A Beggar and a Chooser

There is a saying that beggars can’t be choosers, and while this may be true for most cases, I think there are exceptional ones.

To take the saying literally, most beggars become one because they have no choice. But there are those who choose to be beggars, and even to the extreme case of doing so for the sake of principles – like the 1981 year-long ‘performance’ of Tehching Hsieh who “lived in the streets, never entering a building except when he was arrested by the police, an event documented on videotape” (as cited in Hollevoet, C., “Wandering in the City”, pp. 51-52).

To interpret the saying non-literally, most ‘beggars’ (people in needs) can’t be, and perhaps shouldn’t be, choosers, because these ‘beggars’ are in inferior positions, in the opposite end of the givers and decision makers, and therefore should just accept what would be decided by those in superior positions.

In an attempt to question the statement in previous paragraph, in this past six months, I have tried to not only be a beggar but also be a chooser in the matter of going back to school. Having achieved my chosen goal to be at HGSE, I am now back to being a beggar for full scholarship – which necessitates me to postpone my study for another year, and to continue living in uncertainties in the next month or two, and most likely for the year to come. Only to hope and to prove that perhaps a beggar can also be a chooser, although through long-winded, anxious-ridden, risk-taking, goal-seeking and -questioning process.

Synchronized Nature

It has been a while since I went to the beach, and the trip to Carita over the weekend was my solace to the years of neglect in coordinating with the waves. And I failed miserably the whole first day. The waves kept leaving my boogie board behind, or I was too fast, or too slow, or completely taken over by them. Hopeless, embarrassing attempts. I did only a little better with the kayak. The waves turned me over as soon as I got on board. Only later I managed to balance myself. And both got better the second day.

Being in nature made me realize, as most would, the harmony of the world. How well the coral fishes camouflaged themselves with sand, hermit crabs with seaweeds. How logical were the colors and the shapes of the corals in relation to the ebbs and flows and where the sunlight reached their crevices. And I was in awe with the most trivial things: how the sunlight reflected off of the waves, how the sand captured the drops of water from my fingertips, the foam and the traces of the waves.

The days were long in the great outdoors. And the whole weekend felt like a whole week away from the city. Strangely, the sun set really fast – although it wasn’t really a sun set I was watching, but two within five minutes.

The first one happened around the time I was leaving. And I thought how strange it was that I could see the sun setting from between the leaves on the trees and a good way above the horizon. Then I realized the sun was going behind a cloud with a horizontal top, which completely hid it behind for a while, before it reappeared again in between clouds. The lower cloud then became the second ‘horizon’ for the sun set.

A dawning thought emerged: what if the earth stopped rotating and turned backwards for a few minutes? Having read most of Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, scientifically I remembered vaguely what made the planets so well coordinated. But still, given the state of the global warming and environmental degradation, I couldn’t help asking this question: What if the earth had had enough abuse and decided to call it a quit?

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Below is an image from the pier nearby, where most activities in the nearby fish market has subsided before eight in the morning – when I normally would still be sleeping in Jakarta on weekends.

Moral & Religion

The debate on God has apparently warmed up again. From Goenawan Muhammad to Steven D. Levitt, the question of belief and disbelief has triggered a lot of interests, mine included.

My interest in the topic was triggered none other by 9/11. A specific book that I purchased then was Mark Juergensmeyer’s “Terror in the Mind of God” (2000), for the reason that, in Juergensmeyer’s words:

This book is about religious terrorism. It is about public acts of violence … for which religion has provided the motivation, the justification, the organization, and the world view. … I do want to understand them and their world views well enough to know how they and their supporters can morally justify what they have done.

Mark Juergensmeyer, “Terror in the Mind of God”, 2000: 7, my emphasis.

With the rise of religious fundamentalism, terrorism, debate on Evolution vs. Creationism/ Intelligent Design, and closer to home is religious indoctrination in educational institution(s), I got Richard Dawkins’ “God Delusion” (2006) and Franz Magnis-Suseno’s “Menalar Tuhan” (2006). These books were one way or another also triggered by similar vein of inquiry as Juergenmeyer’s.

My own stand in this debate is: How much does religion really matter? Or do moral and humanism that matter more? This diagram explains my take:

One can have zero to maximum amount of religious belief, but we’ll get fundamentalists when one’s belief in relation to the wider context of moral/ humanism is in the low range (the grey area in diagram).

(Mis-)Education of the Minds

I recently trained high-school students who got scholarships to pursue education overseas. The purpose of the training was to make these students becoming aware of their blocks to critical and creative thinking – one of the main problems is stereotyping.

One of the biggest stereotypes that Indonesian has is against communism, specifically the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). When asked about what they think about PKI, the participants indeed mentioned associative words like banned party, atheists, and dangerous – all negatives.

They then were asked to think of three things that they agree and disagree about the following sentences:

The original transformation of money into capital proceeds … has the following results:
(1) That the product belongs to the capitalist, not to the labourer;
(2) That the value of this product comprizes a surplus-value over and above the value of the advanced capital. This surplus-value has cost the labourer labour, but the capitalist nothing, yet it becomes the lawful property of the capitalist;

And, as part of the original writing, but omitted from the training:

(3) That the labourer has reproduced his labour-power and can sell it once more, if he finds a buyer for it.

To the above sentences, the students couldn’t find anything that they disagreed about. But when it was revealed to them that the sentences were written none other by Karl Marx in “Das Kapital”, one of the students exclaimed: “But I didn’t know it was written by Karl Marx!” – which was precisely the point: the way we are (mis-)educated can make us biased against information, rather than its content.

Dumb and Poorer

A friend told me recently that her brother got into one of the most prestigious public university in Indonesia. He got in through the exam administered by the university on the first phase of the admission.

What is of interest to me is the several phases how one could get into this public university, and the respective entrance fee:
1. To go through the entrance exam administered by the university, with entrance fee of Rp.15 million (around USD 1500).
2. To go through the entrance exam administered by the ministry of education - which is a lot more competitive, with entrance fee between Rp.7-8 million (USD 700-800).
3. If you failed number 1 and 2, then you can go through the second phase of exam administered by the university, with entrance fee of Rp.45 million (USD 4500).

Chances are, those who get in through option 3 are those who fail the option 1 and 2. Or in other words, they are not as smart as those who got in through option 1 and 2.

Those who are among the smartest of the group are rewarded by paying the least of the entrance fee. Chances are, these students have had series of quality elementary and secondary education - which often comes with higher tuition fee here in Indonesia.

With privatization of public universities in Indonesia, the latter are left with finding ways to get funds, one of the ways is to resort to charging higher fees. What will become of those who are not as smart and happen to come from less well-off families?