Indonesia has a big opportunity to achieve advancement. With abundant natural resources, human resources become the power to move forward. Unfortunately, awareness among Indonesian people to focus and build the nation seriously is still fairly low. Awareness of Indonesian people to focus and build the nation seriously is still low. The awareness was only visible when fighting against the Dutch colonialism," Kwartarini Wahyu Yuniarti, M.Med.Sc, Ph.D, lecturer of Psychology Faculty of UGM said on Thursday (30/6) in a Seminar Psychology of The Nation at the Faculty.
Kwartarini said that Germany, a country that had experienced destruction twice, became a developed country because every German citizen has the awareness to do something serious, focused, and true. "And as everyone does that, the country became strong. If that principle is applied in Indonesia, I believe Indonesia can move forward," she explained.
Kwartarini said that another example can be seen from the Netherlands. As it is known that most areas of the Netherlands lies below sea level. The position has become a threat to them and the government always reminds its citizens about this. The step alerts citizens of the Netherlands at any time to all the worst that might happen in the country. "When everyone is alert to something, their performance will become more focused and serious. Unfortunately, Indonesia does not have it," she explained.
Further, the Director of Center for Indigenous and Cultural Psychology of UGM said that the weak character to build the nation seriously is influenced by the Dutch colonial rule for 350 years. In the Dutch colonial period, Indonesian people became slave society. Slave has a number of specific characters such as taking action if being asked and divisive nature. "I believe that colonized mental character happens to our nation, it is called mental remodeling save. That is why the Indonesian people are very inferior, easy to become flatterers and not proactive," she explained.
Meanwhile, a Cultural Anthropologist of Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM, Prof. Heddy Shri Ahimsa Putra, M.A. M. Phil. Ph.D, on the occasion mentioned the need to revise view of culture and its elements. The current view revealed by Koentjaraningrat about seven elements of universal culture is still less detailed because they cannot cover all elements of the existing culture and confuse thoughts. "Culture has three states namely material form, behaviors, and ideas," he said.
According to Heddy, deeper study is necessary on elements of culture that the number can be fixedly determined. These elements should be able to cover all cultural syndromes that exist in society. In addition, the sub-elements have to be specified and known first in order to develop, modify/ fix an element more easily. "A culture needs to be specified into at least 10 elements that a variety of cultural available phenomena can be covered," he said.