Opinion

Hermeneutical Questions: Symbols Disaster Chronicle/Bushel Guru

Uqbah Iqbal*

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Malaysia

Submission: August 25, 2017;Published: August 29, 2017

*Corresponding author: Uqbah Iqbal, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, UKM 43650 Bangi Selangor, Malaysia.

How to cite this article: Uqbah I. Hermeneutical Questions: Symbols Disaster Chronicle/Bushel Guru. Theranostics Brain Spine Neuro Disord. 2017; 2(1): 555576. DOI: 10.19080/TBSND.2017.02.555576

Opinion

Written by Jakob Sumardjo, originally written for an art journal. In the cultivation was widened, because so many cultural information contained by this Babad Pakuan. The writing that is planned to be completed in 15-20 pages, it reaches 3-4 times its length. So it is better this paper published in the form of a small book. The author provision in interpreting contemporary cultural content in this chronicle still holds to the primordial mindset of old societies in Indonesia. The cosmological mindset of old Indonesian society is not anthropocentric as in the Judeo-Christian cultural tradition, but more biocentric and ecocentric. Man is only an integral part of the universe, and the universe is part of a higher reality.

Our way of thinking as a modern man comes from this Judeo-Christian cultural tradition. Man as the center of the universe. Man is authorized as the ruler of the universe. All these things are given names by humans and for the benefit of man. This culture evolved into a struggle for complete human freedom, the breeding of individuality, the guarantee of its human rights, regarded everything outside of itself as an object to be studied, understood and mastered; Secularization, humanization, and materialism. The way the babad thinks is different. Man is not the king of the universe. Man is only one of the reality of the universe. Human rights are subject to universal rights. And the fact of the universe they experience in their concrete life environment, the nature that lives it. This is why humans are friendly with gods, animals, trees, rivers, mountains, sea, mega. In the perception of modern man, this chronicle is a mere fairy tale. But for people who think biocentric and ecocentric, that’s a concrete reality. Industrialization has destroyed nature. Nature has no human rights whatsoever. The right to live animals, plants, rivers, hills, the forest is not there. There is only Human Rights, no Rights of Nature. Nature must be conquered by man. Modern heroes are those who contribute much thought to how this nature can be mastered and utilized to the greatest extent possible for the sake of human well-being. The way our biocentric and ecocentric ancestors thought was buried with deforestation, the destruction of mining hills, the disappearance of mangrove forests. Industrialization is progress, prosperity, prosperity. Let this nature we exploit all-out for this life we live easier, cheaper, more relaxed. These polluted air cases, the polluted seas, the polluted rivers, are the risks of human progress. We will bear it together, because we have enjoyed it together also.

In this chronicle (as well as hundreds of Indonesian tribal myths) we will encounter a strange way of thinking. In the heavens there are people, in the earth there are people, on the seabed there are people, because they also have kings like humans on this earth. Since the “universe society” is higher in quality, people in this world cannot ignore their existence and intervention. Read by modern reason, the sky, the earth, the mountains, the sea, the river, it all contributes to the life of human society. They can not be ignored, let alone considered deserted their human rights. Of course, the times of the chronicle (and poems) have passed. We live in modern times with our modern thinking device. But if this modern life turns out to cause a variety of environmental problems, and instead of human welfare but instead harm, is not the worldview of the ancestors we should review again? Of course we cannot live “primitive” again like that. And we do not want to. But their worldview should be contemplated for the benefit of the present. By reconstructing this ancestor’s way of life, we can also understand why the state of society is now as we inherited. So far we have always been cynical about the habits of rural society, where the collective unconscious of the past is still alive, and judging it as superstitious and outdated. The problem is, is the way we have been “right”?