobs and creates negative welfare consequences due to a lower quality of public ser- vices, wastefulness, or just outright fraud.

Nepotism is a common hiring mechanism in (family) firms where families use their control to hire family members—therefore perpetuating family involvement over time and across generations. It is thus the practice of nepotism that facilitates commonly held family goals of passing the firm leadership on to the next generation. However, since nepotism discriminates against non-family members, it has been characterized as detrimental to society. Some studies show that nepotism can be detrimental to the firm itself.

Peter Jaskiewicz [et al] suggest that based on family conditions that are indicative of the type of social exchange relationship between family members, nepotism types can be distinguished. Hiring that is based on family ties without consideration of family conditions is what is referred to as entitlement nepotism. Entitlement nepotism can occur, be stable, and be supported by others based on family or cultural traditions. Because it can be so deeply embedded, this type of nepotism can also be dysfunctional, dangerous, and detrimental to firms. Entitlement nepotism mirrors the model of man that underlies the literature on asymmetrical altruism, agency theory, and transaction cost economics in family business. The underlying assumption is that an agentic relationship between family members can involve egoistic goals, information asymmetries, low levels of trust, and eventual exploitation of exchange partners. Entitled nepots are more likely to exploit family firm resources for personal gain rather than to use them for the collective benefit of current and future family firm owners.

Nepotism is associated with the family conditions of interdependence, previous interactions, and cultural norms that support obligations to family members is referred to as reciprocal nepotism. Reciprocal nepotism extends previously established perspectives on nepotism outcomes and helps explain the potentially superior performance of firms that take advantage of generalized exchanges among family members in their employment policies. Although family exchange relationships vary significantly, they hold more potential than nonfamily relationships for a long-term, stable, and generalized social exchange relationship and indirect reciprocity. The act of nepotism can select a family member who shares a generalized exchange with the family decision-makers. In such cases, the nepot will feel indebted to the family member for hiring him or her.

Carol L. Vinton exposed that Nepotism is a human resource practice that affects all kinds of family and nonfamily organizations. Nepotism has impacts on some managerial issues.

According to Alma Shehu Lokaj, nepotism is a form of discrimination in which members of the family or friends are hired not because of their talents, or experience but only because they are relatives to the owner or the executives of the enterprise. Nepotism is a common problem in almost all organizations and it affects the morale, culture, and overall performance of the organization. Nepotism is considered a form of corruption and actions must be taken to combat this phenomenon even the public says that is impossible to combat nepotism.

In the next episode, we will discuss the topic of Safar again. Bi Idznillah."

Cananga then sang,

Dimana oh dimana, cinta yang sejati?

[Where oh where, the true love is?]

Kucari, kucari, telah lama kucari

[I'm looking, I'm looking, I've been looking for a long time]

Ternyata oh ternyata, tak perlu mencari

[It turns out, oh it turns out, no need to find out]

Karena, karena, kamulah orangnya *)

[Because, because, you're the one]

Citations & References:

- Fiona Robertson-Snape, Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism in Indonesia, The New Politics of Corruption, Third World Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 3, 1999, Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

- Dinara Safina, Favouritism and Nepotism in an Organization: Causes and Effects, Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 2015, Elsevier

- Jone L. Pearce, Cronyism and Nepotism Are Bad for Everyone: The Research Evidence, Industrial and Organizational Psychology Volume 8 Issue 01 pp 41 - 44, March 2015, Cambridge Journals

- Rimvydas Ragauskas & Ieva Valeškaitė, Nepotism, Political Competition and Overemployment, Political Research Exchange Volume 2; Issue 1, 2020, Informa

- Peter Jaskiewicz, Klaus Uhlenbruck, David B. Balkin and Trish Reay, Is Nepotism Good or Bad? Types of Nepotism and Implications for Knowledge Management, Family Business Review, 24 January 2013, SAGE

- Karen L. Vinton, Nepotism: An Interdisciplinary Model, Family Business Review Volume 11; Issue 4, 1998, John Wiley and Sons

- Alma Shehu Lokaj, Nepotism as a Negative Factor in Organization Performance, Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol 4 No 2 S1, August 2015, MCSER Publishing

*) "Kamulah Orangnya (Sendiri)" performed by Indra Oktiana

[Episode 10]

[Episode 8]

Bahasa

Stories from Cananga Tree (8)

"A man was visiting his friend who worked abroad as a gardener at the house of a very rich man. They were allowed to look around the house and finally came to a corner of the room where there was a scale.

. 'whatever hapens,' said the colleague,' 'please don’t step on it!'

'Why not?' asked the man.

'Because every time my lady mistress does, she lets out an awful scream!'”

"We all have defining moments—meaningful experiences that stand out in our memory. These moments seem to be the product of fate, luck, or maybe a higher power’s interventions that we can't control. Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories. When we cherish those great moments, we probably sit on the beach feeling the sun on our skin. Or sitting in the veranda looking at the stars and moon," said Cananga while looking at three books piled up on the table. The first book entitled 'Perjuangan Kita' [Our Struggle] written by Sutan Sjahrir, one of the Indonesian founding fathers. The second book, 'Madilog' written by Tan Malaka, an Indonesian National Hero. And the third book was 'Catatan Seorang Demonstran' (Annotations of a Demonstrator), a diary of a Chinese Indonesian activist, Soe Hok Gie. Then Cananga read the Decree of five judges which stated that there was no nepotism—even though everybody knew that someone had entered through the back door, no 'pork barrel' politics—even though everybody knew it happened, all relevant institutions had carried out their duties well—even though everybody knew that 'it was all set', and they suggested that everything was fine—and everybody knows that taghut will endanger democracy. It also proves Levitsky and Ziblatt's concern that 'democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.'

If only the three authors of the book read it, you won't stop thinking, Tan Malaka would slam his Madilog and say, 'Bad and good are bad and good for society itself. It originates from society itself, from interactions between humans and humans in society itself. Good actions bring good consequences. Bad actions have bad consequences for society itself. Bad and good laws can be learned and formed from the history of all nations and countries, past and present. There is no longer any need for Ghosts or Gods as the beginning and end of humans and their morals. Instead, the Ghosts and Gods meet their end in humans and their real morals, which are based on society. Remember that from beyond the grave, my voice will be louder than on earth.'

Sutan Sjahrir would say, 'The Republic of Indonesia that we fought for as a tool in our people's revolution gets its full price if we fill it with genuine democracy. For us, a meaningful victory is a victory that contains content, not just a victory for name and honor. The real guidance for our political struggle must be addressed to that content. National struggles in general are not free from the danger of being too influenced by name and appearance. Therefore, what is often called a national victory often proves empty for the people at large. If we price our Independent Indonesia at the price of genuine democracy, then in our political struggle against the world its contents are at stake. The Republic of Indonesia is only the name that we give to the content that we intend and desire.'

Then, what about Soe Hok Gie? What will he do? It seemed he would not say anything, but immediately joined the demonstrators for the third time.

People have a natural tendency to push back when they feel pushed. When the reactive pushing and pulling are stopped and seek out the best way to harness our power and allow others to do the same, the energy flows and win-win solutions are achieved. Having the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others, or the course of events, as the three people mentioned above did, is power. Every person has control of their power—if not, he will be a loser.

"The cycles of the sun, moon, and stars exist whether or not our planet's human inhabitants feel challenged to appropriate them to measure time. But if they did, as was usually the case, their societies' structuring of observable time was and is based on astronomy: the succession of days and nights punctuated by the waxing and waning of the moon, the movement of the sun and the rhythm of the seasons or a combination of the two. The rest is manipulation, the elaboration of mental constructs that are abstract things.

The earliest people on the planet surely recognized the cycles of the most basic astronomical motions. The Sun and Moon rose and set each day, and moved through the sky with predictable patterns, and the weather followed a cycle related to the movement of the Sun concerning the stars. The units of days, months, and years naturally followed. With further observations, those watching the sky could visualize patterns in the stars and distinguish comets and 'stars' that 'wandered' among the others.

