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?

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!

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 …

Glossolalics

Thomas Sheehan of Stanford University coined the term “glossolalics” (analogous to alcoholics) referring to the addiction to terms / glossary by the so called Heideggerians. Oh I like the term! It perfectly pictures the overwhelming difficulties one is having when dealing with Heidegger’s new or newly invented terms. It is so overwhelming that Sheehan cynically said that Heideggerians tend to pay too much attention on the glossary: “Heideggerians seem to have abandoned philosophy to become a glossolalics who think the same thought without need of speech and babble the same speech without need of meaning”. He even added that it was not only the outsiders (non-Heideggerians) that did not understand what we (the Heideggerians) were talking about, “there is a growing suspicion that we don’t either.” Oops!!

Though Sheehan’s comments really nail the head, the Heideggerians are not to be blamed. I think it is simply inevitable because Heidegger’s main ideas are centered around those new terms: Being, Dasein, Ereignis, Geviert, Gelassenheit, Austrag, Abgründ, etc. I believe the problem lies not so much on the new terms themselves because anyway Heidegger still uses human languages despite his efforts to find the originary meanings of the words. He digs up some ancient Greek words and creates new German words. The thing is he hardly gives clear, distinct definitions of the words. Even if he does, the meaning often changes or being redefined throughout his scattered essays or writings. This has created so many interpretations over the ambiguous meanings.

He, of course, realized this difficulty. He defended himself calling his works not “works” but “ways”. But these “ways” have given me hard time. So not only one has to deal with ambiguous meaning of the words but s/he also has to figure out these confusing ways of Heidegger. And things are even harder for someone like me who has to write her thesis in Indonesian. I wrote a thesis on later Heidegger focusing on Dasein as the clearing site of Being to find out about the relationship between man and Being. Since I have never seen any books on later Heidegger written in Indonesian, I had to find or reinvent new Indonesian words, new terms. Believe me, this was a tremendous task! Moreover, I do not read Heidegger’s works in German. Well, even if I did, I don’t think it would have been so helpful because the words are not the everyday German. I often find different English words for the same German word because they were translated by different translators. I got lost in translation.

After a long struggle, I managed to finish my long overdue thesis two weeks ago. It took me almost 4 years to finish it before I get kicked out of the school, STF Driyarkara. I was supposed to sit for the exam next month. Well, I don’t care about the exam. I hate exams. I am just hoping that my Indonesian terms do not stray way too far from its original meaning. In fact, I do not dare to ask whether they express what Heidegger really meant with those terms. I try to focus more on Heidegger’s ideas instead of those mind-boggling terms. But I am afraid I just joined the forces, become the glossolalics myself. Do I really know what I write? So what is Being? Who is Dasein?

How Much Money Does She Actually Make?

Her name is Sumirah, a mendoan seller from Pekaja, Kali Bagor, Banyumas. She makes the best mendoan (snack made of fermented soybeans or known as tempe) I have ever had in my life. But she does not quite know how much money she makes. Or so I thought ... perhaps I was wrong ...

I went to Banyumas, the hometown of mendoan to accompany Chi Yin, a journalist from Straits Times Singapore, to write some reports on domestic migrant workers. We were staying at Sumirah's house because her daughter in-law, Yuni, was leaving to Singapore to be a domestic worker that week.

Sumirah wakes up at 2 am in the morning to make mendoan so that she could sell them at around 5 – 6 am. This morning session will last at about 8 am. She would then start the second batch of mendoan making at around 2 pm which would normally end at around 5 – 6 pm. As a business owner, she has already established her loyal customers who are basically her own neighbors. Every morning and evening they come to her kitchen. The transactions take place in there. Her other customers are the school kids. In the morning, Yuni takes the mendoan to the kiosks near the schools. Yuni also goes door to door to sell mendoan. As she is now in Jakarta doing some training to be a TKI in Singapore, the mother in-law would need someone else (and that would be her son, Yuni’s husband I suppose) to do what she used to do. The business must go on, mustn’t it?

In between those 2 sessions she sometimes helps her husband taking care of some plants like chilly, peanuts and tapioca in their small piece of land. Sumirah usually ends her day in front of TV before going to bed at around 9 pm. There goes her daily activities, 7 days a week. She hardly takes a day off because a day off means no mendoan which means no money for the day. This is not something that she can afford because she is the breadwinner to whom the whole family including her son’s family depends on. She has to work every day, 10 – 13 hours a day, 7 days a week. Besides mendoan, she also makes other kinds of snacks like bakwan (fried vegetables), tahu isi (tofu stuffed with vegetables), meniran (rice cooked with coconut milk) or buntil (tapioca leaves cooked with coconut milk). They all taste so good.

