#10 Egalitarianism

Photo by Matteo Paganelli on Unsplash

First of all, I feel sorry for the tragedy of mass shooting that happened in two mosques in New Zealand, my deepest sympathy for the victims and victims’ family. The truth is, till this time I am still feeling in grief and sorrowful although it did not happen to me directly. Nothing much I can do but pray for them, even it has almost been a couple of weeks after the tragedy but it still feels painful to me if I remember or hear it. I hope such tragedy will never ever occur again throughout the world.

Regardless of the mass shooting tragedy, if we talk about people, especially people around the world. Well, I had read a book; it has title in bahasa Indonesia ‘Komunikasi Lintas Budaya’ which was more or less a book on cross cultural understanding. The author of the book wrote a ton of experiences during his study overseas, and told me more about characteristic of people from different culture and country that made me so excited.

But there was a term that I did pay attention after reading a couple of chapters and it was about egalitarianism. Here, I am not going to make book review but I take an interest about an issue that is us as a human being.

Have you ever felt insecure when you were facing someone or people over you, it could be your boss, senior, lecturers, manager, or whatever in essence they have a higher position than you and then when you met and talked to them you felt suddenly as though you were nobody and lack of confident. Or in reverse, you felt secure and proud when you were amongst them you respect them very much just because they were considered as the rich, important and authoritative? If yes, how can you cope with such situation? 

Well, it is probably because I live in a country that follow collectivistic culture value (I am not sure though) makes me want to discuss this issue. We all agree that all of us as human being are equal without viewing race, ethnic, religion, skin colour, position, group and etc. But there are still many people don’t practice and show that they are egalitarian. People in Netherlands consider that the Dutch are equal as other Dutch as long as they are Human. We often find people here as if they have privilege due to their position, rich, status and this will infect to family member and makes someone feels proud because of his/her parent or relatives that have privileged or prominent status (you see what I mean?) and that is an innate achievement (being). In Australia and other west countries where embrace individualistic culture, they assume that one’s achievement is created (becoming) which is what have you already done in life.

In realm of work/business, okay I say here ‘working area’, we find people who have powerful and important position such as bosses, managers, supervisors, seniors, business owners are arbitrary in treating their workers or employees. For instance, if you work in a restaurant, your boss let all of job desk to the workers like what you do is what you should do, they no need to get involved in the process of cooking itself even for putting a toping because they think they have hired people to do it all. Yeah, there is no matter with it, but it looks like there is a gap between employer who feels superior and employee who feels insecure and inferior. And I sometimes feel that women role is considered less significant like for accompaniment only and it actually happen in masculine culture or in the countries that embrace patriarchy system. There are still many people think that women no need higher education because they will go back to the kitchen at the end  (that is a common saying around me) so they only have to know how to take care of their husband, children, and also how to cook, how to tidy up and everything about household.

In Indonesia, we are taught to respect the elder. We usually call our teacher or lecturer with ‘Pak’ it is just the same with ‘Sir’ and ‘Bu/ibu’ for ‘Mam’ or at least ‘Mr./Mrs.’ we call the same when we call a person who older than us regardless of we know him/her or not, sometimes people here want their title mentioned in certain opportunity as an instrument for power distance. You may often hear somebody’s called professor, doctor in university, worship place, wedding reception. And yeah, it is very common here. But unlike in Australia and other certain west countries, the students just call their teacher/lecturer’s name. It is not because they are rude or impolite but it is just a normal thing there.

And here, people also tend to idolize others excessively so if we watch TV programmes that show gesture of those who are the fame and being adored by people even tend to show off what’s their owns is usual, the worst is you like to watch it. In Netherland is different, no excessive idolization toward celebrities like in Indonesia. Even for the rich, they are unwilling to have a fancy house or apartment just to show their status, power and strength. Unfortunately, in reverse, people here tend to compete to build a fancy big house like a palace instead which is unnecessary, commonly in elite residence. Even we sometimes find an empty fancy house or it is occupied by a housekeeper only, the owners, they are not at home, maybe work or live out of the town or out of the country.

We don’t need to feel either insecure or superior and we don't view people either more superior or more inferior than us. Everybody has the same right and opportunity. In the life after nobody care whether you’re white or black people, you’re Asian or European, you’re rich or poor but we definitely will be asked for our responsibility of what we did in the day of judgement. We should aware, for Allah we are equal either men or women, God will make no distinction on whether we are rich or poor, master/professor, charming or not and all the things that is sophisticated but He will make a distinction on our eeman (faith) and goodness during we live in the world that we call ‘dunya’.

*reference: Komunikasi Lintas Budaya (2011) by Deddy Mulyadi