Indonesia tanah air beta
Pusaka abadi nan jaya
Indonesia sejak dulu kala
Tetap di puja-puja bangsa
These were the beginning lyrics of “Indonesia Pusaka”, an old historical song by Ismail Marzuki. We listened to this song again after many years in OMC XVI. The song brought back memories of the high points of our journey as Indonesian. We remembered the moment we won the gold medal in Olympics, the year we achieved food independent, and the time we won the physic Olympics. For a moment, we were brought to the beautiful Bali, the lush rice field, and the rich jungle of Papua. We were reminded that we were a great nation.
This song triggers all these feeling and emotion inside of us because we are part of this nation called Indonesia. To us, Indonesia is not merely a geographical location in the map; it is a place where we call home. Unfortunately, there were moments in not so recent years that made us embarrassed to be called Indonesian. The government and the elites had tarnished our love for Indonesia as they oppressed and unjustly enslaved the country to satisfy their corrupt and wicked desires. Almost all Indonesians suffered because of their selfish ambitions. As a result, the nation as a whole has lost its patriotism and national pride or nationalism.
We explored the possibility to revive this sense of nationalism particularly through the use of technology in OMC XVI. We were interested in technology because most of the attendees were experts and future leaders in science and technology. In the conference, we learned that the most assured way to bring back our nationalism was through success. The success has to be both in terms of achievement and in progressively better quality of life of the people. Individual achievements are important to inspire and give credibility to disciple the nation. However, without real improvement in the quality of our justice, tax, transportation, food, and politics, the sense of nationalism will still be replaced with the feeling of apathy and worse angry and bitterness.
Although individual achievements are hard; the fight to improve the life of the people is much harder borderline to impossible. This is because the problem is the whole system. The whole system is corrupt and in need of repentance. The government has been spirally going more corrupt and the people have been increasingly infected by corruption. We realized in OMC XVI that it would take nothing short of God’s intervention to turn the tide.
Fortunately, we could see the hand of God working right in front of us in OMC XVI. We saw one attendee presented his project to improve high school lab curriculum. We saw another one working with one university to improve mass media. By the end of OMC XVI, we were converted from a pessimist to an optimist. We were confident as Ismail Marzuki said in the song that we could grow old and pass away in Indonesia.