Fired with the spirit to start up a microfinance program soon, I could not help but wondering how much money she actually makes after all the hard work. So there I was sitting in her kitchen asking her questions about her business. The mendoan (and other snacks) was priced at Rp 250 each. To find out about the revenue was an easy task. Her daily sales turnover was Rp 140.000. The problem arose when I asked her about the cost. She could not tell me. So I tried to calculate the cost by listing down the main ingredients which consisted of tempe (fermented soybeans), flour, some spices and coconut oil. Then I asked her the quantity and the price of each item to multiply and add them up to get the so called “cost of good sold”. To my surprise, I found out that the cost exceeded the revenue. Instead of making money, she actually lost money.

I told her about my finding and she just smiled at me. She did not seem to be bothered. Perhaps she thought I was just a smart-ass city folk who had no idea about this mendoan business. Or perhaps I simply got it wrong. I had a feeling that something was wrong with the information she gave me. It must have been either the coconut oil or flour. 10 liter of coconut oil or 10 kg of flour a day was rather too much for her sales turnover. Even if they were for 2 days of consumptions, the number would still be red.

It was such a simple calculation. Yet I could not figure it out. Where does my 10 years working experience as a fund manager go? This time I hope my calculation is wrong because otherwise she would need to increase the price. She actually mentioned to me about this possibility saying that people sold mendoan at Rp 500 in the nearest town. However she dares not to do it because she would lose her customers. But why bother doing business if you are losing money? So I really hope my calculation is wrong.

Anyway, she has been doing her job for 2 years now. She wouldn't survive that long if she keeps on losing money, would she? Well, perhaps I should have gotten up at 2 am, watched her doing her thing and done my own calculation. Too lazy, though.

Know Your Status!

That's what he said in that campaign. "I know my status, what about you?", he challenged the audience. Yes, Rodrick knew his status long time ago. He has been living with HIV for 16 years. That status has changed his life forever. It wasn't easy in the beginning as he admitted. Definitely not. It took him years before finally accepted his status. He made peace with life 6 years ago.

Knowing our status i.e. whether or not we have HIV/AIDS is certainly a frightening, heart-wrecking thing to do. But living with HIV/AIDS without knowing it is far more terrifying. We could endanger our loved ones. And I guess the most terrifying thing of all is to let others know that we have HIV/AIDS. Rodrick has been through all those stages. He even takes thing further by deliberately telling people everywhere about his status in order to help them. He is now actively involved in Treatment Action Campaign, or known as TAC, an organisation that raises awareness and helps people with HIV/AIDS to get proper treatment.

Rodrick is the first HIV positive person I have ever met. I did not expect to see someone like him. He was nothing close to what I imagined how someone with HIV/AIDS should have looked like. He is so full of life and so fun to be with. He is also an excellent public speaker! Though sometimes he gets annoyed quite easily ;-). Rodrick shows me that HIV or AIDS should not stop someone from living a normal life or enjoying things that life offers. He loves dancing. He likes partying. He took us to some parties. We chilled out in Long Street, Capetown. He also cooked for us when Marina and Gladman, my beloved host family, threw a party. He does get tired quite easily but he certainly knows how to enjoy life. He wants to come to Indonesia. Someday, Rodrick! In short, he's living a normal life.

I am sure there are stages in life that one has to go through before accepting things that they cannot change. Those stages can be very difficult. And, those difficult, trying stages can be very long. Life may not be the same again but it is not the end of the world. I know this is easier said than done. But perhaps, like other kind of hardship in life, it would give us a chance to grow stronger and wiser. Perhaps it would also inspire others like what Rodrick has done to many and certainly to me. Dankie baia, Rodrick!

1 December 2006 is AIDS' day

Samora Woman

It was one afternoon in Samora, a township in Western Cape, South Africa. I was sitting, waiting for the TB & HIV/AIDS campaign to start when this lady with her long, bright, pink skirt caught my eyes. Samora is a place for black South African. It's less than half an hour drive from Capetown. Apartheid has long gone but surprisingly people are still flocking based on their colours. Certain areas are dominated by white people and others are dominated by either black or coloured people. I hate using this term but you cannot help it when you are in South Africa. Somehow colours seem still matter to them. But I guess this area segregation is mostly due to the economy conditions and the land/property prices. Many black people could not afford houses in expensive areas. So, Samora is a "black area". And, you don't just go and wander around in areas like that. It is not safe, so I was told. I wasn't really afraid but Rodrick, that loving HIV/AIDS activist, watched over my back closely while we were there. He never let me off his sight. Well, it is always wise to listen to the locals, isn't it?