Dramatic events such as solar and lunar eclipses were seen, and, in some cases, they were recorded and predicted, and their 'meanings' interpreted. The observation and measurement of these cycles were important for daily life, religious practices, and agriculture, and they became the bases for timekeeping and calendars.

The development of calendars varied, depending largely on religion, culture, politics, and economics. Religious practices and holidays along with agriculture cycles have been defined in terms of lunar sightings, solar motion, and the appearance of the stars in the sky. Hence, calendars have been based on lunar or solar motions, or a combination of the two. Unfortunately, years, months, and days are not integral multiples of each other, and this has led to complications in creating calendars.

There is enormous historical and contextual variation among calendars, says Barbara Freyer Stowasser, which may be less surprising than the similarities that can also exist among calendar systems of vastly disparate civilizations (such as the fact that the Mayan, Aztec, Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian and Chinese calendars were all at one time or another rooted in a sexagesimal system of numbers). Some calendric parallelisms and similarities among civilizations have been and are coincidental, while others suggest the existence of often long-range but frequently obscure cultural influences.

According to Stowasser, 'Time' is always structured for a purpose, and usually more than one. Historically, these have been a mixture of the economic, the political, and, in a broader sense, the ideological. The latter prominently involves religion; most calendars appear to have grown from some religious impulse, while a few of the modern secular ones (like the postrevolutionary French calendar) were designed in the combative mode of antireligion and usually had a short shelf life. (The French revolutionary calendar, introduced in 1793, had its epoch, or starting point, fixed on 22 September 1792, the day of the proclamation of the republic and date of the autumnal equinox; 13 years later, it was all over, when Napoleon reinstituted the Gregorian calendar, from 1 January 1806).

Against this background, the lunisolar calendar of pre-Islamic Arabia (which started and ended in the autumn) was abolished. The pagan method of intercalation periodically wedged an additional month between the two sacred months of Dhu al-Hijja and al-Muharram, interrupting the sequence of the four sacred spring months (Dhu al-Qa'da, Dhu al-Hijjah, al-Muharram, and Rajab) of the lunisolar year.

Science factor and the Islamic Calendar are closely related. Time measurement holds a prominent place among the rules and regulations of Muslim rituals. Its tasks can be achieved without knowledge of astronomy and sophisticated technology. But the very importance of predicting and defining lunar cycles and daily prayer times (and also calculating the correct local qibla, prayer direction toward the Ka'ba in Mecca) made astronomy an Islamic science of practical merit. The sophistication of astronomical and mathematical knowledge and discovery, even at an early date in Islamic history, derived in part from this tight linkage with religion that would often ensure funding for scientific projects endowed for the moral and spiritual well-being of the community. It also derived from the fact that the Islamic realm, by way of conquest and expansion, fell heir to several much older civilizations that had long traditions of scholarship in the theoretical and applied sciences. Among the reasons to embrace this ancient and foreign legacy, the religious motive was operative for many or most Muslim scientists, meaning that their motivation had deeper roots than mere practical utility. Astronomers saw their studies as a way of understanding Allah's plan for the world and of glorifying Him by exalting His works. For others, the main benefit of astronomical knowledge may have been the skills it lent to the practising astrologer. Perhaps the most constant and important impulse for the study of astronomy or any other science in the Islamic world at that time, however, was the ideal of science for its own sake. From an early date, Arabic Islamic culture was profoundly and solidly a scientific culture, and the translation movement of Indian, Persian and Hellenistic sources into Arabic, was a consequence rather than the source of this interest.

The ‘largest’ time system of all, Islamic chronography, has received the least attention in the literature on Islam and time. Islam's calendar of years was established swiftly and early and quickly became a historical fact, yet it is remarkable and significant that this should have been so. When soon after the Prophet's (ﷺ) death, the Islamic realm expanded to include all of the Persian Empire, most of the provinces of the Byzantine Empire north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, and most of the Iberian Peninsula, a new Islam-focused civilization took shape in these vast territories that privileged Islamic religion and Arabic language over older, indigenous cultural allegiances and linguistic heritages.

One of the fundamental institutions that aided this new civilization in constructing its cultural unity over unprecedented distances was the ritual obligation for every free adult Muslim, if able, to perform at least once in his or her lifetime the pilgrimage to the Ka'ba, Allah's House in Mecca. This religion-mandated mobility created and facilitated the maintenance of regular contact between widely separated Muslim populations and fostered a sense of civilizational identity over large geographical distances.

Another institution that held the Islamic world together was the Islamic calendar. One of its greatest advantages may have been that it was so low maintenance. By adopting a strictly lunar system, the beginnings (and thereby the ends) of the 12 months of the year, and therefore of the year as a whole, could be determined empirically, anywhere, by way of sighting of the new moon that signaled a new month's beginning. This produced months of uneven length in the year.

By opting to go lunar, the official Islamic calendar was, of course, decoupled from the seasons. This created administrative and, especially, taxation problems from the start that Islamic states sought to resolve by adopting some sort of secondary calendar, varying from region to region, that was typically of pre-Islamic or otherwise extra-Islamic origin. The great benefit of the systemic simplicity of the Islamic lunar calendar, however – no matter how inherently fluid – was that it eliminated the need for complicated rules of calendar adjustments, as was the case with all solar calendars.

In ancient Egypt, the new day began at dawn. To the Babylonians, it began at dusk. Even though their natural day began at sunrise and ended at sunset, and their hours were seasonal, the Romans started their civil day at midnight, which is the reckoning that underlay the Julian and now by extension the Gregorian calendar. Since the Islamic day begins at sunset, the night (layl) is therefore, the first part of yawm (‘full day’) (except that yawm can also signify ‘daylight hours’, that is, the daylight portion of the 24-hour ‘full day’). The convention to use the arrival of night as the date line fits well with the preeminence of the lunar cycle in the Islamic calendar as a whole, since the 12 months of the Islamic year, and so also the year itself, are calculated in terms of lunar cycles. Since 1925 astronomers have universally counted the day from the midnight hour. When in 1972 radio stations across the world began to broadcast their time in terms of Coordinated Universal Time predicated on Greenwich mean time, it became global practice to start the ‘official’ day at midnight.

The Qur'an’s vision of time is likewise Allah-centred. Time is Allah's creation. There can be no abstract time because Allah, the Ruler of the universe Who is beyond time, is Rabb over time from the beginning to the end of Creation. While time is a function of Allah's Omnipotence, so is its measurement a divine gift that Allah created for the benefit of mankind. The Qur'an presents richly designed examples that prove Allah's authorship of all celestial movements and their utility to the human race as devices to measure (but not to control) time. Night and day and even the 12 lunar months of the year are ‘appointed times for the believing people’. Reading the sky for the prayers of the day and for the 12 months of the year is a constant reminder of Allah's Power and Providence.

