Transcending ‘Kalabendu’

We have spent 60 of the 73 years in our republic’s existence under irrational politics. The democracy that we have upheld for the past 20 years is full of ceremony, but lacks the spirit of "hikmat kebijaksanaan".

KOMPAS/DIDIE SW

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In this article, we use kalabendu (“a time of chaos”) as a metaphor for the recent accumulation of the five negative complexes.

The five negatives describe a time when: truth is seen as a thing of the past (post-truth); “politics” is no longer a platform to achieve the greater good for a diverse people (identity exclusivism); the standards of common sense are discarded among the public (and political correctness is mocked); global civilization is shackled by VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity); and as Barry R Posen (2018) wrote, “the rise of illiberal hegemony” (in reference to the wild and corrosive politics of Donald Trump).