Viva Condoms

Yes, it's a picture of a condom. For those who recognize it, yes it is the national flag of the Republic of South Africa (RSA). It was one of the many interesting posters about HIV/AIDS that I saw in day hospital in Mitchell's Plain, Western Cape, South Africa. I was startled to see how candid and straightforward that poster was. One could also easily spot other interesting and creative posters, billboards, pamphlets or other campaigning tools for fighting HIV/AIDS in the streets of Western Cape, in the buildings, public places or even churches. Another billboard on the street says "HIV/AIDS loves skin to skin". They must be really serious about fighting HIV/AIDS. How could they not be if approximately 5,3 million out of 43 million people of South Africa are currently living with HIV/AIDS?

But, a condom wrapped with a national flag? Aren't they being a little too serious about it? A national flag is a symbol of a country. It is associated with respect, heroism, nobility, pride. There are even certain rules and regulation on how to treat the flag that one may get punished for violating the rules. And, what is a condom? A condom symbolizes a very private matter between 2 individuals which is not much talked openly in public i.e. sex. In this case, a condom is a symbol of protection from getting HIV/AIDS. So when a condom and a national flag are put together what exactly does it tell us? Firstly, an immersion between a private and a public matter just took place. Condoms now become a public issue. Secondly, it simply shows how serious the people of RSA that they are all, as represented by the flag, involved in dealing with the HIV/AIDS problem. I don't even dare to dream of seeing such kind of poster in Indonesia. Why?

It goes without saying that condoms mean sex. In many countries like Indonesia, sex is very much still regarded as a taboo that any discussions about it are better kept tightly in the closet. One may argue that it would be far unnecessary to make such a poster here in Indonesia because the percentage of people who are living HIV/AIDS is almost nothing compared the RSA. The official number indicates that there are only about 130,000 people out of 225 million who are HIV/AIDS positive. Also, the majority of people living with HIV/AIDS here in Jakarta got infected through drugs injections instead of sexual intercourse. But the figure, like other (official) figures, is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps we should stop deceiving ourselves that we would never be like any African countries when it comes to HIV/AIDS. (Or other issues like environmental destruction, poverty, hunger, etc.) What makes us so special that we think we will not be like them if we do not start taking things seriously?

Nevertheless, I agree that perhaps that kind of poster would be way too provocative for most Indonesians. The socio-political cost to have that kind of poster hanging in public places would probably outweigh the benefits. There is a possibility that it may even rouse a social unrest should the conservative, puritan groups decide to blow up the issue. So, the question is how the Indonesians do the campaign about sexual diseases? It is certainly a problematic issue in itself. There are always other benign, subtle, tactful ways of doing the campaign but we could not possibly talk about preventing sexual diseases (particularly HIV/AIDS) without involving condoms in conversation. The thing is, promoting condoms to unmarried couples or teenagers might be seen as endorsing free sex. In country like Indonesia where sex is firmly tied with morality, this would raise some problems. Some people may argue that condoms would be unnecessary if only people stay faithful to their spouses. Yes, but there is a "big if" in that argument. If all people behave the way they should, the world would be so free of problems. Last time I check, the world is not like that. Another reality check shows that a lot of singles and teenagers in Indonesian big cities are no longer the way they used to be years ago.

Promoting condoms in Indonesia is obviously not an easy thing. It has a lot to do with cultural and moral values. But should we blind ourselves with false hope that everyone is so religious and of high moral standard that s/he would never do pre- or extra-marital sex? Or should we start seeing the face of reality and deal with it? The point is not about having that sacred red-and-white flag wrapped a condom. It is about the attitude in dealing with the problems. Would we dare to claim that we have been truthful and realistic in dealing with the many problems that we have as the South Africans are doing with HIV/AIDS?

Nelson Mandela : "Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because [that is] the only way to make it appear like a normal illness."

Being Thrown

So I am here ... but so what?
How would I be otherwise?
Who else could I be?
Who could tell if there are other tales?

What's left but walking the chosen path
in a realm that is most obscure to logic
whose edge shaping the silhoutte of life
that has been forever longing
to be fulfilled and understood

What's left but dancing to the rhythm
that rips the will off its stiffness
delivering it to the game of life
that has been eternally yearning
to be played and savoured

So I am here ... but so what?
And so what ... if I am here

Li- Jakarta, 21/10/06