From City to City Through One Village to Another, There Are Always Signs
Tauhid Nur Azhar
I am one of those labile individuals who often behave quite impulsively when near a train station. Moreover, according to neuro-molecular researchers, there is a suspicion that a mutation in the Dopamine receptor known as D4, or its gene DRD4, is associated with various behavioral phenotypes, including dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and a personality trait that seeks novelty. In a positive context, this is called spontaneity (without hesitation), and in a negative context, it is often associated with impulsive behavior, which can lead individuals to make sudden decisions that are not well thought out.
In the case of my relationship with train stations and the “dangerous” Access application, which can facilitate “travel addicts” like me with various conveniences, leading to impulsive ticket purchases, especially with the “go show” scheme that offers cheap prices to fill train occupancy; this impulsive behavior can exist due to the support of the systems and infrastructure involved, including the Access by KAI application, of course.
Cheap ticket prices and flexible schedules are very tempting, to the point where I can quickly change my agenda with actions that may no longer be instinctively impulsive but have entered the compulsive category because they have become an irresistible desire and always need an outlet if I don’t want to create an emergency situation.
The satisfaction of the desire to travel by train often leads me, unintentionally, to perform incognito muhibah in various cities passed by the train. Starting from just having fun on the best-selling train of 2023, Joglosemarkerto, which is a loop line train for Central Java-DIY, with the simple reason of wanting to experience the sensation of traveling on the first railway in Java, Semarang-Tanggung, which was built starting on June 17, 1864, marked by the first groundbreaking by Baron Sloet van de Beele, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, to suddenly boarding the Ranggajati train with the simple reason of wanting to experience the luxury of business class with its special seats, before the Ranggajati business train set was replaced by the new generation era train, which is now becoming a primadonna.
As a result, I often find myself stranded in a 100,000 rupiah homestay in a small, remote town due to the compulsive urge to board the train, which takes me through the Doraemon door that can take us anywhere. And that’s the pleasure, when morning approaches, a cup of robusta coffee is served, and the day brightens, the pecel basket comes attacking. I am overwhelmed, unable to resist the delicious taste of the peanut sauce attacking. Especially when the peanut sauce collaborates with jicama and peyek urang. Choose which one? Peyek Urang or Peyuk Ayang. Unfortunately, Ayang, who is now growing up, alias STW, is starting to dislike my impulsive behavior. Although there are now many opportunities to travel due to the WFH or even WFA, work from anywhere, model, Ayang no longer likes suddenly finding herself wrapped in a blanket in an old inn. No longer likes roughing it in a wooden hut at the foot of a mountain without a shower and Wi-Fi connection.
So the choice now is peyek urang, right?
But don’t say that the compulsive traveling I do by train is useless. In those journeys, I see many unique things and the dynamics of life in various cities I visit. There are cities that idolize Singapore, neatly arranged with public rules strictly enforced. The city is beautiful, clean, but feels a bit mechanistic and deterministic, right? There are also chaotic cities. Everyone seems to act according to the law of whatever they want. But strangely, there are regulations that can create harmony when various individual impulsive behaviors meet in a common space of interest. Like swarm intelligence of a flock of birds or anchovies in the ocean. In the midst of the dynamics of needs that exist in various fields of transaction with the law of reciprocity based on capital in the form of effort, skill, or commodities that can be exchanged for what is needed, an orchestration related to common interests is created. Especially regarding survival issues. The accumulation of personal needs in terms of survival can become a communal awareness construct.
There are also many different conditions that occur together in the same location or habitat, such as a city. There is an elite part of the city with all its aesthetic beauty arranged in such a way, while in small alleys behind towering fortified houses, there is a living space with all its poverty framed by the sound of dangdut music mixed with the puddles of poverty that, although not wide, can drown you in a swiftly flowing misery.
There are cities with advanced information systems, good flood drainage, integrated waste processing into energy, primary to referral health services that are excellent, and there are also cities that slow down the tempo to be in harmony with the cultural breath that prioritizes harmony and synergy with all elements of life.