Time is not an abstract force. The pre-Islamic concept of dahr, death is bound by time is a pagan fallacy. Allah says,

وَقَالُوْا مَا هِيَ اِلَّا حَيَاتُنَا الدُّنْيَا نَمُوْتُ وَنَحْيَا وَمَا يُهْلِكُنَآ اِلَّا الدَّهْرُۚ وَمَا لَهُمْ بِذٰلِكَ مِنْ عِلْمٍۚ اِنْ هُمْ اِلَّا يَظُنُّوْنَ

'And they say, 'There is not but our worldly life; we die and live [i.e., some people die and others live, replacing them], and nothing destroys us except time.' And they have of that no knowledge; they are only assuming.' [QS. Al-JAthiyah (45):24]

The computation of days, months, and years is rooted in Allah's will. He, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, says,

اَلشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ بِحُسْبَانٍۙ وَّالنَّجْمُ وَالشَّجَرُ يَسْجُدَانِ

'The sun and the moon [move] by precise calculation, and the stars and trees prostrate [they submit obediently to the laws of Allah].' [QS. Ar-Rahman (55):5-6]

In another verse, Allah says,

اَلَمْ تَرَ اَنَّ اللّٰهَ يَسْجُدُ لَهٗ مَنْ فِى السَّمٰوٰتِ وَمَنْ فِى الْاَرْضِ وَالشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ وَالنُّجُوْمُ وَالْجِبَالُ وَالشَّجَرُ وَالدَّوَاۤبُّ وَكَثِيْرٌ مِّنَ النَّاسِۗ وَكَثِيْرٌ حَقَّ عَلَيْهِ الْعَذَابُۗ وَمَنْ يُّهِنِ اللّٰهُ فَمَا لَهٗ مِنْ مُّكْرِمٍۗ اِنَّ اللّٰهَ يَفْعَلُ مَا يَشَاۤءُ

'Do you not see [i.e., know] that to Allah prostrates whoever is in the heavens and whoever is on the earth and the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, the moving creatures and many of the people? But upon many the punishment has been justified [and therefore decreed]. And he whom Allāh humiliates - for him there is no bestower of honor. Indeed, Allāh does what He wills.' [QS. Al-Hajj (22):18]

The 'Ummah' will always pay attention to time, and Allah give them the direction,

هُوَ الَّذِيْ جَعَلَ الشَّمْسَ ضِيَاۤءً وَّالْقَمَرَ نُوْرًا وَّقَدَّرَهٗ مَنَازِلَ لِتَعْلَمُوْا عَدَدَ السِّنِيْنَ وَالْحِسَابَۗ مَا خَلَقَ اللّٰهُ ذٰلِكَ اِلَّا بِالْحَقِّۗ يُفَصِّلُ الْاٰيٰتِ لِقَوْمٍ يَّعْلَمُوْنَ

'It is He who made the sun a shining light and the moon a derived light and determined for it phases—that you may know the number of years and account [of time]. Allah has not created this except in truth. He details the signs for a people who know.' [QS. Yunus (10):5]

And also,

يَسْـَٔلُوْنَكَ عَنِ الْاَهِلَّةِ ۗ قُلْ هِيَ مَوَاقِيْتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَالْحَجِّ ۗ وَلَيْسَ الْبِرُّ بِاَنْ تَأْتُوا الْبُيُوْتَ مِنْ ظُهُوْرِهَا وَلٰكِنَّ الْبِرَّ مَنِ اتَّقٰىۚ وَأْتُوا الْبُيُوْتَ مِنْ اَبْوَابِهَا ۖ وَاتَّقُوا اللّٰهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُوْنَ

'They ask you, [O Muḥammad], about the crescent moons. Say, 'They are mawaqit [measurements of time] for the people and for ḥajj [pilgrimage].' And it is not righteousness to enter houses from the back, but righteousness is [in] one who fears Allah. And enter houses from their doors. And fear Allāh that you may succeed.' [QS. Al-Baqarah (2):189]

Safar is the second month of the lunar Islamic calendar, in Arabic words, it means traveling or migration. In the pre-Islamic Arabian, houses were empty this time while their occupants gathered food. From an Islamic perspective, traveling can be obligatory if someone travels to perform Hajj, study, or visit parents. It is Sunnah if the intention to do good deeds such as visiting relatives and friends, performing Umrah, and helping fellow brothers and sisters. It is permissible if one wants to have recreation or something similar. It is makruh if the intention is only to increase wealth and worldly needs. And it is Haram if it is intended to carry out immoral acts. So, the priority of traveling depends on the intention and purpose.

Traveling has several benefits, Imam Shafi'i (رحمه الله) said, 'Travel from your village to seek virtue. Go on a journey because there are five benefits to it: getting rid of boredom and earning a fortune, gaining knowledge, manners, and good friends.' Therefore, Fiqh also regulates the procedures of worship while traveling.

We will continue our discussion in the next episode, bi 'idhnillah."

Then, Cananga sang,

Everybody knows the deal is rotten

Old Black Joe's still picking cotton

For your ribbons and bows

And everybody knows *)

Citations & References:

- Sutan Sjahrir, Perjuangan Kita, 1991, Rumah Syahrir

- Tan Malaka, Madilog: Materialisme, Dialektika dan Logika (1943), 1951, Widjaya

- Soe Hok Gie, Catatan Seorang Demonstran, 1989, LP3ES

Barbara Freyer Stowasser, The Day Begins at Sunset: Perceptions of Time in the Islamic World, 2014, I.B.Tauris

- Dennis D. McCarthy & P. Kenneth Seidelmann, Time: From Earth Rotation to Atomic Physics, 2018, Cambridge University Press

*) "Everybody Knows" written by Leonard Cohen

[Episode 9]

[Episode 7]

Bahasa

Stories from Cananga Tree (7)

"One morning, a father told his teenage daughter, 'Did I hear the clock strike four as you came in last night?'

'Oh, it started to strike nine Dad,' his daughter replied, 'but I stopped it so that it wouldn’t wake you up.'"

"In pre-modern societies, the most common units of time – the day, the month, and the year —were defined by the three great natural timekeepers—the earth, the moon, and the sun," Cananga continued.

"The rotation of the earth on its axis established the first natural division—light and dark—and the twenty-four-hour period was the shortest unit of the natural clock. Most societies further divided the daylight hours by the apparent movement of the sun across the sky. Because the axis of the earth was tilted at 23.5 degrees, the amount of light in a twenty-four-hour period varied with the seasons (except at the equator). Only at the equinoxes (equal nights)—the Vernal (21 March) and the Autumnal (21 September)—were day and night exactly twelve hours each.

The second natural timekeeper, the moon, revolved around the earth and cycled through its phases in approximately 29.5 days. The interesting thing about the moon was the way its shape changed. When directly between the earth and the sun, it was invisible; as it orbited, however, it waxed, became full, and then waned to a sliver, disappearing entirely. The cycle was repeated again and again. Because these changes—from sliver, to half, to full, and back again – were so readily apparent and since the approximately thirty-day period mimicked other natural intervals—the female menstrual period and the cyclic behavior of certain marine creatures—the cycle assumed great importance in the ancient world and was the basis of many early calendars.

The third natural timekeeper was the sun. Although it took the earth approximately 365.25 days to travel around the sun, astronomers deter- mined the precise length of the solar year in two slightly different ways. The tropical solar year, employed by the astronomers of the Islamic tradition, was the time it took the sun, in its apparent movement, to return to the same reference point on the ecliptic—365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds. That reference point was typically the Vernal Equinox, where the celestial equator intersected the ecliptic (the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun). In astrological terminology it was the first point of Aries and was usually dated 21 March (although it could sometimes fall on the 19th or the 20th). The sidereal solar year, by contrast, employed in the Indic astronomical tradition, measured the apparent motion of the sun with reference to a fixed background star. The two definitions differed slightly on the length of the solar year—the sidereal being about twenty minutes longer than the tropical.

The word 'calendar' comes from the Latin 'calendarium,' an interest register or account book. At its most basic, the calendar is a way of keeping track of the first natural time division—the day. It is an abstract method of naming the days by allocating each to a week, a month, and a year. A guide to day-to-day activities, the calendar enables a society to fix its important rituals and festivals. It offers a way of recording and arranging the events of the past as well as calculating commitments for the future. To produce such an abstract temporal system was the impetus behind most early attempts to observe and record the positions of the heavenly bodies.

The tracking of time is, in a deep way, a signature preoccupation not just of modern society, but of human civilization in general. The process of building and refining timekeeping devices has been one of the great drivers of progress in science and technology for millennia: from Neolithic solstice markers through mechanical watches to ultra-precise laser frequency standards, we are and always have been a species that builds clocks.

