Dari 1908 ke 1998

Saatnya Semar Menggugat

Oleh J. Kristiadi

KEMARAHAN rakyat menuntut keadilan dalam jagat pakeliran sering diungkapkan dalam lakon Semar Gugat. Ia adalah dewa yang merakyat dengan tugas mengabdi pada keadilan serta membela kebenaran. Inti lakon tersebut adalah protes keras Semar kepada Sang Hyang Wenang (Dewa Penguasa Dunia) untuk mendapatkan keadilan karena diperlakukan sewenang-wenang secara licik oleh Bathara Guru (pimpinan para dewa). Tuntutan dikabulkan, dan Semar kembali ke dunia mengemban tugas luhur mengasuh para satria Pandawa.

Melakukan gugatan saat ini sangat kategoris karena pada Mei terdapat dua peristiwa sejarah yang mementaskan gugatan rakyat terhadap kesewenang-wenangan dan ketidakadilan. Pertama, Kebangkitan Nasional, 20 Mei, merupakan babak sangat penting bangsa Indonesia melawan tirani penjajah. Kedua, peristiwa 21 Mei adalah puncak perjuangan seluruh komponen bangsa untuk menghentikan penguasa monolit dan monopoli kekuasaan.

Dua kejadian itu merupakan tonggak sejarah yang mempunyai relasi "mistis" (melebihi daya jangkau akal manusia) dan berkekuatan magis (melampaui batas kemampuan manusia). Sebab, dua peristiwa itu digerakkan vitalitas dan energi roh bangsa yang gigih berjuang membebaskan diri dari kelaliman penguasa. Karena itu, meski jarak memori historis tersebut terpisah cukup lama, sekitar 90 tahun, roh yang menjiwai kedua peristiwa itu bersifat tunggal, yakni daya dorong spiritualitas bangsa Indonesia dalam mengukir peradaban kehidupan berbangsa dan bernegara.

Urgensi gugatan tersebut dirasakan mendesak karena selama 15 tahun proses demokratisasi, rakyat semakin merasakan kaidah Fukuyama (1992) bahwa demokrasi liberal dan kapitalisme, sebagai titik akhir dari evolusi ideologi umat manusia serta sebagai bentuk final dari pemerintahan kreasi manusia (the final form of human government), semakin luntur. Dalam kurun waktu itu, pelembagaan demokrasi hanya terbatas dalam dua ranah. Pertama, pada tataran proses politik terutama pemilihan umum, tetapi tanpa disertai ideologi yang menghadirkan peradaban politik. Kedua, sirkulasi elite terbatas pada lingkaran kekerabatan.

Lembaga politik seakan menjadi peternakan politik yang memproduksi elite politik dari rumpun keluarga (trah) tertentu. Akibatnya, tingkat kepercayaan publik terhadap demokrasi semakin menurun. Hal itu diperparah dengan merajalelanya tingkat korupsi politik yang melibatkan kader lintas partai. Peranan uang sangat deterministik dalam proses dan kompetisi politik. Akibat buruk selanjutnya adalah semakin menurunnya tingkat persepsi masyarakat terhadap kemampuan dan kapasitas publik dalam memengaruhi kebijakan negara.

Fenomena itu seakan membenarkan dalil Nietzsche, pemilu adalah puncak manifestasi "naluri kerumunan manusia" (popular elections were the ultimate expression of the herd instinct). Salah satu karakter kerumunan adalah gampangnya sesama anggota terhipnosis perilaku satu sama lain sehingga mudah terpancing emosinya untuk melakukan anarki. Praktik politik selama satu setengah dekade telah menunjukkan kecenderungan yang semakin meyakinkan, para politik elite secara anarkis menguras kekayaan negara untuk ongkos transaksi kekuasaan.

Kegegapgempitaan selebrasi para penikmat kekuasaan membuat jumud memori 15 tahun lalu bahwa harga melengserkan penguasa yang memonopoli kebenaran politik harus dibayar sangat mahal, yaitu penderitaan, pemerkosaan, darah, bahkan ratusan nyawa melayang. Opium kekuasaan tidak hanya membuat tumpul ketajaman memori, tetapi bahkan telah mengakibatkan vitalitas ingatan para elite semakin lunglai sehingga tidak mampu mengolah memori masa lalu sebagai daya dorong melakukan koreksi atas kesesatan niat, pola pikir, dan perilaku. Karena itu, sangat relevan peringatan yang disampaikan Milan Kundera dengan suara kenabiannya bahwa perjuangan manusia melawan kekuasaan adalah perjuangan ingatan melawan lupa (the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting).

Agenda gugatan rakyat yang sangat penting dewasa ini adalah menyelamatkan kader-kader partai agar tidak terjerumus ke dalam perbuatan hina dan cendala. Dalam jangka panjang adalah pendidikan politik. Melalui proses ini diharapkan dihasilkan kader yang amanah dan mampu mengendalikan diri terhadap perilaku serakah. Namun, agenda kini yang sangat mendesak adalah regulasi yang dapat memaksa partai politik membuka diri asal-usul anggaran untuk biaya politik. Mereka juga harus dapat mempertanggungjawabkan secara transparan semua uang yang diperolehnya, serta bersedia diberikan sanksi yang sangat keras bagi yang melanggarnya. Hanya dengan cara itu, politik di Indonesia bertahap dapat menggeser dominasi politik uang menjadi perlombaan membangun watak kader.

