Indonesia's Incredibly Bright Future

Note: Somehow, this post (Indonesia's Incredibly Bright Future) written and posted on Wednesday was deleted accidentally. So I'm reposting it regretfully.

Disclaimer: I wrote this on caffeine high and this post contains broad generalizations and does not carry the opinions of other A1 HL-ers in my group.

As an Indonesian teenager who is more proficient in writing in English than in her own native language, I often feel ashamed of my incompetence in Indonesian.

I love writing in English, I hate writing in Indonesian.

I love English Literature; I often have problems reading Indonesian Literature.

It is a sad irony and predicament for many young International educated youths today.

I don’t know from where exactly this inadequacy comes from, nor when will it end.

What is the draw of the English language anyway? Is it naturally more beautiful, most audiophilically pleasing? Is it simply a matter of taste?

Are we, young Indonesians ashamed of our country, and thus our native language? Are we just too sick and tired in the reality of this country?

A gloriously corrupt nation whose ex-president (and probably our favorite) stole $35 billion from our country and despite all his crimes still lounges at his Cendana home?

Or is it something shallower, more sinister?

Maybe we decide, hey, English makes us special, makes us more exclusive. SUPERIOR even in comparison to the national school kids.

I think so.

Amidst globalization and the supremacy of American culture, us young people, gradually and not so gradually see our Chinese, Malay, Javanese, Balinese and our hundreds of cultures as boring, ridiculous, retarded and un-awesome.

We adore bule actors while we mock and laugh at Indonesian ones.

Seeing bule’s down the street we stare, we look, we fancy.

Who cares if they really are just average folks with different pigments? They are Caucasians and thus are cooler and awesome than we are.

Secretly we all want to be Americans and or Europeans, what’s so exotic in being Asian? Most of the countries in our continent are a third world country!

We aren’t Asian Americans, but as someone put it, we’re Americanized Asians.

Well, I am. I, sadly and shamefully am.

It a distressing and often irrevocable trait, I have been raised this way; all of my friends are this way. Apparently my love of English Literature is ironical. I may have read dozens and in a few years, hundreds of English Literature, but how many Indonesian books have I read? Probably less than a dozen!

I can name great writers whom I love and adore. How many Indonesian writers do I like? One.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Even his work I first read in English, and then properly switched to the Indonesian version.

Even Pram, the Nobel Prize candidate whom I so revere, is mostly unknown and ignored by most of us.

Who cares? We say, he’s dead, and he’s irrelevant! He’s sooo boring.

But that’s not the point is it? He was someone who loved this nation, this country and the people of the Indies. He who spent so many years suffering and toiling for freedom, and wrote, just wrote for our country.

I called several bookstores searching for his most famous and prominent books today. It took me calling more than four stores to finally find it.

One of the person who answered my call and heard the title of the novels, asked me the author of this book! PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER! I almost screamed at her.

In Gramedia, Indonesia’s biggest chain bookstore, there are probably only two racks for Indonesian literature; half of it is used up for translated classics and modern works.

But there is dozens of racks for Japanese comic books, and mindlessly moronic Americanized chick-lits.

It has been sixty over years since our independence, almost ten years since the fall of Suharto.

No one cares about the future of this nation.

We all say, someone is going to come along and change all that. Someone is going to take care of it.

Time will fix our nation. Time will make this nation great!

I know sound like a rambling visionary screaming for a change in a world and society deaf and contentedly ignorant on such matters.

Nietzsche said Visionaries lie to themselves, and liars lie to other people only. Though he is right in certain ways, he’s still incorrect and the insane Nietzsche we all love.

We are already lying to ourselves anyhow. We’re ignoring who we are (genetically), and happily too!

So, to the foreigners I say with a dyed blonde hair, blue contact lenses, black tank top, jeans and a perky smile, “Hi welcome to Indonesia, we are the new generation of Indonesians, oh don’t worry we speak English, we live the American way! We don’t give crap about Indonesia!”