At the most basic level, says Chat Orzel, a clock is a thing that ticks. The 'tick' here can be the audible physical tick we associate with a mechanical clock like the one in Union’s Memorial Chapel, caused by collisions between gear teeth as a heavy pendulum swings back and forth. It can also be a more subtle physical effect, like the alternating voltage that provides the time signal for the electronic wall clocks in our classrooms. It can be exceedingly fast, like the nine-billion-times-a-second oscillations of the microwaves used in the atomic clocks that provide the time signals transmitted to smartphones via the internet, or ponderously slow like the changing position of the rising sun on the horizon. In every one of these clocks, though, there is a tick: a regular, repeated action that can be counted to mark the passage of time.

For people in modern societies, solstice markers and calendars are not the first objects we picture when the subject of timekeeping comes up. When we think of timekeeping technology, for the most part, we envision something that is both faster and showier. What immediately comes to mind for most people when the subject turns to timekeeping technology is a clock: a device for measuring time on much shorter intervals than a day. We use clocks for numerous purposes: to limit work hours or sporting competitions, to coordinate meetings with friends and colleagues, or to track the unfolding of rapidly changing events, and so on. Clockmakers employ a wide variety of displays to achieve this end, from lighted displays to ringing bells to musical alarms.

A mechanical clock whose audible 'tick-tock' provides us with the term for the repeating process at the core of any timekeeping method. These days, it’s very common for scientists and science writers to speak of the operation of the universe in terms of 'clockwork.' The solar system, the galaxy, and even the universe as a whole is cast as a mechanical clock: an intricate system with innumerable tiny parts moving in complex ways that ticks along smoothly and reliably from the known past into the predictable future. It operates according to simple rules and principles, and its various patterns and cycles require no outside intervention to keep them repeating over and over.

The Ummah begin their day at sundown, because the calendar is lunar and the months begin with the sighting of the crescent shortly after sunset. The sunset (Maghrib time) marks the beginning of the new twenty-four-hour period (Yawm) or 'day'. For example, at Maghrib of Thursday starts the night of Friday (Laylat al-Jumu'ah) and at Fajr time of the night of Friday starts the daytime of Friday (Nahar al-Jumu'ah) and it lasts until the next Maghrib. The same goes for all the others days.

There are five canonical prayers (salat); the night prayers are determined in terms of horizon and twilight phenomena and the times of the daylight prayers are defined in terms of shadow lengths.

The five daily prayers are found in several verses of the Quran. Isha' and Fajr prayers are mentioned directly. Allah says,

يٰٓاَيُّهَا الَّذِيْنَ اٰمَنُوْا لِيَسْتَأْذِنْكُمُ الَّذِيْنَ مَلَكَتْ اَيْمَانُكُمْ وَالَّذِيْنَ لَمْ يَبْلُغُوا الْحُلُمَ مِنْكُمْ ثَلٰثَ مَرّٰتٍۗ مِنْ قَبْلِ صَلٰوةِ الْفَجْرِ وَحِيْنَ تَضَعُوْنَ ثِيَابَكُمْ مِّنَ الظَّهِيْرَةِ وَمِنْۢ بَعْدِ صَلٰوةِ الْعِشَاۤءِۗ ثَلٰثُ عَوْرٰتٍ لَّكُمْۗ لَيْسَ عَلَيْكُمْ وَلَا عَلَيْهِمْ جُنَاحٌۢ بَعْدَهُنَّۗ طَوَّافُوْنَ عَلَيْكُمْ بَعْضُكُمْ عَلٰى بَعْضٍۗ كَذٰلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ اللّٰهُ لَكُمُ الْاٰيٰتِۗ وَاللّٰهُ عَلِيْمٌ حَكِيْمٌ

'O you who have believed, let those whom your right hands possess and those who have not [yet] reached puberty among you ask permission of you [before entering] at three times: before the dawn prayer and when you put aside your clothing [for rest] at noon and after the night prayer. [These are] three times of privacy [literally, 'exposure' or 'being uncovered'] for you. There is no blame upon you nor upon them beyond these [periods], for they continually circulate among you—some of you, among others. Thus does Allāh make clear to you the verses [i.e., His ordinances]; and Allāh is Knowing and Wise.' [QS. An-Nur (24):58]

The Qur'an does not specify the exact time of prayers are performed, but it does provide instructions. One verse says,

اَقِمِ الصَّلٰوةَ لِدُلُوْكِ الشَّمْسِ اِلٰى غَسَقِ الَّيْلِ وَقُرْاٰنَ الْفَجْرِۗ اِنَّ قُرْاٰنَ الْفَجْرِ كَانَ مَشْهُوْدًا

'Establish prayer at the decline of the sun [from its meridian] until the darkness of the night [i.e., the period which includes the Zuhr, Aṣr, Maghrib, and Isha’ prayers] and [also] the Qur’ān [i.e., recitation] of dawn [i.e., the Fajr prayer, in which the recitation of the Qur’an is prolonged]. Indeed, the recitation of dawn is ever witnessed (by the angels).' [QS. Al-Isra (17):78]

In short, Salat al-Isha' (evening prayer), after twilight; Salat al-fajr (dawn prayer), at daybreak; Salat al-Zuhr (noon prayer), after noon, the sun just beginning to decline; Salat al-asr (afternoon prayer), the sun still high, white, and pure; Salat al-Maghrib (sunset prayer), when the sun had disappeared over the horizon.

The most important prayer of the week—the noon prayer on Friday—was scheduled for a particular moment rather than for a range of hours, and interest in more exact methods of time reckoning soon developed. By the early thirteenth century, a muwaqqit (timekeeper) had begun to appear on the staff of many mosques. At about the same time the name of another time specialist (the miqati), a munajjim who specialized in spherical astronomy and astronomical timekeeping but who was not a mosque official, became increasingly common in the astronomical/astrological literature.

By the early fifteenth century, the water clock had spread across the Islamic world and had become the instru- ment of choice for the muwaqqit and the muezzin. This interest in more accurate timekeeping was reflected in the new name of the discipline—ilm-il muwaqqit (science of fixed times).

In the first decade after the Prophet’s (ﷺ) death, the early Muslim community established a new era. In his 'Chronology', Al-Biruni wrote, '... From what has been said above regarding months, intercalation, and leap year it is clear that there are that of the latter there are two varieties, the first, simple, formed of12 months such as the Moslems and Turks and orientals use, each having as a mean of 354 days, but occasionally 353 and 355, this excess and deficiency being outside the control of man. The second, that where intercalat­ion is practiced, and 13 months result as is the case with the Hindus and the Jews as well as the Greeks in ancient times and the pre-Islamic Arabs. On the other hand, the solar year has 365 days and a fraction which is nearly a quarter; it is employed by the Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, and Sogdians (or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya), but these differ as to their method of dealing with the fraction.

A ’date’ is a point of time well-established at which something has taken place knowledge of which has reached and been diffused among the people, such as the formation of a new religion or sect, or some occurrence in a state which, like a great battle or a devastating hurricane, has arrested attention to such an extent that it is taken as an artificial point of departure from which to reckon years, months or days, so that whenever it is desired, the amount of time which has since elapsed can be known, or the relative dates of events fixed whether before or after.

The Mussulman era [at-taqwim al-hijri, denoted as AH (Anno Hegirae)] dates from the year when the Prophet (ﷺ) removed, hijra, from Mecca to Medina [16 July 622 AD]: its years are all lunar. That of the people of the Book is the Greek one known as the era of Alexander, although it is from the beginning of the year when Seleucus was appointed King of Antioch [1 Sept. 311 BCE], Christians employ it Syrian or Greek years, while the Jews use their lunar years with the necessary intercalations, and the Harranians, who call themselves Sabians have cus­toms similar to the Jews. Other eras are known to the people of the Book such as the creation of Adam (عليه السلام) and the deluge of Noah (عليه السلام), the drowning of Pharaoh (عليه لعنة الله) the erection by Solomon (عليه السلام) of the temple in Jerusalem, and the destruction of that temple by Nebuchadrezzar (Bukhtnasar), but there are controversies about these, consequently it has been agreed that the era of Alexander is most satisfactory because of the fewer difficulties at­ tending it, and the smaller number of years involved.