Namun, harus diakui, karakter politik tidak memungkinkan para elite politik secara sukarela melakukan regulasi yang membatasi kekuasaannya. Karena itu, perlu konsolidasi kekuatan demokratis dari seluruh komponen masyarakat, bersama media khususnya televisi, bahu-membahu memberikan tekanan politik terus-menerus kepada mereka. Kolaborasi dengan unsur-unsur dari parpol, baik yang mempunyai gagasan sama maupun mereka yang takut dan cemas terkena giliran menjadi pesakitan KPK, selalu dimungkinkan.

Untuk merawat semangat memperjuangkan pemberantasan korupsi, perlu dikumandangkan semboyan Wiji Thukul: hanya satu kata, lawan!

J. Kristiadi Peneliti Senior CSIS

Sumber: Kompas, 21 Mei 2013

Penjelasan Kenapa Bayi Suka Digendong

Infant behaviour

Carrying home the evolutionary advantage

May 20th 2013, 17:31 by A.A.K. | MUMBAI

A GENTLE pat on the back and a short walk can put a crying baby to sleep. Four-legged newborns, too, calm down when their mothers hold them by the nape of their necks to carry them. Precisely why, though, has remained a mystery. Kumi Kuroda, of RIKEN Brain Science Institute, in Japan, and her colleagues decided to find out.

The researchers monitored the heart rates of twelve human infants aged between one to six months under three conditions: while they lay by themselves in a crib, immediately after they were picked by their mothers, and while they were carried around. Specifically, they measure the heart rate variability (HRV), or the tiny differences in the interval between successive heart beats, since previous research showed that lower HRV is tied to higher stress.

As the researchers report in Current Biology, true to stereotype, the babies' HRV increased significantly when they were carried, suggesting less stress. The results persisted when controlled for things like crying, which can increase the heart rate considerably and skew HRV readings. Given the ethical constraints on experiments involving human babies, Dr Kuroda and her team then turned to mice. 

After ascertaining that murine newborns, too, show the same physiological response to carrying as human infants do, they examined the sensory mechanisms which might give rise to the phenomenon. First, they used a local anaesthetic to numb the skin on back of the mice's neck. This blocked the neural signals that are produced by touch. Anesthetised mice were more fidgety while carried than those that were not.

Next, Dr Kuroda gave the mice a large dose of vitamin B6, to strip them of the ability to judge the relative position of their body parts, or proprioception, as it is known in the argot. Mice plied with the vitamin were also friskier than those that weren't, judged both by observed behaviour and physiological measures such as HRV.

Finally, the researchers used a drug to suppress the mice's parasympathetic nervous system. This is responsible for unconscious "rest-and-digest" or "feed-and-breed" activities like sexual arousal, salivation or urination, that occur when the body is at rest. When parasympathetic nerves were impaired, the carrying-induced, stress-lowering spike in the HRV was not seen, suggesting that the cardiac effect resulting from carrying did indeed stem from the parasympathetic nerve.

Crucially, the nervousness caused by pups' impaired senses meant that murine mothers took longer to carry them to part of the enclosure considered safe. Because the young often squirm when sensing danger, such impairment would make whisking them away from potential threats harder. The calming mechanism, then, appears to have evolved to facilitate such extraction. Although human offsrping are not exposed to as many existential threats as their murine counterparts, their parents will no doubt be grateful anyway.

Sumber: Economist, 20 May 2013 

Now sit up and listen: why posture matters

Date

May 15, 2013

Amy Schoenfeld

The back button ... Esther Gokhale, right, teaches techniques for maintaining better posture. Photo: Jim Wilson

Matt Drudge recently noted an anniversary of his aggregator news site with a Twitter post: "18 years of DRUDGE REPORT in February! And STILL sitting ;)."

Drudge, 46, hasn't just been sitting for two decades. Like so many workers chained to their technology, he has been hunched over desktops, notebooks, smartphones and tablets, and it's all taken a toll on his body. He tries to limit the time he spends sitting to four or five hours a day, but sometimes he sits for up to 17 hours.

To ease his back, neck and shoulder pain, Drudge says, he has learnt how to adjust his posture. Whether he's typing in the car, from the wooden folding chair in his Miami home office or from a boardwalk bench at the beach on cloudy days, he makes sure to tilt the top of his pelvis forward, roll his shoulders back, elongate his spine and straighten his craned neck.

Sit up straight.

Drudge is one of thousands of people who have trained with Esther Gokhale, a posture expert in Silicon Valley. She believes that people suffer from pain and dysfunction because they have forgotten how to use their bodies. It's not the act of sitting for long periods that causes us pain, she says, it's the way we position ourselves.

