Through the Looking-Glass

I just finished my second reading of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and the following quote resonated with me:

“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under…the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public…the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes…the third category need constantly to be before the eyes of the person they love…the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present.”

More and more it seems, social media is the eyes through which the semi-familiar public in the second category looks at us.

During my school's eight hour graduation yesterday I read an article about the impact of social media on the lives of young people in Saudi Arabia. The writer described it as nothing short of a social revolution where their lives behind their screens are freer and more robust than beyond the screen. After the usual proceedings of the students receiving their medals and saliming the line of teachers on stage, (me included! In the blue batik all teachers were gifted by the graduating class!) the rest of the day had the aura of a circus, with everything but the animals and peanuts. One interesting act was a Sundanese wedding ceremony, which I was told was symbolic in some way. In this symbolic graduation wedding two students were fabulously dressed up as bride and groom, others as dancers and two boys wore the costumes and make-up of an old man and women who performed a skit in the aisle before the play bride and play groom went up to our principal, vice principal and their wives. The pairs sat in a square facing each other and the “wedding” ceremony was complete when the bride and groom knelt at their feet and the narrator orated a speech. About one hour was devoted to the 12th graders graduating and the other seven were something akin to a talent show in which every extracurricular from the martial arts group to choir and scouts was represented.

Selfie sticks stuck up in the air like crooked cyborg arms throughout the ceremony. Even during the principal’s heart-felt speech at the beginning encouraging all of the students to continue their schooling before marrying, I was admitedly dismayed that the boys in their suits and the girls in the traditional kebaya gown and thick make-up were busy documenting more facial expressions than might be found in a super-model’s repertoire. The 10th and 11th graders, who sat behind the teachers, were decidedly more present at the ceremony.

What the kebaya looks like. It's very lovely.

Already in the spotlight, at least for the first hour, the graduating class appeared to quickly lose interest in the ceremony and became more interested in documenting their outfits and make-up for a wider audience than the one physically present (their entire social media family). One major difference between yesterday's graduation and my previous experience with graduations was that family members were not invited to participate – only the school family. I like to think that part of the selfie craze I saw served the purpose of preservingthis triumphant day for all those missing from the ceremony who mattered most to the students, like their immediate family. Judging from the amount of pictures posted to facebook the day after, however, their primary concern was that they appear before the public eye, the higher judgment of a facebook audience.

Although it has its merits, I believe much of what's posted on social media outlets like facebook is done so out of vanity. Undoubtedly there are many, many ways in which social media can enhance our lives. Twitter, Instagram, Etsy and Facebook are modern platforms for economics, politics and romance, as the article on Saudi youth argued. And the more conservative the society, the more enhancement offered. If eyes are the windows to the soul then our screens are our windows to the soul of a wonderland variety of information and possibilities. Our lives are larger and more important when laid out on our public timelines.

Truthfully, the examples of vanity here in Indonesia with the selfie fetish and obsession with lighter skin, hair and eyes are no more obscene than America’s vanity and feeling of self-importance. And even more truthfully, I look at the beauty ideal so scornfully because to me white skin is nothing special. It’s not the dominant feature in my image of beauty because I’m not being re-directed at every turn to conform to the dominant group’s ideal vision. I have options! I can take what the media pours into the visual stream or leave it. If I take it then no one blinks twice, if I leave it then I’m considered a modern, forward-thinking woman.

Unlike my students, I don’t have to talk about marrying by 25 (later for men. Just saying) or juggle fashion and piety. Even the occasional street harassment is nothing that would influence when and where I go out around town (at least nothing compared to what it is here, where waiting alone for a bus leads to men not-so-inconspicuously taking your picture and joking about how they’re going to use it as pornography).

Being a foreigner may sometimes add a special layer of fear and miscommunication to my interactions with strangers and in my interaction with this culture. When crossing cultures there's an abyss of faux-pauxs, frustrations and holes in the foreigner's understanding that can only be crossed once a modicum of common ground, or, in other words, trust, has been gained. And yet, there is a grace we give strangers in exchange for their honest judgement. Even strangers on the other side of the abyss. They cannot know us like someone who has followed our whole timeline but they see a snapshot of the person we are in that moment, from a distance, which is something we can never do ourselves. The longer I’ve been here the less I put myself in the first category of people who value the opinions of anonymous eyes. Living somewhere new means struggling toward the point when you can escape that first category and instead put your energy into your closer relationships.

When a student whom I don’t know well or stranger asks to take a photo with me, they couldn't care less about interacting with me. I am but a tool to get them more validation from their known public and the fact that I speak to them to offer congratulations or ask their name was glossed over entirely with the twelfth graders at our school's graduation. I do not belong to the group of people whose opinion they care about, which is understandable as I'm not a close relation and the abyss has not yet been crossed. 

What worries me is when our screens stand as an extra obstacle in crossing the abyss, when they are a screen we draw between us and any other persons who wearily watch us, wanting to pull back the screen but too afraid to do so without a modicum of humanity encouraging us to come forward. 

This wonderland through the screen is so appealing because nothing is what it is and everything is what it isn’t (my interpretation of this Carrollian quote in this context is that through the digital looking-glass people view us for what we are not – an unchanging picture out of context – and don’t view us for what we are – a unique experiment on the part of nature). But it's appealing because we feel in control of our image and we feel we can mold how the world views us with filtered snapshots of our lives. 

Obviously, these categories of self-importance are only in place to help the author, Kundera, clarify and simplify his argument. In real life they are fluid or perhaps non-existent. Obviously as well, I’m a white girl who can’t understand what it’s like being part of the colonized culture. I know what a monopoly on the beauty market looks like but not what complete, out-right rejection of my essential nature looks like.

