I've been pondering over this question the past week:

Why is it difficult to get Indonesians to comply on social distancing & self-isolations?

There are sound economic arguments made -- but I don't think it covers all.

Then I remember a Social Psych journal I read back then. The title was "For God (or) Country: The Hydraulic Relation Between Government
Instability and Belief in Religious Sources of Control" (Kay et al., 2010)

It was a fascinating read & I dug it up from my laptop's archive. It offered some new answers.

The study has a few premises.

I finally got round to watching Parasite. Had some thoughts on the movie's message-- so fair warning, spoiler alert!
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It's quite obvious that it is a critique on the state of our society, under the firm grip of capitalism. Its manifestation is very ugly but subtle. First off-- how connection is highly valued over merit. In the first few scenes, Ki-woo was referred to take a tutoring job for the rich Park family. Even though Ki-woo faked a uni certificate to indicate his merit, it didn't matter to Mrs. Park. The referral was all she needed.

So all these discussions about KPI reminds me of a debate round I had in 2008. It was Quarterfinals of ALSA UI, vs. SMAN 8 Yogyakarta (I was representing Kolese Kanisius). The motion was "This House prefers ratings over censorship" & my team was Proposition in that round. First argument we launched was moral relativism: people have different standards of what "morality" is. Some would consider sex scenes to be obscene, others find it completely natural. The state shouldn't favor one moral standard over the other, which is what censorship does.

In this Election, the Unholy 3Cs (Communist, Chinese, Christian) were used against Jokowi by his opposition as a smear campaign tactic. It's still very evident in the recent protests where members of Brimob were accused of being 'imported'. Let's understand why.

A THREAD First, on the Communist part.

Back in 1960s, PKI was gaining large popularity. Soekarno had leftist leanings and kept PKI in his inner circle. The potentiality of Indonesia being under a communist rule was unsettling for the US, and so they decided to do something about it.

For a young democracy, I believe Indonesia has a pretty darn good system of elections:
a) Polling stations are easily accessible and can be found hundred of meters apart from one another-- compared to many other nations that require you to drive or travel quite far. #Pilpres2019 b) Government declares Election Day as a public holiday which allows people to take time off work/school to cast their votes-- compared to other countries that treats Election Day as any other day, making it harder for people to vote cos they can't miss work/classes.