Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Being-Thrown of Ayn Rand

I was quite startled to find out that a 1991-polling placed Atlas Shrugged as "the second-most influential book (after the Bible) for Americans". Atlas Shrugged is one of Ayn Rand’s novels. Seriously? Are Americans that capitalistic, individualistic?

Ayn Rand is not an economist but with her philosophy which she calls objectivism, she is described by one
article as "the modern fountainhead of laissez-faire capitalism.” She is also described “as an impassioned, uncompromising, and unapologetic proponent of reason, liberty, individualism, and rational self-interest."

She fervently criticizes altruism. For her, the highest form of happiness is fulfilling one's own dreams, not someone else's – or the public's. She sees man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

It is usually very easy to attack too-radical-thoughts. I am not going over details about her philosophy for I have not read much of her books. But perhaps by reading her books (mostly novels) we could understand Americans much better (a smiley sign here). I seldom heard her thoughts being discussed here in STF Driyarkara or in Indonesia. Perhaps they don’t regard her as an important philosopher as the Americans do.

I have not read Atlas Shrugged though I have the book at home. I also have The Fountainhead. My friend Dede has given me those books ages ago. He even gave me The Fountainhead twice because he forgot that he actually has already given me that book once. I must have looked like I desperately needed to read the book. Do I look like an “objectivist”? Or do I look like a lost capitalist who needs to repent?

But I have read Anthem, Rand’s other novel. In that book, she criticizes communalism, totalitarianism, and at the same time passionately promotes individualism. However, I find that her criticism is rather too extreme. She is overdoing it. Perhaps it has got something to do with her life experience. She was a Russian native who ran away to the States years ago when Russia / USSR was still very much a communistic country. Her extreme reaction against communism, totalitarianism and her strong beliefs in individualism are therefore understandable.

Don’t we all always think or philosophize from our situatedness, our being-thrown-in-the-world? This is how I perceive later Heidegger as a rather too-extreme “correction” to early Heidegger after the Nazi event. But does it mean we are always determined by our situatedness? What does this determination mean if so?

Friday, April 06, 2007

Welcoming the Nothingness

Aren’t we all afraid of standing before the nothing or shall we say it nothingness? We, the so-called modern people, love to get ourselves busy in order to escape from the quest about the nothingness. But in Heidegger’s thought, nothingness is very crucial. Heidegger’s preoccupation with the nothing become an important theme that bridges his early and later work and serves to characterize his unique approach to philosophy [Basic Writings, 93]. But wait the minute, how could we deal with or question the nothingness if it is nothing at all? What is nothingness? Is it even possible to question the nothingness?

First of all, the nothingness is not the “not thing” or the negation. According to Heidegger, we know the nothingness when we are anxious. The nothingness is revealed by anxiety. In Being and Time, Heidegger says that anxiety is different from fear in a way that the object or cause of anxiety is never clear and definitive. We get anxious when standing before something dark, mysterious, or unknown. However, dealing with nothingness is actually the same as dealing with Being, says Heidegger because “pure Being and pure Nothingness are the same” [Basic Writings, 110]. Interrogating the nothing - asking what and how it, the nothing is – turns what is interrogated into its opposite. The question of the nothingness puts us, the questioners, in question. It is a metaphysical question. It is a question about Being.

We know how important the term aletheia which basically means the openness, disclosedness or unconcealedness of Being to Heidegger’s thought. It is impossible to talk about aletheia without talking about “lethe” which is the hidden, the concealed, the undisclosed part/aspect of aletheia because the word aletheia itself consists of two words these are “a” and “lethe”. This lethe is what remains hidden when Being is disclosed. Consequently, Being is never fully disclosed. Whenever Being discloses or gives itself (or appropriated by Ereignis), at the same time Being also conceals or withdraws itself. Heidegger even claims that what is concealed is more original than what is disclosed or unconcealed.