Beauty is an ideal. It is a construct which gives us hope. And feeling watched isn’t entirely negative either. It gives us purpose because it means something apart from ourselves has taken notice and we are then forced to turn our focus outward and see what more can be expected of us. I just worry about how this fetishism with an ideal that doesn't reflect anything about who we are is detrimental to youth who are in the process of finding where they fit in the global picture. 

Oryza as Oracle or Revalations in the Rice Field

I can't describe the beauty of walking through the rice fields in my neighborhood at twilight. It is the dusty hour of ghosts, when ibus everywhere warn you to stay inside lest you get possessed. Day-dreaming and after dark: these are the times when you are most susceptible to possession apparently. Twilight is everything the easy sun-soaked hours of the early afternoon are not: fresh, mysterious and quiet (ok, besides the sound of the mosque, but that easily becomes background noise for me now). Beautiful places tend to add clarity to my perspective. They have the power to clear out all the cobwebs of my cluttered mind and leave only the here and now, stripped to its bare essence. 

 

Sometimes I am afraid of experiencing something truly sublime alone. Will I remember standing on the narrow dykes in between the mirror-like paddies, lighter than the sky, with mud weighing down my crocs? Will I remember how suddenly expansive it all felt, surrounded on all sides by watery fields and dark muddy paths leading away at not-so-perfect right angles? Will I remember the marbled clouds wobbling on the surface of the water which was streaked with eerie lights from the houses at the edge of the rice field? Or the lone tree that stood in the middle of it all, providing me with a point to reach? (I was as proud as if I'd landed on the moon.) And what of the call to prayer and the calls of frogs which filled the space of my mind so that I thought of nothing but what was in front of me? 

No, I may forget many details about Indonesia once I leave but I won't forget the feeling of particular moments such as these, wandering in nature among all the peaceful crepuscular-loving ghosts.

After my evening slog through the rice paddy I found myself asking, "what am I doing here?" As I was walking back in the dark, stumbling through the paths which were now less familiar (not because of the darkness but because I felt more alert to my surroundings), I wondered at how I came to have that frame of reference. How did I come to have an emotional attachment to this place so as to make it feel familiar, to make me feel a bit more connected to this strange place? I've often thought that you can only really know something once you're able to recognize the subtle changes it undergoes. 

Or, as Ursula Le Guin puts it: "Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger."

All of these people who go abroad with the expressed intention "to help" in another country - why do they stay? The decision to go is varied enough and perhaps mostly driven by personal desires in the beginning, when you can't really know what to expect and everything is just grand overtures and romantic ideals. Some might stay because the desire to fill out their resume is strong enough, but for most people I would not think that sufficient motivation to complete such an unpredictable, undefinable job as ours: volunteer english teachers. 

Our job description reads counterpart and cultural ambassador. It is as vague as it is impersonal; hardly a good argument to present yourself with on those days of doubt. A compelling reason to stay is feeling that you serve a purpose - first to your own life but also to the new community who adopts you. And you only know you serve a purpose for others once you have been invited to stay. Not simply for social currency (exhibit a. "hey look we have a foreigner!"; exhibit b. "hey look I'm helping out in a developing country. Aren't I noble?") but for your own unique offerings. And I think that really boils down to mindset. You can be extremely qualified to teach kids and share your knowledge about America but if you treat your differentness as a closed door whenever opportunity strikes, getting pissed off or easily overwhelmed by the attention and occasional harassment, then you'll want to leave and that will show. This invitation I speak of is usually not straight-forward or spoken aloud but a warmer current in the social atmosphere around you that develops over time. 

I think purpose is truly born within a moment that is especially impressive in some way. Beauty makes an impression. It makes me feel as though there is so much more of it to see. Indonesia might be in the international spotlight right now for its hard line on drugs (I wrote this a week ago as 8 of the 10 national and international drug smugglers were executed by firing squad) but in 10 years the impressions of my personal memories will be more tangible than the feature headlines of the Jakarta Post or international stories squished on page 3 of the Los Angeles Times*.

Despite my personal differences of opinion with some of the politics, policies and attitudes here, I hope I will always value observing the truths of others over amassing an audience for my own unevolved opinions. A thing that I think distinguishes the various bloggers and authors on all topics Indonesia is the capacity to admit that we are but foreigners looking in and don't have a place coming in to criticize another nation's system... As they say, my family may be messed up but I'm the only one who can say shit about them.

Beauty, although it may take a while to see, is equally accesible to everyone - travelers and residents alike. I try to imagine what the people who have lived around this their entire lives think of their natural beauty. I know they say Karawang is hot and has many rice fields and usually leave it at that but I wonder if for them they have internalized the beauty of the land they live, work and die on, all within few square miles' radius. There's transient beauty that you appreciate and a more spiritual beauty that you feel. Travelers and tourists may experience the first, people spending a short time somewhere might sense the second but only once you have a true emotional attachment to the land will you experience the third.

By traveling outside our comfort zone with an open mind, we serve a purpose. It's enough to just have the real experience and to lose yourself in the experience of others. Isn't obliterating stereotypes that all Americans have a lifestyle like Paris Hilton or that Indonesian Muslims are ultra conservative and hate the influence of Western culture an excellent purpose? Maybe you will also keep an evocative blog or channel your fresh perspective into some project your school or community might actually use. That's nice too. I can't speak for everyone but these are all reasons enough for me to stay.

 

*For a seasoned perspective on the Bali Nine executions see Elizabeth Pisani's recent blog post discussing the political atmosphere surrounding them).