The Meaning of Apologies

Iedul Fitri, or the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan for Moslems, is marked by asking each other for forgiveness, normally by saying ‘mohon ma’af lahir bathin’ (forgive me body and soul.) This is supposed to be the time when past wrongs are exonerated, sins forgiven and everybody starts the new year with a clean slate, innocent like new born babes.

Which begs the question, if everybody every year says sorry, but then continues with their bad ways, what is the point of apologizing or asking for forgiveness? Unless of course, they’re not really sorry or don’t understand the meaning of remorse. Or worse, since they know they will be forgiven at the end of day, might as well use the rest of the year to pack in as many sins as possible.

Hence, it is no surprise that although Indonesia has the largest Moslem population, it also ranks high on the list of most corrupt countries and probably the most tolerant of preventable human failings such as lacking in discipline and irrational and irresponsible behaviours.

Since every year we are always asking each other’s forgiveness, what is that we’re actually remorseful about? Certainly not for anything specific, I’m sure, such as ‘sorry for stealing the company’s money,’ or ‘sorry for being too lazy to get my work done,’ or even, ‘sorry for being a nasty boss, a nagging wife, a cheating husband or a good-for-nothing son.’ (Or if you’re in Aceh caught canoodling in public with your paramour, ‘sorry for showing affection, please don’t stone me to death.’)

No, for these would be an admission of actual wrong doings and personal failures.

While we are good at asking for forgiveness in the general and rhetorical sense, such as during the Iedul Fitri or at the end of pompous speeches where we apologize profusely for words wrongly spoken and feelings unintentionally injured, or on invitation cards, for names and titles misspelled, wild horses will not be able to drag out an apology when it comes to real wrong doings for which sincere apologies are required.

As a matter of fact, I cannot recall any public official calling a press conference to apologize over personal failings, corruption and misdeeds that come under his responsibility, let alone entertain the thought of resignation. Apologizing is seen as an act of weakness rather than strength. There’s more honour in defiant indignation and vehement denial than in the humble admission of guilt.

The standard responses for real misdeeds are feign ignorance, deny responsibility or point the finger at somebody else. If really pushed to a corner, when an apology is warranted, we could always blame the Almighty for making us imperfect creatures. It’s not our fault that we’re a bunch of lying, cheating and weak-willed lot, but our Maker’s.

When pushed to a situation where we have to say sorry, our ego’s impulse is to reject the notion that we might even be the slightest bit in the wrong. When it comes to our own failings, remorse seems to come below indignation and self-denial.

This is a pity, because a well-honed and properly constructed apology can actually go a long way in furthering one’s interests and transform a personal weakness into public magnanimity.

Celebrities and public figures for instance are normally quite good at airing their apologies. After all, for people living in constant pursuit of paparazzi and who feed off the media for their fame, there is no such thing as bad publicity and a beautifully crafted display of regret can generate a lot of mileage in the media.

For example, for all the amount of bile and antipathy directed at singer Kanye West on his rude behaviour against Video Music Award winner Taylor Swift, the singer’s public outburst during the show earned him the enviable top spot in Twitter’s trending topic for a few days.

As a matter of fact, public apologies by public figures are often a good way to put a closure to scandalous behaviours (especially where exposed marital affairs are the issue) and for putting the onus on the public to let the matter go one way or the other. Our public officials would do well to learn from them. A contrite face, a public mea culpa, some verbal self-flagellation can be an effective character boost to a flagging popularity for our politicians and public officials. Especially if nobody else is doing it.

At least this type of apologies actually have a more beneficial purpose than the general, rhetorical ones we hand out on an annual basis.

(Desi Anwar: First published in The Jakarta Globe)

Berry Addicted

After having resisted valiantly for years finally I acknowledge defeat and succumb to a force greater than my free will: I have as of today joined the army of almost twenty million Blackberry carriers that are now roaming this planet and whose number multiplies faster than a proliferating amoeba.

Although in my defence, the device came into my hand not by conscious choice but foisted upon me by corporate decision in its effort to cut down on company phone bills and to make sure the boss can bother you at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Personally I’ve been hankering after the latest iphone, the Blackberry never having made it into the top ten of my gadgets wish list, not even when it morphed into a Barrackberry. But then not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I resigned to having the lumpy thing weigh down my already bulging bag and expected no fancier use than as an emergency back up to my faithful GSM and CDMA devices.

Until that is, it got magically ‘activated’. Within hours of being formally accepted into the BB community, I was hooked. The thing not only started taking over my brain functions and controlling my life but also changing my personality. No doubt very soon I would share the telltale traits of a Blackberry addict: the perpetually moving thumbs, the glazed look, the absentminded air of one relentlessly preoccupied with life’s greater things.

