Culture of Development and Development of Culture

Agus Pakpahan

It is a right time for us to think of what should be done next year as this year will
end soon. In the shadow of a celebration of “Happy New Year-2008”, it is also a time of
preparation for harder work after we have been experiencing unfinished job to cure our
national crisis. After more than 37 years of practicing development mantra, we still
unable to practice of the word development means in our daily life if we mean by
development is increasing capability of people can do or can be such as mentioned by
Amartya Sen.

Culture of development is about what people believe, think and do in association

with their efforts in increasing their capabilities. Sense of crisis is a cultural variable that
makes people strongly or weakly responsive to the crisis of our nation and strong sense of
community will determine whether or not our efforts to end our crisis is weak or strong.
It is a psychological variable that influences community’s behavior toward rivers of crisis
solution. It is also a state of mentality that is hold by our people.

What we observe is a consequence of the above situation. Illegal logging,

environmental destruction, low productivity, high conflict potentials, poverty, income
disparities and so on are impacts of our weakness in our culture of development.

So, development of culture is our effort to internalize our capabilities in a sense of

increasing what people can do or can be. In other words, development of culture is the
way to solve our developmental problems. It is a process of sacrificing our old culture
that inhibits our growing capability toward better life. It is a learning process.

To what extent our learning process is successful with respect to what we gain
after experiencing development for more than 37 years? How far our learning capability
has improved relative to what has been achieved by other countries? There are global
indicators that usually used by scholars or policy analysts. However, ones rarely see that
if we use cultural perspective we have to focus on what is unique to us rather than what is
relative to others. Why? Uniqueness is source of originality and only original solution
that will solve our fundamental problems. All successful countries have found their
original ways to tackle their problems. For example, we see how Chinese and Soviet
Union had ended up in different situation now.

Uniqueness is about fitness. It is about cultural differentiation, selection and

acceleration. Here, technology, institutions, laws, values, and other human creation are a
part of culture. We cannot accelerate development without having differentiation and
selection process. Cultural diversities, therefore, are our stock of potential resources.

European or American culture is usually assumed superior than local culture. It

could be true. But, how fit that culture to our culture is still a question. The fact is that at
our present time we cannot afford to adopt westerners’ culture when, for example, our per
capita income is still far behind. It does not mean western or eastern culture is bad or
good; culture is unique in their owned.

After taking care of our national efforts to develop our nation, it is time to be
more serious in seeking our efforts based on our own uniqueness. We have to seek our
own cultural identity and recapitalize it into our original ways to solve our problem. It is
about digging our spirituality in order to revitalize our strength and to salvage our
weakness.