What We Possess and What We Don't

*Part of series of writings

Let's looking back our life, what life experience could we collect? For today's standard, life experience came mostly from watching movies, TV, reading books, looking at magazines and advertisement, and browsing the net. Social media is practically everywhere right now. Everything we see, everywhere we look, there are always some neatly designed commercial billboards, beautifully packaged products, head-turning posters, and more. Unconsciously, they shaped our culture. Yes, our culture wasn't anything passed from the earlier generations: ours is shaped by media and their viral publication.

Bombarded with images of 'white is beauty', today's women shaped themselves towards the ideal, screened with advertisement of 'fat is for loser, skinny is sexy', the youth start to dieting themselves for no apparent reason (apart from 'being skinny just for the sake of skinny'). Even the self-proclaimed 'vintage' people knew the vintage culture from magazine, not a historical culture that's passed by their earlier generation.
Everyday tons and tons of visual imagery supplied to our eyes, the things that seems cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and opportunities, the dramatic story of successful person.

First, we dressed up with thick make ups and elegant outfits, then it continue and became a sort of habitual activities, the activities spread along a specific zeitgeist, forming a to-be-culture that's ready to unleashed themselves to greater institution like society. After the society had been successfully penetrated (by means of publications and socialization), the culture are established. Staying there for quite some time, before the media inject us again with another trend, another aesthetic value.

Everywhere we look: there's a new advertisement of the new Gucci products, new Apple releases, the success story of Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, the miraculous-dramatic story of rehabilitated junkie out of Oprah's talkshow. We were told to be like them, we were told to dig some deeper meanings behind those fabricated publication. We are mocked when we dress in some loin cloth when we went public, everyone laughed when we can't say a thing about Twitter. Today's media publication and company marketing shape our culture, minimize the gap between what's real and what's dreamy.

We were told to tucked in our shirt so that we can look like Katie Holmes, we are forced to buy those Zara clothes so that we may look like the people who bought them. Workers work hard to gain money and ended up spending in some Armani shoes and the new BlackBerry Bolt. Children looked up on PS3 advertisement and begged their father to buy one, teenage looked up Katy Perry's dress and hunt them in shopping mall, adults fooled by the new time-saving application in iPhone so that they can access their emails everywhere, and ended up buying them. And what happened when we can't buy those products? What happened when we failed to lived up the ideal images of 'white is beauty' or 'thin is sexy'? What happened when we didn't participate in some global warming prevention campaign? You get alienated, people looked down on you, they reject you.

The gaps are enormous, between what's real and what's not. Yet, today's corporation and media had eliminate every bound possible. Oceans and mountains, miles of roads and ricefields are eliminated, so that we here in Jakarta can looks like the people in New York, so that we can also plug a big headphone to our iPod Nano like everyone in Tokyo did. Visual imagery in every social media, well, to be honest it was a clandestine arrangement to globalize everything, socialize everything, make everything familiar and 'touchable', they even make the intangible could be grasped easily.

Here's when the invisible ideology took us in, forced us to conform with them. Yet, we never realized it, we never--consciously--knew what kind of ideology and belief they were all injected to us. We knew about the physical products, yet can't grasped the concept behind it, a concept of globalization, an idea to gather everyone under one roof. Knew something that physical products don't guarantee instant literacy, we possess a Blackberry yet we can't maximized the functions (says like, email features or voice recognition call), that's when the gap happened.

--TO BE CONTINUED-- 

Facebook, and Evolution.

It's been 3 month since Facebook staff updated their layout to the latest incarnation--the one dubbed 'The Publisher'--the one we all used right now. The funny thing is, every time Mark Zuckerberg & co released new layout upon the site, there were always, ALWAYS, some groups of people voice their sound against it (don't mistake me, I've been in Facebook since 2007, almost 2 years now) I did a little search just some minutes later with the keyword 'new layout', and guess what I found:

 

There are many groups established to rally a support against Facebook's new layout (and I reckon many friends of mine joined in them, too...hehehe). According to my experience since 2007, Facebook had updated their layout, like, 3 times till now. And in each updates, those 'status quo' supporter always popped up again and again to scream their protests. "Bring Back The Old Facebook", "New Layout Sucks", "Against Facebook's New Layout", etc, etc. Of course people always had the right to indulge in their comfort zone and staying with the old. But what exactly is the pain of accepting change and new idea? To the close minded, the pain would be much and unbearable. To let go something that's been familiar with us--well, it required an effort, and open-mindedness. It urges us to form a new way of thinking, a new paradigm.