During the ignorance the Arabs reckoned from cele­brated battles among themselves, and before the Hijra, the year of the Elephant when the Abyssinians coming from Yamen to destroy the Kaba were routed and in which the Prophet (ﷺ) was born.

The Persians have been accustomed to date from the beginning of the reign of their reigning king, and on his death to use that of his successor. At the time their empire was destroyed, they were dating from Yazdeger ibn Shahryar bin Khusrow Parviz the last of the Khusrows, the years being without intercalation the majority of the Magians date from his murder 20 years after his accession.

The Egyptians on the other hand date from Nabonassar, a practice which Ptolemy followed in the Almagest' in determining the mean motions of the planets, while regarding the fixed stars he dated from Antoninus the then King of Greece. At present, however, the modern Egyptians who intercal­ate along with Rome date from Augustus the first of the Emperors. In astronomical books, the era of Diocletian is always found. He was the last of the pagan Emperors of Rome; after him they became Christians.

Among the Hindus, many eras are in use, some old, some new. The best-known and most current of them is Shakalala which means the era of Shaka, that man who became vic­torious and all-powerful at that time, and tyrannized over the people; when they killed him, they made this era from the year of their delivery from him.

Necessarily every nation has one or more eras; they are only of two kinds, whether knowledge of them has reached us or not. However, this is a long story and has been dealt with more conveniently in another place.'

For Muslims, the position of the sun plays a crucial role in determining prayer times. Finding the most accurate bearing of the Kaaba, in Makkah, has been an integral part of Islamic science since its inception. As such, astronomy has always played an important role. Muslim polymaths, like Al-Biruni, Al Battuni, Al Khawarizmi, Thabit Ibn Qurra, and Ali Al Qushji, to Ulugh Bey, have always helped innovate and expand the discipline. But it's not only Muslim men who have contributed. In the 10th century, a Muslim woman, Maryam Al Ijlya - also known as Mariam Al Astrulabi - changed the face of astronomy forever by pioneering the astrolabe. Her contribution to astronomy was recognized in 1990 when Henry H. Holy discovered the main-best asteroid at Palomar Observatory and named it the 7069 Al Ijliyye. Astrolabes are used for astronomical observations, timekeeping, and navigation. Mariam's innovation also laid the foundation for managing transport and communication routes. She also contributed to tracking the position of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, helping find the Qiblah and ascertaining prayer times and the date of Ramadan. Mariam is considered one of the 200 most famous astronomers in history.

Astronomy deals with the study of the heavens in an effort to understand the underlying principles governing the behavior of the planets, stars, and galaxies and the Universe in general. To study about the orbiting of the stars and the moving of the celestial bodies upon the incidents by the decree and fate of Allah is permissible, like the doctor deducing, well-being and illness by checking one’s pulse. But if one takes knowledge from the stars, for example, Fortune-telling, and he or she does not have the belief of the decree and fate of Allah in (the influence of anything) and claims to know the unseen itself, he has committed an act of disbelief. So, it is forbidden from an Islamic perspective. Learn from the stars which you can take guidance from, then restrain yourself. Indeed, the signs of Allah are everywhere, not only in the sky but also on land and sea, in plants and animals, and even in yourself.

In the Islamic months, every month, out of the twelve, is original­ly equal to the other, and there is no inherent sanctity that may be attributed to one of them compared to other months. When Allah chooses a par­ticular time for His special blessings, then it acquires sanctity out of His grace.

Abu Huraira (رضي الله عنه) reported that the Prophet (ﷺ) was asked as to which prayer was most excellent after the prescribed prayer, and which fast was most excellent after the month of Ramadan. He (ﷺ) said,

أَفْضَلُ الصَّلاَةِ بَعْدَ الصَّلاَةِ الْمَكْتُوبَةِ الصَّلاَةُ فِي جَوْفِ اللَّيْلِ وَأَفْضَلُ الصِّيَامِ بَعْدَ شَهْرِ رَمَضَانَ صِيَامُ شَهْرِ اللَّهِ الْمُحَرَّمِ

'Prayer offered in the middle of the night and the most excellent fast after (fasting) in the month of Ramadan is the fast in Allah's month al-Muharram.' [Sahih Muslim]

The hadith signifies that the best month of fasting is the month of Muharram, the fasts of the month of Muharram are the most re­wardable ones among the fasts one observes. Although the fasts of the month of Muharram are not obligatory, yet, the one who fasts on these days out of his own will and choice is entitled to a great reward from Allah. The hadith does not mean that the award prom­ised for the last of Muharram can be achieved only by fasting for the whole month. On the contrary, each fast during this month has merit. Therefore, one should avail of this opportunity as much as he can.

According to Ibn Rajab (رحمه الله), since this month is specifically attributed to Allah and fasting is one of the deeds which is attributed to Allah, it was considered appropriate to specify an action for this month which is attributed to Him with an action which is attributed to Him and done solely for Him, viz. fasting. It is said that the reason for attributing this month to Allah is to show that its sanctity belongs to Allah and no one has the right to change this as was the habit of the people of jahiliyyah who used to change its sanctity and transfer it to Safar. He thus makes reference to the fact that it is the month of Allah which He sanctified, and no one from His creation has the right to change this.

Although the month of Muharram is a sanctified month as a whole, yet, the 10th day of Muharram is the most sacred among all its days. The day is named Ashura'. It is more advisable that the fast of Ashura should either be prefixed or suffixed by another fast. It means that one should fast two days the 9th and 10th of Muharram or the 10th and 11th of it.

A righteous person became well-known for his abundant fasting, says Ibn Rajab to explain one of the reasons why Muslims are prescribed to perform fasting. 'The fragrance of a fasting person is better in the sight of Allah than the fragrance of musk,' says the Prophet (ﷺ). No matter how much a fasting person tries to conceal this smell, it spreads to the hearts, and the souls inhale this fragrance. It may well appear after death and on the day of Resurrection.

A righteous person used to fast a lot. The entire world is a month of fasting for the pious people. The day of their ‘id shall be on the day when they meet their Rabb. A greater portion of the day of fasting has passed and the ‘id of meeting Allah has drawn near. Since fasting is supposed to be a secret between the servant and his Rabb, the sincere ones strove to conceal it in every way possible so that no one comes to know of it. He would stand at the jami‘ masjid on a Friday, hold a jug of water in his hand, place its edge to his mouth, and do as if he was sipping from it. The people would be watching him but nothing would go down his throat. He started doing this in order to remove the popularity of his fasting. One of the scholars of the past kept fasting for forty years and no one knew about it. He had a shop. He used to take two loaves of bread everyday from his house and depart towards his shop. On the way, he would give both the loaves in charity. His family members assumed that he was eating the bread in the market-place while the people in the market-place assumed that he ate at home before coming to the shop. No matter how much the truthful people try to conceal their conditions, the fragrance of truth betrays them. When a person conceals a secret, Allah W most certainly brings it into the open.

Finally, there is a door in Paradise whose name is ar-Rayyan. None but those who used to fast shall enter through it. Once they have entered, it will be locked and no one else will be able to go through. Fasting is a shield against the Hell-fire like a shield which one of you uses in battle.

Muharram means 'sacred', the first month of the Islamic calendar with at most thirty days. Warfare in Muharram is forbidden and it has been so since before the advent of Islam. The word Muharram is short for "Muharram Safar" (lit. 'sacred Safar'), which distinguishes in the ancient Arab calendar between Safar I, which was sacred, and Safar II, which was not.

Safar is the second month of the lunar Islamic calendar. The Arabic word safar means 'travel, migration', corresponding to the pre-Islamic Arabian time period when Muslims fled the oppression of Quraish in Mecca and travelled, mostly barefooted, to Madina. We'll continue our discussion about Safar in the next episode, bi 'idhnillah."

