Identities of Culture

Identities of Culture

Complicated, boring and mysterious those are the things which appear in my mind when I know about Humanistic Studies. From the name of this subject I guess we will talk about human live or human social interaction during this semester. It will be very large of topic and maybe make me confused.

After the first meeting in the last week, I know that we are really true will talk about human live but for this subject we will concern in religion and multiple cultural in our beloved country. Honestly, I really interested about that because I like learn culture whether it cultures in Indonesia or in another country. The most important I still assume that this course is mysterious because as a human we also do the same thing and I think that is naturally. I hope I can keep my excitement and still interested to know deeper about human live, in religion and the differences of multiple cultural in Indonesia until in the end of this course. Understand and get good score of course are part of my wishes. Especially, I can understand and apply my understanding when I teach because the time when we teach in front of the class, that is time when we are really need to understand our candidate of students. I wish, by this course I more to know how we handle and respect to the differences in our class and be a model of my students. So they can be a person who can live in the differences peacefully. 

If we are talk about identities of someone, we can’t release the background of family from that one. Especially from culture and religion because our country is not communism, so we should have a religion which we believed. We can know identities’ someone by the name, the accent of she/he speaks, and the gesture. There are so many cultures in Indonesia because there are more than 30 provinces in this country. The first thing I which I will analyze from my friends is their name because from that I can know their hometown or culture background.

In Indonesia we can guess someone hometown by the family name or we called “marga” like Pasaribu, Marpaung, Hutabarat etc. People who used family background commonly come from North Sumatra and East Indonesia. Commonly they use family name which comes from father descendent or we called “patrealisme”. It is different with West Sumatera which the people still believe in “matrealisme” or they follow mother descendant. Even though not all Indonesian people use family name, but we can guess by the unique and characteristic of that name. Like someone who has unique name a little bit like Portuguese people, I guess that one from East of Indonesia. Or someone who has name like story in Ramayana, it maybe the family background come from Java which only little bit people who follow the “patrealisme” pattern. 

We can know background of someone from the accent of her/his language. Maybe we always hear that Javanese people always speak softly and Sumatra people always excited when they are talking about. It one of the way we analyze our friends identities, without we ask them about their background. I interested in Keraton descendant or we called as blue blood descendant. I want to know more about them and how they make interaction with commonly people. It still mysterious for me and make me curious.

Religion. That is the sensitive thing in this country which has many religions. I still ask why we can have many religions in this world. By that question I try to respect another person who has different religion with me. I am really grateful with God because I live and grow in the place where not only having one religion is. Indonesia is a gift from God because I think our country has a lot of things start from resources, culture and religion. The differences make our complete each other, so why we can’t try to respect and understand that. I feel sad, if there is a person who underestimate another people because religion or culture. I feel it is not fair for them. I ever felt how to be minorities in the big society and if there is people who staring at you because you are different, it is really annoying. Not easy to be part of big society for minorities people.  Because of that I interested in the minorities community which has different religion and background like Chinese people in Indonesia, or they are who come from another country and live in Indonesia.