Notice something in those 'status-quo-lover' groups, they named themselves "2,000,000 People to Protest", "Millions to Hate New Facebook Layout" ...well, here's something I gotta tell you: communal protests, street revolutions, mass demonstrations, they ran out of place in this new century. Marxist revolutions won't work anymore. Today's power, it's not in the arms of many, it's in the arms of the minority. The dedicated, visionaries minority are the one who'll shape the world in future. Labor organization with 10,000 people could easily be smashed with one clever provocative person, right? See how Mark Zuckerberg ignore the protest and move on with those new layouts (not just once, but many times.)

 

‘The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.’

— Martin Luther King Jr.

 

From the micro-sized topic of the Facebook layout thingy, let’s broaden our topic, because frankly, all I want to discuss here was about change. The only thing that's constant in our world. Except time and change, nothing lasts forever in this world. Remember Darwinian evolution that encouraged us not to stay with the status quo, not to accept the things as they were before and as they are right now, rather we have to accept things as they will become. The strongest is not the one who'll survive, nor the most intelligent, it's the most adaptable who'll seize the day. 2,000,000 people with their strong will and loud voice might make a change, but imagine how long does it take to convince and find another 1,999,999 people who shared the same idea with you? Quantity can be beaten by quality, David can beat Goliath. The least minority--the ones who react correctly to situation--they are the masters of war. They’re the one who can turn the tide on the battle, because they had what others don’t: correct tools and instrument. See how Mark Zuckerberg stay deaf eared to the protestor, because in the end, Mark is the one who possess the tool, the instrument to change the whole Facebook layout and Terms of Service. He’s just one guy with a small army of programmer backed him up, but he can  spread influence to 200 million Facebook users around the world. He successfully turn the tide of the battle, he won in the war of one against many.

The idea is, today’s world is totally different from yesterday. And how stupid it was for us to keep looking back to the past, without so much looking ahead. The past may served us some deep meanings for our next step, but that’s that: we had to move on. Status quo may gave us security, comfort and sense of belongings, but it is merely an illusion, a temporary state, because in the end, it'll change. There's no point in resisting change, there's no use in tackling new ideas. Accept them, and change with them. Be responsive and adaptable, and you may continue to live.

(now, look what happened to those protesting groups in Facebook right now:)

1,497 fewer members, huh? Well, time's a CHANGING, buddy! :-)

‘Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.’

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Global Message

 

Yup. Global citizen. And by global citizen, I don't think Chris (and the whole TED team) said anything about attitude and behavior changes. Globalization isn't about the change of lifestyle and the translations of imported physical commodities to our daily life. Globalization isn't about the cup of Starbucks you got per day, isn't about your Apple iPhone, isn't about your Nike shoes.

You can't say you are a global citizen when you wear Armani clothes, Levis' jeans and Converse shoes. That's not global citizen. If, you knew a thing about globalization based only from the physical products you possessed, the celebrities gossip you heard and the Hollywood movie you watched. Basically, you're just a caveman being exploited by capitalists.
But, you can say you're a global citizen when you knew about the news update on how Obama's new regulations can affect your daily life and the latest discovery of stem cell experimentation even though you're stuck in your room with kopi tubruk and a local cigarette.

Globalization is about open-mindedness. The willing to embrace others' opinion, arguments and ideas from around the world. It requires only the moral shift and adjustment--not lifestyle changes and westernized habit. Not about consumption of physical products, not about good fashion sense.
We won't be as advanced as Japan in the term of technology, we can't be as liberal as America in political climate, the best we can do is to cling to our already established cultures. We're Indonesians. You think you can equated yourself with an American just by dressed up like them? No. You can't. But you can be as advanced as any modern countries citizen, even though you're staying in your Batik clothes: by gaining more knowledge and information.

That's the answer. Today, the flows of information and communication had become more valuable than the flow of physical products. You are rich when you possessed more information than most people, even though you go by bus everyday. On the contrary, you are poor when you drive a Lexus yet do not knew about the current affairs in international world. The environment affects our behavior, yes I do understand, but it is not the automatic adaptation that'll bring the next societal evolution, that's not conformity without further thinking that made us develop, nor it is the close mindedness and foolishly hoping that we won't be touched by globalization. Why said bad things about Starbucks, why directly attacked McDonalds and KFC, why blaming Microsoft and Apple? They're just they are.
What power do you have to oppose them? What power do you have to resist them? You don't have any. The biggest roadblock to development is that we keep looking left and right for reassurance, rather than sticking to what we already have, and function it forward for leaping ground.

Globalization touched us already. And yes, it is unavoidable. This is no threat, nor it's something to frighten us. It's something to embrace and celebrate. The future is here. Today. Understand it and make a change.

Open your mind. Welcome to the new world.