Pancasila

Indonesia has a national ideology, Pancasila, five principles that Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia, instituted as an ideological impetus for the existence of a single and independent Indonesia comprised of parts so geographically, culturally, and (not the least) religiously diverse.

The five principles, which remain, in spite of many years of co-option by Suharto and discourse amongst the people, part of the Indonesian national identity, include: belief in God, just and civilized humanity, ‘Indonesian democracy’ (scare quotes mine) through consultation and consensus, social justice, and national unity.

After spending a little bit of time in Indonesia I believe that Pancasila is not yet complete and needs yet another principle to truly embody this muddle of an archipelago: a firm reverence for the solute/solvent relationship.

My explanation is quite simple: Indonesians have a torrid romance with the concept of dissolving things in other things and then consuming the creation. It is a veritable nation of latent chemists. Literally, any time you can drink something that is made by dissolving something else, that makes it all the better.

For this reason not only do they have and venerate Nescafe (in fact, I often have to specify when I order coffee that I want coffee and not Nescafe, after all I both come from the land where it comes out of water fountains and most certainly would like to partake of the pinnacle of deliciousness) but at least three imitations thereof. When you get on an Indonesian ferry (an experience so rich I will probably follow with an entry on it) every family pulls out a large bottle of water, pours off a draught (onto the floor, certainly not into their small child’s mouth), pulls out a small brown glass bottle, and pours its contents into the water. The result is often the color of what CandyLand characters might piss, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. At any roadside stand there are at least fifteen types of individually wrapped packets you can buy and add to water. Drinks that have gelatin like components are hugely popular, I imagine because you combine two iterations of the process: powder into water to make the gelatin, then gelatin into drink. In fact, I predict that the high school students of Indonesia will make the great patriot who figures out how to sequester helium inside the gelatin bits that goes in the drinks (triple iteration!!) a very wealthy man.

Vive Pancasila