What will you do? When you sit in a commuter train or other public transportation, perhaps listening to music coming from your smartphone, a woman and her 4 years old girl baby stand in front of you?
If you are a non emphaty-less person, you will immediately wake up and allow the woman and her kid sit in your place, won’t you?
I believe you will. This is what a modern and civilized society requires from its member. This conduct of showing emphaty to the needs should color relationships among the society. People are always expected to show that they are willing to sacrifice for other people.
This morning, I saw in front of me, inside a commuter train something, an action of few Indonesians, that showed a paradox.
Indonesians, at least majority of them, believe that they are parts of a modern and civilized society. They use computer and gadget daily and eveywhere. Many of them are social media maniacs. Updating the status in their Facebook timeline every hour, contributing lots of tweets everyday. Those to tell the world how modern they are.
Nobody can argue. Indonesians are known as country that has a gadget population more than the people. Marc Zukerbeg considered Indonesia as an important market for his Facebook, and worth his visit.
No doubt. Seeing these facts should show anyone, Indonesians are modern.
Unfortunately, this morning action of few Indonesians has told a different story, a paradox from what they want us to believe.
Although, a woman with her young child standing in front of them in a crowded train, nobody made a move to ask the lady to sit. What made the situation more ironic was that the Indonesians were male with no handicap. They were not too old, some of them were younger than me.
No one were willing to wake up. They preferred to play with their gadget, of course they have to use the gadget to look smart and modern, or pretending to sleep, even everybody knew they were not.
Really annoying manner.
Some other passengers tried to make them aware about what to do. Unluckily, in vain. No result. They were really emphaty-less.
I was quite angry with what they did. It is actually quite embarrassed to write this. However, it is another fact in our society, that is claimed to be a modern and full of emphaty, there are still too many people likebthe ones described in this article. Too many.
To me they are not yet fully civilized or modern but if you tell them this fact, they will be surely be angry.
Quite a paradox, right?
Perhaps if you have a chance to come here, please don’t be surprised if you see what I told in above paragraphs. Somehow, this emphaty-less act is still common here, in Indonesia, a place whose people believe they are parts of civilized society.