Citations & References:

- Stephen P. Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires, 2013, Cambridge University Press

- Chat Orzel, A Brief History of Time Keeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks, 2022, BenBella Books

- Abu'l Rayhan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Al-Biruni, The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology, written in Ghaznah, 1029 A.D., The Translation facing the Text by R.Ramsay Wright, M.A. Edin., LL.D. Tor. and Edin., 1934, published in 2007 by Antioch Gate.

[Episode 8]

[Episode 6]

Bahasa

Stories from Cananga Tree (6)

"In his court, the judge asked the defendant, 'You say that you had pulled the gun on him yet you didn't fire. Why?'

'Well your honor,' replied the accused, 'when I pointed my gun at him, he said, 'How much do you want for that gun?

Now, I ask you, your honor, could I kill a man when he was offering business?'"

"Defining war is as much about what it excludes as what it includes. War is a form of violence, but there are many forms of violence not commonly classed as war. War is a specific form of violence defined first by its political nature. It can be an existential challenge for a political community, even if only a fraction of society fights or directs the war effort," Cananga went on while looking at the Twilight at the horizon, the time between day and night. After sunset, there is a period in which the sky gradually darkens.

"War occurs when the threat or use of armed force against opponents is met by an armed response. It is a socially sanctioned activity, even if what justifies the resort to war has changed over time and is accepted (at least by those who wage it) as a legitimate activity, even though much of what is done in war violates social norms in peacetime. War is usually distinguished from everyday lifetimes of peace–though what differentiates the two has changed over history and it requires significant social

coordination in terms of organization and planning, even if confusion and disorganization have been a hallmark of conflict throughout history. War is mass murder, says Ian Morris, and yet, in perhaps the greatest paradox in history, war has nevertheless been the undertaker’s worst enemy. Contrary to what the song says, war has been good for something: over the long run, it has made humanity safer and richer. War is hell, but—again, over the long run—the alternatives would have been worse. It sounds like a controversial claim, but Morris explains.

By fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have reduced the risk that their members will die violently. This observation rests on one of the major findings of archaeologists and anthropologists over the last century, that Stone Age societies were typically tiny. Chiefly because of the challenges of finding food, people lived in bands of a few dozen, villages of a few hundred, or (very occasionally) towns of a few thousand members. These communities did not need much in the way of internal organization and tended to live on terms of suspicion or even hostility with outsiders.

People generally worked out their differences peacefully, but if someone decided to use force, there were far fewer constraints on him—or, occasionally, her—than the citizens of modern states are used to. Most of the killing was on a small scale, in vendettas and incessant raiding, although once in a while violence might disrupt an entire band or village so badly that disease and starvation wiped all its members out. But because populations were also small, the steady drip of low-level violence took an appalling toll. By most estimates, 10 to 20 percent of all the people who lived in Stone Age societies died at the hands of other humans.

The twentieth century forms a sharp contrast. It saw two world wars, a string of genocides, and multiple government-induced famines, killing a staggering total of somewhere between 100 million and 200 million people. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 150,000 people—probably more people than had lived in the entire world in 50,000 B.C. But in 1945, there were about 2.5 billion people on earth, and over the twentieth century, roughly 10 billion lives were lived—meaning that the century’s 100–200 million war-related deaths added up to just 1 to 2 percent of our planet’s population. If you were lucky enough to be born in the industrialized twentieth century, you were on average ten times less likely to die violently (or from violence’s consequences) than if you were born in a Stone Age society.

This may be a surprising statistic, but the explanation for it is more surprising still. What has made the world so much safer is war itself. It began about ten thousand years ago in some parts of the world, then spreading across the planet, the winners of wars incorporated the losers into larger societies. The only way to make these larger societies work was for their rulers to develop stronger governments, and one of the first things these governments had to do, if they wanted to stay in power, was suppress violence within the society.

The men who ran these governments hardly ever pursued policies of peacemaking purely out of the goodness of their hearts. They cracked down on killing because well-behaved subjects were easier to govern and tax than angry, murderous ones. The unintended consequence, though, was that rates of violent death fell by 90 percent between Stone Age times and the twentieth century.

The process was not pretty. Whether it was the Romans in Britain or the British in India, pacifiers could be just as brutal as the savagery they stamped out. Nor was the process smooth: for short periods in particular places, violent death could spike back up to Stone Age levels. Between 1914 and 1918, for instance, nearly one Serb in six died from violence, disease, or starvation. And, of course, not all governments were equally good at delivering peace. Democracies may be messy, but they rarely devour their children; dictatorships get things done, but they tend to shoot, starve, and gas a lot of people. And yet despite all the variations, qualifications, and exceptions, over the ten-thousand-year-long run, war made the the state, and the state made peace.

While war is the worst imaginable way to create larger, more peaceful societies, it is pretty much the only way humans have found. There isn’t a better way. If the Roman Empire could have been created without killing millions of Gauls and Greeks, if the United States, says Morris, could have been built without killing millions of Native Americans—in these cases and countless others, if conflicts could have been resolved by discussion instead of force, humanity could have had the benefits of larger societies without paying such a high cost. But that did not happen. It is a depressing thought, but the evidence again seems clear. People hardly ever give up their freedom, including their rights to kill and impoverish each other, unless forced to do so, and virtually the only force strong enough to bring this about has been defeat in war or fear that such a defeat is imminent.

As well as making people safer, Morris suggests, the larger societies created by war have also—again, over the long run—made us richer. Peace created the conditions for economic growth and rising living standards. This process too has been messy and uneven: the winners of wars regularly go on rampages of rape and plunder, selling thousands of survivors into slavery and stealing their land. The losers may be left impoverished for generations. It is a terrible, ugly business. And yet, with time—maybe decades, maybe centuries—the creation of a bigger society tends to make everyone, the descendants of victors and vanquished alike, better off. The long-term pattern is again unmistakable. By creating larger societies, stronger governments, and greater security, war has enriched the world.

So, war has produced, Morris argues, bigger societies, ruled by stronger governments, which have imposed peace and created the preconditions for prosperity. Ten thousand years ago, there were only about six million people on earth. On average, they lived about thirty years and supported themselves on the equivalent of less than two modern American dollars per day. Now there are more than a thousand times as many of us (seven billion, in fact), living more than twice as long (the global average is sixty-seven years) and earning more than a dozen times as much (today the global average is $25 per day).

Morris added that war, then, has been good for something—so good that war is now putting itself out of business. For millennia, war (over the long run) has created peace, and destruction has created wealth, but in our age, humanity has gotten so good at fighting—our weapons so destructive, our organizations so efficient—that war is beginning to make further war of this kind impossible.

We humans have proved remarkably good at adapting to our changing environment. We fought countless wars in the past because fighting paid off, but in the twentieth century, as the returns to violence declined, we found ways to solve our problems without bringing on Armageddon. There are no guarantees, of course, Morris suggests, but there are nevertheless tends to reward paradoxical conduct while defeating straightforwardly logical action, yielding ironical results.

Everything about war is paradoxical. In war, paradox goes all the way down. According to Basil Liddell Hart, one of the founding fathers of twentieth-century tank tactics, the bottom line is that 'war is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.' Out of war comes peace; out of loss, gain. War takes us through the looking glass, into a topsy-turvy world where nothing is quite what it seems. Morris's argument is a lesser-evil proposition, one of the classic forms of paradox. It is easy to list all the things that war is bad for, with killing coming at the top of the table. And yet war remains the lesser evil because history shows that it has not been as bad as the alternative—constant, Stone Age-type everyday violence, bleeding away lives and leaving us in poverty.

