The Nation In Denial

As I was raised as a child in the culture of Patrilineal which respect the elders, we have to be polite and honor them all of the time and to believe whatever their teaching might be, I agree absolutely with the part that we have to act polite and honor their position in the society, but I’m not all heartedly with the second one that we have to believe whatever their teaching might be, because somehow even though it seems wise and philosophical in kind of speaking, but it doesn’t have to be necessarily always become the truth of all time. This is the case that happen to all of us or most of us right now, ‘Us’ as in all Indonesian People, by this I want to emphasized the belief that trusted by many of us, that our country is an ‘agricultural’ country instead the geographical fact that our country is indeed is in the form of enormous archipelagic country (even a blind man knows that!),in the term of Mr. Dummy “Archipelago country is a country which consist of a groups of chained islands and connected by the watery parts and mainly is the sea”, and please underlined the part that mainly the country consist of sea, so it is very based on the fact and logical thinking if we called our country as a maritime country instead of land based country a.k.a agricultural, and isn’t it logic if an archipelago country is a maritime country because of the watery area that larger than the land?! it’s not that I’m against all the agricultural stuff, it is good, very good in fact!! but we leave all of it in such unbalanced proportion, when we exploit the land but we leave the sea nearly untouched or the exact term will be “poorly managed”. And we have all of this agricultural teaching in the schools and from our parents without knowing when and where it was started, maybe the change of the mindset was started when our country was colonialized or maybe after that. Now the important part of all is that our mindset is heading at the wrong direction, and it is the obligation for the navigation officer to make it straight and proper, but actually it’s the obligation for all the people who has the better mindset than me and maybe a bigger power to change the situation to the better. The change should start now and like what they said “It’s now or never!” we really have rush it, because to make a slightest change in the mindset of the peoples, it could take a decade or even more to see the result of the change! I personally insist the revolution of our mindset, unless we want to see this great nation falling apart because the misdirection and grave mismanagement.
When we talk about the characteristic of a maritime nation, we will then talk about it’s maritime policy, and that will include all the field of operations from the field of economy, social, politics, laws and to the field of defense. The nation’s policy will reflect their orientation on the development, and one’s policy should be based on the natural and geographical characteristic in order to get the best result on the nation’s progress, and when we get back to the maritime nation, we should see the policy that reflect the attention of the government on the maritime issues, since it should be the fundamental element that should make the count on the making of progression of the nation itself. Now I will tell you the fact that I found recently from all of the discussion and reference that I have when I’m doing my course onboard of the ship FS Jeanne d’Arc. The Europe communities especially the France in particularly consider that in Asia there’s two big nation with the power that came naturally because of their large extent and the number of their people, and those are India and China!! at first I was surprised why Indonesia which has the extent of area and the number of people not far behind from those two nations are not even on the list of the nation with natural power, and it makes me think hard!! What factor from those two nations that we don’t have and make the other country consider Indonesia not as a country that should make the count, and I came to the conclusion that our country is like a lion who has no teeth and claws, it’s only the appearance that is enormous and looks scary but they consider it as a kitty cat that tamed and can’t even defend itself. And it’s all because the grave mismanagement of our nation’s goal and the methods used to get there, it will bring us back to the very basic things to consider, what are we as a nation want to make of ourselves in the future?? As a land based nation (continental) or a water based nation (maritime), as far as I can see in my personal point of view and probably most of Indonesian people will think the same, that this nation’s policy still focusing on the land based policy, despite of the complexity of the development in Indonesia, still it doesn’t exonerate the obligation that the development should have a balanced progress in all the field component. And as a maritime nation (undoubtful fact!!) we should a strong maritime foundation in the structure as well as in infrastructure and the policy to support it, from there we can step even further to the other area that need the attention, but when we have the wrong foundation then whoever in charge of the government, it won’t get anywhere! It sounds strong but indeed it is the fact that we can’t argued, and still there are plenty of stubborn big headed who thinks “their thought is the best of all and others is wrong” that sit in their comfy chair as our representative and as the policy maker of the government that thinks that we are on the right direction. I should say that our nation is in their denial, deny that this nation is a great maritime nation and not a continental nation that have all the focus on the land power instead of the sea power. Indonesia is a great maritime nation that should focus their greatness of power in the sea and the land of the support. As long as we still in denial, the focus of the country will get nowhere, and the progress that we expect that could bring back all the teeth in the lion’s mouth will not occurred.