Thursday, March 22, 2007

3. Selecting Idol Figures
In child and teenage periods, motives of imitation and identifying are in their peak of development. In child period, father is usually one's identification figure. To a child, his father's figure is the most marvelous figure in his psychological world. A father who can meet his child's identification motive until his son or daughter becomes a teenager will still be his child's idol. In his son's eyes, this father will still be a prominent figure although possibly he is an ordinary man in the society. On the contrary, a father who failed to be his son's idol in his son's children and teenager periods, still will not be a prominent one in his son's eyes although possibly he is a prominent figure in the society.

A child needs a father as his/her own father, not as a father of others. According this perspective, one who is not familiar with his father (or his mother) will suffer an identity crisis, since his loses an idol figure. To become his son's idol, a father should have certain concepts on his son, what he wants from his son, what he wants his son to be. Without such concepts, a father can't design capacity and characteristics of his son's morality. In school ages, parent's position competes with that of teachers.

When a child becomes a teenager, his identification figures possibly will be famous celebrities. In his college-student years, when one is able to think logically and to compare various thinking and literatures, he will choose as his idol a figure who has notions which are firm, unique, prominent, controversial or has been proven to create great works, whether the figure is still alive or has passed away. For adults in college student years, idols have an important role in determining objectives for their future.

The big thinking of the big figures inspires the young person to think big too. A big man in this case is a man whose scope of thinking is beyond social space, geographical space, and space of time in which he lives. The world's big and figures often idolized by the youth among others are Hitler, Napoleon, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Soekarno, Imam Khomeini, and Khadhafi One may be introduced to a big man by reading his biography or visiting his historical places. A big man is a man who "dreams" about something "impossible" and later realizes his dream(s) into reality. Many of great works were initially regarded as merely dreams.

4. Habituation to Patterns of Constructive Behaviors
Knowledge can be transferred by means of teaching. Meanwhile, creating a pattern of behaviors is an aim of education. Education is a form of culture transfer, meanwhile culture of any society contains following elements: (a) moral or ethic, (b) aesthetic, (c) science, (d) technology. On the other side, human behavior is not always logical. Instead, most of human behaviors are formed by means of habituation.

A person getting used to wake up early will still wake up early although he had slept lately at the previous night. The delicious of a spicy food doesn’t have something to do with logic but with habituation to taste. Furthermore, sense of cleanness, sense of orderliness and sense of discipline are also internalized by means of processes of habituation. A person who understands logic of honesty doesn’t necessarily becomes an honest person, on the contrary he may abuses that knowledge to deceive others who are honest. Good manners are not necessarily logic but obviously they are formed by means of habituation.

In forming character of a person, things that should be habits in his/her behaviors are (a) good manners or etiquette, (b) cleanness and neatness/orderliness, (c) honesty, and (d) discipline.

Personality is one of qualities owned by an individual, but it is also one of qualities owned by a group or nation. Consequently, we can say that there is personality of Indonesian nation or Indonesian personality. At present, Indonesian personality is seen as really in bad condition. This doesn’t happen suddenly due to reform, but it happens as a result of this nation’s mistakes in managing living as a nation and a state for 50 years. Results of developing the nation’s personality at present can only be known in one generation in the future. Wallahu a`lam