Then how do we deal with nothingness or the nothing? In Being and Time, Heidegger calls us to question Being. However in later Heidegger, apparently the more appropriate action or attitude is to welcome or to be friend with the unknown, the mystery. Nothingness is not something that we could or should conquer by disclosing everything or by grounding everything to reason. With mystery Heidegger refers to something that is beyond our calculative, representational thinking. How do we do it? We should be waiting in silence, contemplating about what closest to us and most importantly letting being be (Gelassenheit). With this, Heidegger is saying goodbye to philosophy of willing.

Ah, sounds so mystical. Though he refuses being labeled as a mystic saying that mysticism is a flight from thinking, his later thinking and his “closeness” to Meister Eckhart, one of the great German mystics, tell us otherwise. But whatever the label is, I think what Heidegger is trying to do is to give room to the unknown, the mystery which the modern people tend to ignore or even dislike. I myself hate being in the dark not knowing what's going on. I don't like the uncertainty. But life is so full of mystery, uncertainty, the unknown. We are already thrown into that kind of life. Guess, we just have to make peace with it by welcoming the mystery as the interesting element of life.


Happy Good Friday!

Sunday, April 01, 2007

For The Next Two Years


For the next two years, Warsun will have to take care his only daughter, Rola, when Yuni, his wife, is in Singapore to work as a foreign domestic worker. Yuni is currently still doing the training in Jakarta. Warsun does not really like that idea. Why is that? “Because I will have to do all of the chores. I will have to wash the clothes. And, I will have to help my mother selling the mendoan”, said the 37-years-old man. Life is not easy when the wife is not around, isn’t it Mas Warsun?

But it is not all exciting either for Yuni who had worked in the Middle East three times before trying her luck in Singapore this time. Of those three times working in the Middle East, only once she managed to bring her salary home because two of her ex employers there did not pay her salary after all the hard work she had done for them. She said the family that she worked for in the Middle East got houses as big as a football field and had so many family members. Did those employers get busted for not paying her salary? You bet they did not.

Nevertheless these experiences never stop her from trying again. In fact, she is still very much determined to work overseas. To her, being a successful foreign domestic worker is a matter of luck. It never occurs to her that it is her right to get protected, to demand the salary she earns. Perhaps she has never heard that by law (UU No. 39 / 2004) the government is obliged to protect Indonesian migrant workers while working overseas. Apparently, many foreign domestic workers from Pekaja, Kali Bagor, Banyumas also subscribe to this point of view. Their only hope is to be lucky that is they get good employers. They do no have so much faith in the government, don’t they?

So despite her painful past experiences as a foreign domestic worker, Yuni has set her mind to go to Singapore. Given her education level (junior high school) and Indonesian high unemployment rate, being a foreign domestic worker does not seem to be much of an option to her. She basically follows the examples set by people around her like her own mother, her mother in-law, her relatives, her friends in the village who had gone overseas to work as foreign domestic workers. As a part-time construction worker, her husband does not make much money. Her husband’s mother, with her mendoan business helps them with their daily meals and housing. But obviously they also have other needs and Yuni who had once earned money on her own feels the need to have her own money. They have already sold the motor bike that they bought from her only one-time success working in the Middle East. They need money now. Yuni said she wants to use the money to renovate the kitchen, to pay for the bills, to pay for Rola’s education and buy other stuffs. So it’s time to go.

Unfortunately for the next two years Yuni will have to leave Rola at home, her daughter who turns 8 this April and already misses so many years being with her mother. I am not sure what Rola really feels this time. Yuni first left her when she was 4 months old. But she is big enough now to feel and understand the absence of a mother. Perhaps Rola hates the situation. Or perhaps she is growing accustomed to not having her mother around. But for Yuni, it is a dreadful situation. The guilt is so much to bear. But I don't know what else to do, said the 24-years-old woman quietly.

The sad thing is, she is not sure when she will stop doing this because the money she earns will only be enough to feed her family for maybe 2 or 3 years apart from the renovation. She will have to work 253 days per year (she only gets 1 day off per month in Singapore) for the next two years to bring home Rp 17 million (US$ 1,900) after taking into account the 8-months salary deduction. She knows she will need to do at least another period after the current one. If only she knows how to manage the money into a productive/income-generating activity, maybe 2 periods are enough. But for the time being, Warsun has to wash the clothes for the next two years …