And how could they not be? Like having a chip planted by some aliens in our brains BB owners carry a virus of addiction and dependency that even the most powerful man on the planet cannot prevail. I fear it is only a matter of time before this thing in my hand defines my identity and existence. Certainly I’ve met BB holders who suffer from panic attacks and break into a cold sweat when their little gadget is not within arms reach.

As a matter of fact BB holders have a Pin in their device that basically acts as our identity in BB world and enables us to have instant communication with each other (and which, combined with a GPS, incidentally makes it much easier for those aliens to track our whereabouts on earth and see how fast the BB converted multiply).

Imagine on my so-called Smartphone I can do email, voice mail, chat and send instant messages, send files, browse the Internet, record video and audio, take photos, upload them onto my Facebook, listen to music, read the latest news, play games, and oh, make phone calls. In other words, just about every activity related to communicating and sharing information short of telepathy.

Interestingly however, I find that this expansion of communication capability and exponential leap in interconnectedness is contributing to the BB holders’ growing autism and eerie descent into solipsism.

Faced with multiple modes of communication, it seems that BB owners find themselves in some kind of angst when they are actually in the same room together. For when one is used to communicating using chat, blackberry messenger, google talk, sms and email, having to express oneself verbally and directly without the comfort of abbreviated text and the safety and clarity of emoticons can be quite unnerving :(

Yes, BB owners function a lot better when they’re left to their own device, so to speak and get irritated when their time is wasted by real face to face conversations or forms of communication that require some kind of focus, substance and do not involve a track ball.

But then why have only one conversation when you can have ten going on at the same time? Why not have a lunch meeting, check your email, have BB conversations with your friends and argue with your colleagues over SMS at the same time? Why bother with a real conversation at all? I’ve even seen BB owners carry on a discussion with each other over their phones even as they sat quietly at the same table.

And now I too belong to that exclusive club of sophisticated people with super interconnectivity at our fingertips with my very own Pin number. I decided to Ping a BB friend. My BB friend Pinged me back. We spent a good part of the afternoon pinging each other. Life is so exciting…

(Desi Anwar: The Jakarta Globe, February 2009-02-05)

More Fatwas Please

I’m following with interest the edifying ‘fatwas’ recently issued by our venerable old men of MUI and to be honest, rather disappointed that they did not come up with injunctions that are a lot more relevant, tougher and pertinent to what this country really needs.

Take for example the ‘fatwa’ against smoking. While I fully agree that pregnant women and children should not smoke, there should be a fatwa against men or anyone else for that matter who smoke in front of pregnant women and children with the crime punishable by stoning, while those who smoke in public places should have their index and middle fingers lopped off so they would not be able to repeat their disgusting offence ever again.

Smokers not only pollute our lungs and contribute to global warming not to mention make my clothes smell like an ashtray, but they are evil incarnate and followers of Lucifer who will no doubt adjust very nicely to being roasted in the flames of Inferno.

As to the fatwa on chanting and meditating during yoga, I was hoping for a full ban on the whole exercise altogether along with Pilates, Ballroom Dancing and Karaoke, as my failure to perform any of these activities remotely well have greatly weakened my faith in a just and fair deity. I mean, that Down Dog and Sun Salute are not as easy as the Yoginis make them out to be. And what have I done to possess a singing voice akin to a cat slowly being skinned alive?

Also deserving eternal damnation, along with not voting during election time, is fatwas against aspiring politicians giving empty promises during the campaign period, lying about their wealth, high-school diplomas and how many houses and illegitimate offspring they have as well as sporting bad haircuts, cheesy smiles and singing in public. These sinners must be reminded that Heaven has no place for them, their greasy looks and their god-awful voices.

On top of that I would also suggest a fatwa against public officials for snoring on the job, rambling speeches and incoherent reasoning as these actions form a serious threat to our faith in God and Democracy and deserve nothing less than Purgatorial retribution.

Fortunately if I’m not mistaken there are already fatwas against corruption and watching gossip infotainments on the television. But why stop at the obvious?

One ‘fatwa’ which is long overdue in this country is against people who refuse to queue up and who, feigning ignorance and lack of peripheral vision, insist on pushing their way to the front of the line especially in public toilets. For these troglodytes the fear of hell fire and eternal torture is not enough for them. They should be thrown the lions along with the heretics and apostates.

