The things we cannot see

[A. G. Maisey]

David, broadly, I do agree with that which you have placed before us, however, I will put this to you:-

by heritage, you are Javanese, but by location you are European

ergo, to function within European society you must have a template in your mind that understands what you see & experience in a European way
however, to function within Javanese society you must have a template in your mind that understands what you see & experience in a Javanese way.

those of us who do need to function well in more than one society & culture do develop the facility to have more than one world view.

I know a Javanese engineer who was born in a little village outside of Karangpandan, which is on the slopes of Mount Lawu, near Solo in Jawa Tengah. He once said to me something like this:-

"--- when I am working in Jakarta or Sydney, I need to think in the same way that the people I work with think, but when I go home to my village, I need to think exactly as my grandfather thinks --- "

I reckon this just about sums it up, one cannot understand the way in which other people see the world around them, unless one can adopt a mental paradigm that permits the acceptance of ideas that could be out of place in any other model.

I know from my own experience, that when I go to Solo, it takes me about two weeks to fully change the way in which I understand things, but when I come home to Australia, it only takes me maybe three or four days to think like an Aussie again.

Now, I am not an academic, I just function like this because I have developed this approach naturally over many years, but in defence of the scientific method, I will say this:- my broad understanding of the scientific method is this:-

question/observe > research > construct hypothesis > test hypothesis > analyse results > develop conclusion.

by adopting this "scientific" approach, I think it perhaps permits the academic understanding of how another society/culture functions, even though it does not permit the academic individual to understand in the same way that an individual from that other society/culture functions.

[David Gallas]

I haven't looked at it that way yet, but that's right, you switch very quickly between the Javanese and the European view. We are in between 2 cultures. I once heard my girlfriend say to her friend, that she immediately knew from my tone and way of talking whether I was on the phone with an Indo or not...

I notice that on this forum I speak directly from my European self, without any medical indication of schizophrenia, haha.

The beauty of the present day is that you can easily get in touch with wong jawa all over the world.
There are 3 large groups in this, of course in Indonesia, Suriname and the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, many Javanese are of East Java Madurese descent. Some Indonesian brothers think our traditions are "old", which is very strange for us to hear, we don't know any better.
We try to keep the traditions of our grandfathers and grandmothers alive.
We have objects from before 1942, still wash our keris with realgar, lemon and sulphur, have many old books that we use, wear rings that have an energy and I had made a post six months ago on a forum for people of Indonesian descent about the keris and the belief in the energy of the keris, is now after 70 years, away from our beautiful motherland, still very much alive. In fact, the 3rd generation picks up this tradition with great dedication.

We never had the introduction of the Panca Sila, the introduction of the one god system, and the period until 1998.
And then the caution begins! The political situation, and I'd rather not go into it any further, but let me put it this way that talking about the keris and the energy isn't totally is risk-free.
For example, my family in East Java was imprisoned and most of them died in an unnatural way...

The tradition that many Javanese in the Netherlands follow can best be described as the tradition as introduced by the Wali Songo.
You have to imagine that you leave your motherland and you take old family pieces with you.
Of course you want your children to know the importance of those objects and that you know how to take care of them, apart from the fact that it is also just fun, the slamatans with the whole family.
Like tomorrow, then it is jumat kliwon. So tonight at 6 pm I'm making an offering for the kerisses.

[David]

What i am about to write is not in any way meant to counter the experiences of members described here who find themselves operating in completely different paradigms dependent upon whether they are in Indonesia or some Western nation. But i do have to point out that even in the West there are communities of people who operate outside the "normal" and "logical" Western modality of thought.
I have been involved in neo-pagan community in North America for more than 35 years. Such communities, though not operating on the same frequencies as the societies in Jawa, Bali, etc., very much embrace the similar concepts of the seen and unseen worlds and a mystical/magickal reality. Likewise you can find similar belief systems operating within the more generally accepted Western mindset throughout the Western world. So i have spent many years switching my manner of operations back and forth dependent upon which group of peers i am interacting with.