Indonesian Culture and

Its Current Existence

Some of us have an understanding that culture is related only with art. We do not know that culture is all that integrated with human life. Culture is created by human to maintain life sustainability. The understanding of culture comes from Sanskrit, namely buddhayah, the plural form of Buddhi (Buddhia or mind) interpretes as matters related with mind, and human mind.

According to Koentjaraningrat (1985), culture is the whole ideas, actions, and results of human work in people's lives. Koentjaraningrat divided the element of universal culture into seven parts, namely: 1) Language, 2) Knowledge system, 3) Community system or social organization, 4) Living equipment and technology system, 5) Living livelihood system, 6) Religious system, and 7 ) Arts.

Indonesia is famous with its diverse and unique cultures. In terms of language, Indonesia has a variety of languages in each ethnic. Its art also varies in the form of dances, paintings, plaits, etc. With the passage of time, the indigenous culture of Indonesia is gradually eroded and even almost forgotten. Responding to this, the Multiplication program of Stube-HEMAT in Bengkulu held a discussion with youth of Bengkulu (31/1/19) at 5:00 P.M at Asep Thea café. The discussion was hosted by Hosani Ramos Hutapea and Sabar Budi Simbolon as the speaker and the moderator of the discussion. Sabar Budi is a cultural activist in Bengkulu. He focused on culture of Indonesia (archipelago) and Batak culture. Besides culture, he is also active in Literate House. The discussion itself was attended by eleven participants.

From the discussion, it could be stated that there were restlessness in our surroundings about culture. Koentjaraningrat has ever reminded in his book about changes of human behavior and actions and it is the only reason. Today, ethical human behaviour, politeness, habit of smile and greetings have faded with the presence of individual attitudes of modern human. In the past, young people will bow their heads and greeting politely when meeting older people, or have contact smile with others when passing by on the road. Today such habit is rarely done. In addition, we also rarely use our own local language as daily spoken language, some feel proud more to use contemporary language or foreign language. It causes local language slowly extinct.

Indonesian society which is identical with culture of mutual cooperation and friendship, is getting eroded by times. It can be seen on wedding ceremony that formerly used to rely on neighbours help, and then it changes to wedding organizer. Further, gathering activities done by visiting neighbours and relatives are rarely done because of the high fence of houses.

In Indonesia's religious diversity, intolerance is sometimes happen among religious believers. The attitude of mutual love and respect differences get decrease because of exclusive sentiment assuming that one religion/group is the only right one. Then, the current phenomenon of religious cloths, women should not greet men and sometimes their smile cannot been seen because they are close. It shows that the understanding of religion and culture bring to contradiction.

We are as aware and intellectual society should maintain and keep our belonging cultures. As we see Japanese, they adopt other cultures but not merely eliminate indigenous culture. Likewise, Indonesian  should not solely accept any cultures from abroad, but should be smart and wise in filtering them. Therefore, we are as young generation should enrich ourselves with knowledge and be responsible to maintain Indonesian culture. (YDA).