According to Francis Bacon, three novelties brought modernity in their wake: gunpowder, ocean navigation, and the printing press. And if the first of these was directly related to war, the other two affected it no less decisively. Historians of technology and economy, says Azar Gat, have revealed the steady improvement in agricultural technique, horse harnessing, ironwork, and mining, the advent and spread of the watermill and windmill, the compass, and the lateen, triangular sail, and advances in water damming and canal building—all resulting in a continuous growth in productivity and population throughout the landmass.

Military power is a key component of state power. Yet for all the attention statesmen, soldiers, and scholars give to military power, it remains a loose concept, says John A. Gentry. An actor has military power if the actor, firstly, accurately identifies exploitable vulnerabilities in a targeted adversary in any dimension, and secondly, successfully exploits one or more of the target’s critical vulnerabilities, leading to physical military defeat or disruption of power production processes, leading to a decision to forego or to stop fighting, which concedes the point of contention.

Wealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and military power is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth, says Paul Kennedy. If, however, too large a proportion of the state’s resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term. In the same way, if a state overextends itself strategically—by, say, the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of costly wars—it runs the risk that the potential benefits from external expansion may be outweighed by the great expense of it all—a dilemma which becomes acute if the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline. The history of the rise and later fall of the leading countries in the Great Power system since the advance of Western Europe in the sixteenth century—that is, of nations such as Spain, the Netherlands, France, the British Empire, and currently the United States—shows a very significant correlation over the longer term between productive and revenue-raising capacities on the one hand and military strength on the other.

According to Kennedy, the relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven rate of growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs that bring a greater advantage to one society than to another. For example, the coming of the long-range gunned sailing ship and the rise of the Atlantic trades after 1500 was not uniformly beneficial to all the states of Europe—it boosted some much more than others. In the same way, the later development of steam power and the coal and metal resources upon which it relied massively increased the relative power of certain nations and thereby decreased the relative power of others. Once their productive capacity was enhanced, countries would normally find it easier to sustain the burdens of paying for large-scale armaments in peacetime and of maintaining and supplying large armies and fleets in wartime.

Let's finish our discussion about War, in the next episode, we will continue with the topic of the Islamic Calendar, bi 'idhnillah."

Afterwards, Cananga then sang,

Oh! There is fire in the air that I'm breathing

There is blood where the battles rage

These are faces I will not remember

Will I fight for the Queen or the Slave?

A treacherous part to play with our heart of courage *)

Citations & References:

- Azar Gat, War In Human Civilization, 2006, Oxford University Press

- John A. Gentry, How Wars Are Won and Lost: Vulnerability and Military Power, 2012, Praeger

- Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, 1989, Vintage Books

- Ian Morris, War: What Is It Good For?, 2014, Profile Books

*) "Battleborne" written by Nick Phoenix & Thomas Bergersen

[Episode 7]

[Episode 5]

Bahasa

Stories from Cananga Tree (5)

"A school student was asked by his teacher to tell a story in front of the class, he said, 'I'm not kidding. I was going to tell a joke about time travel. But you guys didn't like it!' and then went back to his seat."

"Wars, by their very nature, tend to be relatively short. They use resources, consume manpower, and weaken the nations involved," said Cananga while looking at the iconic 1945 photograph of six Marines raising a flag on top of Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, taken by Associated Press combat photographer, Joe Rosenthal. The flag-raising also was recorded by Marine Sergeant Bill Genaust, a combat motion picture cameraman. He filmed the event in color while standing beside Rosenthal. Genaust's footage established that the second flag raising was not staged. On March 4, 1945, he was killed by the Japanese after entering a cave on Iwo Jima and his remains have never been found.

Upon first seeing the photograph, sculptor Felix de Weldon created a maquette for a sculpture based on the photo in a single weekend at Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, where he was serving in the Navy. He and architect Horace W. Peaslee designed the memorial. Their proposal was presented to Congress, but funding was not possible during the war. In 1947, a federal foundation was established to raise funds for the memorial. The United States Congress approved the Memorial and the commission for the memorial was awarded in 1951, after it was approved and accepted by the Marine Corps League who also selected De Weldon as the sculptor. De Weldon spent three years creating a full-sized master model in plaster, with figures 32 feet (9.8 m) tall.

"Most countries simply cannot sustain wars for extended periods. World War I lasted for four years, World War II lasted for six, and both conflicts had devastating consequences for all the combatant nations. However, during what has become known as the Age of Chivalry, one series of conflicts between two of the most powerful nations in Europe continued through five generations of kings and for more than one hundred years. What has become known as 'the Hundred Years War' was a conflict between the House of Plantagenet, the ruling dynasty in England, and the House of Valois, rulers of the kingdom of France. The war began in 1337 and did not finally end until 1453. This was the most notable and protracted war of the Middle Ages, and it contributed directly to the creation and emergence of the national identities of modern England and France.

Before going on our discussion about 'war', perhaps you and I would like to know, 'Why do we fight?' or 'What is a war for?'

'These weren’t questions I’d ever expected to ask or answer', says Christopher Blattman. 'But once you witness the cruel extravagance of violence, it’s hard to care about anything else. Even when you see it from a position of safety with the privilege of distance. Everything else fades in importance.'

'I learned a society’s success isn't just about expanding its wealth,' Blattman added. 'It is about a rebel group not enslaving your eleven-year-old daughter as a wife. It is about sitting in front of your home without the fear of a drive-by shooting and a bullet gone astray. It is about being able to go to a police officer, a court, or a mayor and get some semblance of justice. It is about the government never being allowed to push you off your land and stick you in a concentration camp. Another economist, Amartya Sen, called this 'development as freedom.' It is hard to imagine something more important to be free of than violence. As it happens, fighting also makes us poor. Nothing destroys progress like conflict—crushing economies, destroying infrastructure, or killing, maiming, and setting back an entire generation. War undermines economic growth in indirect ways as well.

Most people and businesses won’t do the basic things that lead to development when they expect bombings, ethnic cleansing, or arbitrary justice; they won’t specialize in tasks, trade, invest their wealth, or develop new techniques and ideas. A large literature has shown how wars collapse economies. Take civil wars, for example, like Uganda’s. The second half of the twentieth century saw more internal conflicts than ever recorded. They were devastating, causing incomes to collapse by a fifth. For more on how wars affect health, schooling, and other outcomes, looking across all countries and wars, Mueller and other economists have also shown that each year of war is probably associated with 2 or 3 percent lower national income violence on the American economy, but simply based on what people seem to be willing to pay in home prices to avoid violence.

The economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith predicted as much over two and a half centuries ago, 'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism,' he wrote in 1755, 'but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.' Clearly, if I cared about prosperity, equal rights, and justice, I had to care about war,' says Blattman.

'War' in Blattman's view, it doesn’t just mean countries duking it out. He meant any kind of prolonged, violent struggle between groups. That includes villages, clans, gangs, ethnic groups, religious sects, political factions, and nations. Wildly different as these may be, their origins have much in common. We’ll see that with Northern Irish zealots, Colombian cartels, European tyrants, Liberian rebels, Greek oligarchs, Chicago gangs, Indian mobs, Rwandan genocidaires, English soccer hooligans, and, according to Blattman, American invaders.

One of the most common errors people make is to confuse the reasons a contest is intense and hostile with the reasons that a rivalry turns violent. You see, acrimonious competition is normal, but prolonged violence between groups is not. Wars shouldn’t happen, and most of the time they don’t. The fact is, even the bitterest of enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace. That’s easy to forget. Our attention gets captured by the wars that do happen. News reports and history books do the same—they focus on the handful of violent struggles that occur. Few write books about the countless conflicts avoided. But we can’t just look at the hostilities that happen any more than a medical student should study only the terminally ill and forget that most people are healthy.

Political scientists, says Blattman, have tallied all the ethnic and sectarian groups in places like Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, and Africa, where riots and purges are supposedly endemic. They counted the number of pairs that were close enough to compete with one another, and then they looked at the number that actually fought. In Africa, they counted about one major case of ethnic violence per year out of two thousand potential ones. In India, they found less than one riot per ten million people per year, and death rates that are at most sixteen per ten million.