As a matter of fact, thinking about it, there should be fatwas for all forms of bad manners and uncivilized behaviour in this republic. Foremost that come to mind, other than the inherent inability to stand patiently in line, are: spitting, gobbing and throwing rubbish out of car windows; taking off one’s shoes on airplanes; scratching one’s crotch; burping, chewing with the mouth open, slurping and making other unpleasant noises while eating and drinking.

Other annoying and morally deficit behaviours include staring, eavesdropping, gossiping in high-pitched voices, not saying what one really mean and not minding one’s business as these vices are not only insidious but they are traits inherited directly from that Serpent in The Garden.

And while we’re at it, I really think there should be a fatwa on personal hygiene and cleanliness. After all cleanliness is next to godliness and it’s not for the good of God’s health that this homily refers to. Yes, those MUI wise men should ensure that when their flock leave their respective homes they are free from the evils of body odour, bad breath and dirty fingernails that are sure signs of moral degenerateness and mental corruption.

Finally there really should be a fatwa against pathetic old men who pretend they’re clever, venerated wise men ordained by God but who could only come up with a bunch of the most ridiculous and pointless rulings that is an insult not only to the Almighty but to the intelligence he’s bestowed us with. (@Desi Anwar: First appeared in The Jakarta Globe)

The Phenomenon of Change

Things don’t happen unless there is a need and a wish for them to happen. Things change unless the energy for it is there.

In this respect I do think the phenomenon of Barack Obama is not that he is someone who drives, inspires and initiates change, but he is in fact, the embodiment of change itself. When Obama was elected as President of the United States, it did not signify that change would surely come. Change is actually already here. It is not up to him, but up to this planet and everyone on it to complete the dream.

Obama in other words, is the manifestation of that very need for change that has emerged, developed, grew and crystallized long before any of us has heard of this skinny man with a funny name.

And the need is not necessarily individual, but it is certainly collective. We might not have been conscious of it but it is certainly there on the subconscious level. It is not isolated to a particular place, particular country or even to this particular planet, but rather it is universal.
One only has to see the number of books that have appeared in the last decade alone on the power of dreams, the capacity of the individual to make things happen, the importance of affirmation and positive thinking: books on enlightenment, empowerment and increasing awareness.

One only has to see the increasing number of people more curious about spirituality and the meaning of life: More people seeking to live in constant awareness and heighten their consciousness so that they live their lives not as passive victims of circumstances but as masters of their destinies.

We see in other words, a greater desire to be co-creators in the creative process that is life itself. And when I speak of Life, the human aspect is only part of it – a significant part to be sure, at least from our perspective, but still only a limited part. The rest, we are still subject to the laws of nature and the power of the collective subconscious.

The subprime fiasco and the global financial chaos is not merely a matter of economics, transnational market interdependency and corporate greed. For the last few decades mankind on this planet has been in a rampaging and looting mode, taking incessantly from the earth, consuming and destroying everything on our path, polluting our environment and poisoning the very air that we breathe.

The time has come to redress the balance, to slow down and to put a brake on our excessive spending and wasting. The time has come for each thinking individual on the planet to decouple ourselves from our material obsessions and mental infatuation with conflict and competition to engage in self-reflection and find true meaning in our lives.

For change is already here when it is our children who speak words of wisdom; the young who remind the old of the need for peace, harmony and cooperation; the innocent who point the way to a better future and a more sustainable planet, while adults fight and nations kill one another.

But change needs a face that symbolises the universal need for peace and cooperation that transcends creed, colour and country. A unifying figure that every one from the most powerful to the most victimised can identify with and claim as part of their own.

What is Obama but a potpourri of all things imaginable? He does not belong only to The United States and as a matter of fact he is not even black, but his background and family is a rainbow of hues representing nations from all corners of the world –European, African, Asian and Chinese. Even in religion he does not fit into any stereotype, with Jews, Christians and Moslems happy to claim him as one of theirs or accuse him of being another when it pleases them.

From the circumstances of his birth, childhood and education (a child of mixed marriage, abandoned by his African father, had an Indonesian step father and half-Indonesian step-sister now married to a Canadian Chinese Malaysian, white grandparents, brought up in Asia and Hawaii, the island state where East and West meet) Obama is Everyman and every child that has a dream.

Even more significant is the fact that he is the President of the United States (not of a country in Africa or Asia) a country that can create most damage on earth but yet can also make all things possible in the world.

For when the time for change is ripe, for an idea to be implemented and for the dream to be realised, if there had not been an Obama around, the world would have created him anyway.
(Desi Anwar. First appeared on Tempo English, January 09)



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