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Gokhale is not helping aching office workers with high-tech gadgets and medical therapies. Rather, she says she is reintroducing her clients to what she calls "primal posture" — a way of holding themselves that is shared by older babies and toddlers and that she says was common among our ancestors before slouching became a way of life. It is also a posture that Gokhale observed during research she conducted in a dozen other countries, as well as in India, where she was raised.

For a method based not on technology but primarily on observations of people, it has been embraced by an unlikely crowd: executives, board members and staff at some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies, including Google and Oracle; and heavy users of technology such as Drudge.

An evolutionary issue.

"I need to do things that make sense and that I can see results from. Esther's work is like that," says Susan Wojcicki, 44, one of Google's senior vice-presidents, who has suffered from back and neck pain that she attributes to doing too much work at her desk.

Gokhale is not the first to suggest that changing posture is the key to a healthy spine. Practitioners of the Alexander Technique and the creators of the Aplomb Institute in Paris similarly help clients find more natural and comfortable ways to position themselves. Pilates and physical therapy can improve posture and bring awareness to it. A handful of companies, including Lumo BodyTech, now sell personal posture monitors, offering smartphone users constant feedback about the way they hold their bodies.

Gokhale's methods have not been tested scientifically, although a doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation is planning to conduct clinical trials this year.

But Gokhale, who was trained as a biochemist at Princeton University and studied at Stanford's medical school, has some influence among medical professionals, particularly in Silicon Valley. More than 100 have referred patients to her, and a similar number have taken her course, she says.

For many office workers, sitting at a desk all day goes hand in hand with back, neck and shoulder discomfort. Stress and poor positioning can bring on aches or exacerbate injuries among workers faced with heavy computing, frequent travel and long meetings. Regardless of occupation or lifestyle, backaches affect most Americans — about 8 in 10 deal with the pain at some point in their lives, according to Richard Deyo, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.

The expenses are huge as well. By one estimate that appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the national cost of treating people with back and neck pain was $US86 billion in 2005. And with back pain one of the main reasons for worker disability, missed work because of these aches might cost employers close to $US7 billion a year, according to one study.

For most people with back pain, the aches are short lived and relief comes with rest and time, according to Deyo. But methods to help those with chronic pain are diverse. Standing at a desk has become a popular way to ease discomfort. Exercise, yoga, acupuncture and chiropractic have also been shown to reduce pain. Medical treatments such as surgery and steroids continue to be important options, doctors say, even amid concerns that these have been overused.

Haleh Agdassi, a rehabilitation doctor with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in California, sees back and neck pain so frequently among heavy users of computers that she calls it the "Silicon Valley syndrome." She encourages clients to try a mix of non-surgical strategies but finds it frustrating that treatments for such a common problem are only modestly effective.

"There's no magic bullet out there for back pain," she says. "That can be overwhelming for patients. It's an anxious, vulnerable crowd — they're looking for solutions." Gokhale, 52, can relate to the anxiety of searching for an answer. She previously dealt with pain in her lower back, first as a college student practicing yoga, then as a young mother with sciatica. She eventually had surgery for a herniated disc, but it failed, she says.

When doctors suggested she try a second time, Gokhale began a search for other answers. Many of her own clients come to her similarly exasperated, she said.

Drudge read Gokhale's book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, before training with her in person. "I needed her touch, her observations and her humanity," he says.

In Gokhale's courses, offered in her Palo Alto studio and in cities across the country, students relearn how to sit, stand, sleep and walk. While some clients take private classes, many enrol in group workshops with eight to 10 people who meet for six 90-minute sessions. While the students are often strangers, the classes are casual and intimate: most clients wear yoga clothes or sweatpants, and they giggle awkwardly as Gokhale adjusts their bodies.

Gokhale says that most Americans tend to be relaxed and slumped (think of a C-shaped spine), or arched up and tense (an S shape), the stand-up-straight style of posture that some parents demand of their children. She helps her students return their bodies to the stance that she says nature intended: upright and relaxed (a tall J spine).

With the care of a kindergarten teacher, Gokhale adjusts clients' bodies from bottom to top. She helps clients relax the front of the pelvis downward, so the belt line slants forward and the butt angles back, so "your behind is behind you, not under you" (a contrast to the neutral pelvis recommended in Pilates and some physical therapy).

Gokhale guides students' rib cages that sway too far back, so they are flush with the stomach. She takes their hunched shoulders, rolls them up and brings them gently back and down. And she helps students release tension in their necks by re-centering their heads over their spines and pulling upward slightly at the hairline on the neck. The result is an elongated and well-stacked spine that many students say they can maintain comfortably because their muscles are not strained.

She encourages people to take the class with colleagues and relatives, so that students can help remind each other to adjust their bodies. But even those who work alone find ways to remember their posture.

After doing a group workshop with Gokhale this year, Drudge says many things now remind him to make adjustments — seeing others with poor posture at Starbucks or the gym, passing by his reflection in a window, or sitting down in a chair to work.

"But I don't beat myself up about it. When I'm aware of my posture, I fix it," Drudge said. "And eventually, I think, it becomes who you are."

NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/now-sit-up-and-listen-why-posture-matters-20130515-2jlij.html