We see this at the international level too. There was the long confrontation between America and the Soviets, who managed to divide Europe (indeed the world) into two parts without nuking one another.

Somehow, however, we tend to forget these events. We write tomes about great wars and overlook the quiet peaces. We pay attention to the gory spectacles, the most salient events. Meanwhile, the quieter moments of compromise slip from memory. This focus on the failures is a kind of selection bias, a logical error to which we’re all prone. The mistake has two important consequences. One is that we exaggerate how much we fight. You start to hear things like 'the world is full of conflict,' or 'humanity’s natural state is war,' or 'an armed confrontation between [insert great powers here] is inevitable.' But none of those statements, says Blattman, is true.

To find the real roots of fighting, or to answer 'why do we fight?', we need to pay attention to the struggles that stay peaceful. When it comes to war, we’re prone to the opposite kind of selection—we pay too much attention to the times peace failed. It’s as if the US military engineers looked only at the bombers that went down. Those planes are covered in gunfire from tip to tail. When we do that, it’s hard to know which shots were fatal because we aren’t comparing them to the planes that survived. The same thing happens when you take a war and trace it back to its so-called roots. Every history of every rivalry is riddled with a barrage of bullet holes, like poverty grievances and guns. But the aggrieved seldom revolt, most poor young rabble-rousers don’t

Overlooking all the conflicts avoided entails a second and greater harm, however; we get the roots of war and the paths to peace all wrong. It doesn't mean happy and harmonious. Rivalries can be hostile and contentious. The groups may be polarized. They’re often heavily armed. They disparage and threaten one another, and they ostentatiously display their weapons. That is all normal. Bloodshed and destruction are not.

When people focus on the times peace failed and trace back the circumstances and events to find the causes, they often find a familiar set: flawed leaders, historic injustices, dire poverty, angry young men, cheap weapons, and cataclysmic events. War seems to be the inevitable result. But this ignores the times conflict was avoided.

From Jack McDonald's perspective, what characterizes war in the present day is a tension between uniformity and diversity. On one hand, contemporary wars take place in an international system that is more uniform than ever. That system consists of sovereign territorial states that recognize and legitimize one another as the primary political units in international politics and they also share a single common set of rules—international law—that provides a global standard for regulating war and warfare. On the other hand, there is more diversity in contemporary war than ever: states find themselves fighting transnational insurgent movements that leverage the Internet to their advantage. Wars are waged with technology ranging from basic firearms to stealth jet fighters using satellite-guided missiles. Old ways of war such as murdering, terrorizing, and starving civilians for strategic effect coexist with Western ways of war that utilize precision weapons to minimize civilian harm, and in many cases eliminate the possibility of harm to their own combatants by using remote-piloted drones.

Wars and warfare have caused death and destruction throughout human history, says McDonald. Wars have ranged from prehistoric settlement raiding to the industrialized slaughter of the Second World War and selective killing with precision-guided weapons in the present day. Wars destroy humans, property, and the environment alike as it’s usually impossible to restrict the consequences of a war to its armed participants. This potential for death, destruction, and escalation is why the prospect of war weighs heavily on the minds of political leaders and civilian populations alike.

War serves a political purpose, as in some circumstances military force has political utility for the leaders of states or armed groups. The nineteenth-century Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz defined war as ‘an act of force to compel our adversary to do our will’. Wars in history have ranged from highly ritualized activities between similar political groups to no-holds-barred slaughter between groups seeking to eliminate each other. Clausewitz explains war as being akin to a duel, albeit on a large scale, which captures the fact that war is fundamentally adversarial: it involves an opponent who threatens physical harm. It’s also strategic, in the sense that governments cannot ultimately dictate or control their opponent’s actions. Given that wars often feature more than two warring parties, McDonald defines war as ‘the use of organized armed force between two or more sides for political purposes’, emphasizing the necessary criterion of organized violence by social groups.

The political and strategic goals of warring parties don’t entirely explain the actual impact of wars. At minimum, we also need to consider what kinds of entities the parties are—be they states or non-state armed groups [‘non-state armed groups’ refers to the myriad social groups that pose military threats in international politics and which are not formally part of a state’s armed forces. They range in size from small militias up to organized armed forces able to conduct sophisticated military operations. The importance of non-state armed groups is that, while they may lack formal recognition and legitimacy in the eyes of the state, they use organized physical violence and so must be taken seriously by their state opponents. Often non-state armed groups conflict with one another or form alliances with states that intervene in civil wars]—as well as their social capability for violence, and the degree of restraint that political elites and military leaders are able to exert over their forces. It is for this last reason the relationship of opposing sides in war in part dictates the ferocity and limits of conflict. Civil wars, in which societies are split by two or more warring factions, are often especially brutal due to the way they tear communities apart along lines of ethnicity and religion, but also create conditions in which loosely organized armed groups prosper.

Wars in the contemporary world vary hugely in terms of their scope and consequences. Consider that the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan resulted in the deaths of over five thousand service personnel. Compare that to the Tigray war (2020–2022) in northern Ethiopia, which has already killed up to half a million people—mostly civilians—through a mix of fighting, starvation, and lack of access to healthcare, or to the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian war has created over 5.6 million Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced a further 7.1 million people.

Contemporary wars also vary considerably in terms of who is fighting, and how. Long-running, low-intensity conflicts, such as the multiple ongoing conflicts in the Sahel region, exist alongside devastating civil wars like those in Syria, Libya, and Myanmar. The sheer range of means and methods of warfare contributes to the diverse character of contemporary warfare. Some conflicts involve states attacking one another directly; others involve indirect attacks via proxies.

'War plays in the contemporary world', probably could be the answer to our worries, 'What is a war for?' In particular, McDonald says, it’s about why war is still useful to many governments and non-state armed groups. Despite international legal constraints on war, the use of military force remains a latent possibility in international disputes and internal conflicts—and sometimes that latent possibility becomes a reality. Such are the destructive consequences of war that even the threat of it can be a useful bargaining tool. To rebels and insurgents seeking to control or create a state, military force may appear the only way to achieve their political goals.

States often struggle to explain and legitimize the use of military force to their citizens and other states. How wars are waged often bears little relation to the popular image of war, which is shaped by the industrial wars of the twentieth century that killed tens of millions of people. Another reason they struggle, McDonald argues, is that there is a gap between how wars are fought in practice and the way war is framed and regulated in international politics. That gap can be manipulated for strategic reasons to gain an advantage against a law-abiding opponent. Understanding how and why this divergence has come to exist, and what can be done about it, is key to understanding how war works and what it is used for today.

We will still discussing about the topic of 'war', in the next episode. Bi' idhnillah."

And before stepping into the next fragment, Kananga sang,

Jejak kaki para pengungsi bercerita pada penguasa

[The footprints of the refugees tell the story to the authorities]

Bercerita pada penguasa tentang

[Telling stories to the authorities about]

ternaknya yang mati, tentang temannya yang mati

[their dead livestock, about their dead friends,]

tentang adiknya yang mati, tentang abangnya yang mati,

[about their dead younger brothers, about their dead elder brothers,]

tentang ayahnya yang mati, tentang anaknya yang mati,

[about their dead fathers, bout their dead sons,]

tentang neneknya yang mati, tentang pacarnya yang mati,

[about their dead grandmother, about their dead girlfriends,]

tentang istrinya yang mati, tentang harapannya yang mati *)

[about their dead wives, about their dead hopes]

Citations & References:

- Christopher Blattman, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace, 2022, Viking

- Jack McDonald, What is War for?, 2023, Bristol University Press

- At Hourly History, The Hundred Years War: A History from Beginning to End, 2019, Hourly History

*) "Puing II" written by Virgiawan Listanto

[Episode 6]

[Episode 4]

Bahasa