Locations with populations inclined toward a sedentary lifestyle, or laziness, can coexist with locations dominated by a frugal nature, which is not just about being thrifty but also careful and faithful to values believed to bring well-being.
What makes me wonder endlessly is how the orderliness and various efforts to meet the mandatory fundamental needs of humans can, in turn, become an invisible system construct that builds a civilization seemingly driven by unseen hands.
It cannot be denied that for thousands of years, humans have undergone a long journey of adapting and forming more complex life patterns. From nomadic groups that moved from place to place, they eventually chose to settle. Of course, this process did not happen overnight. History records that humans began to build settlements, create systems of government, develop economic systems, and even establish legal rules. But how did this significant change actually occur? What drove humans to choose a settled life and develop a more complex social structure?
Human civilization began with one major decision: to stop moving and start settling. This decision changed the course of human history. Lewis Morgan and Herbert Spencer, in their theory of social evolution, emphasized that humans move through several stages of social development, from simple social forms to more complex societies. They explained that settlements are an important starting point in this development.
Robert Park, in his urban ecology approach, views the city as an ecosystem where humans interact not only with each other but also with their environment. The concept of settlements evolved into cities, places where various social, economic, and political interests intersect.
Jared Diamond’s perspective in “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is also worth considering. Diamond argues that the development of settlements was greatly influenced by the domestication of plants and animals. With a stable food source, humans had a reason to stay in one place. This domestication ultimately triggered the emergence of the world’s first cities.
From simple settlements, societies began to form more complex systems of government. Initially, governance took the form of monarchies or absolute power passed down through generations. However, over time, systems of government became more democratic.
Max Weber, a renowned sociologist, introduced the theory of the legitimization of power, which states that legitimate power can only be accepted if recognized by society.
John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau contributed important ideas about the origin of the state through the social contract theory. They believed that government exists through a mutual agreement to create rules that maintain order. Meanwhile, Norbert Elias, in “The Civilizing Process,” describes how power plays a role in creating an orderly society.
The development of the economic system became a crucial foundation for social welfare. Early societies were based on an agrarian economy, where agriculture was the primary source of livelihood. Over time, the economic system evolved into a more complex trading system and eventually capitalism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in their views on capitalism, indicate that the unequal distribution of wealth in this system can cause social disparities.
Amartya Sen, in his work “Development as Freedom,” emphasizes the importance of freedom in the economy to achieve social welfare. He views welfare as a fundamental right of every individual, and the government plays a role in facilitating its realization. This idea sparked debates, as highlighted by Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz, regarding the extent of the government’s role in the economy.
As society evolved, there arose a need to create rules governing social life. Law became a crucial instrument in shaping an orderly society. Thomas Aquinas popularized the natural law theory, which posits that law should be based on universal ethical principles inherent in human nature.
John Austin, with his legal positivism theory, saw law as a set of rules enforced by authority, without considering ethics as a primary factor. Michel Foucault, in “Discipline and Punish,” offers a different perspective, viewing law as part of a power mechanism used to control society. Essentially, communities with extraordinarily dynamic interests require a control system that can ensure conditions conducive to meeting collective needs.
The concept of a population with communities united in space and time, resulting in the birth of rules, governance systems, social infrastructure, and the model known as the city or polis, is the outcome of a long process alongside the rise and fall of several civilizations. Civilizations recorded in history due to the discovery of scripts and semiotic symbolism include Babylon, Sumer, and ancient Greece.
The concept and historical records of the city as a polis are found in the literature of ancient Greece and its world. In a 2005 Modern Scholar lecture, historian Geoffrey Hosking explains that the concepts of “polis” and “citizen” in ancient Greece were closely tied to the appreciation of freedom. The polis, literally meaning city or city-state, was more than just a geographical or administrative entity; it was the center of social, cultural, and political life for its citizens. Within the polis, the relationship between citizens and the city-state formed the basis of their social and political identity.
According to Hosking, ancient Greek citizens had direct roles and responsibilities in managing their polis. The right to participate in political decisions was a highly valued form of freedom. Greek citizenship was not just about residence but was closely linked to active participation in public affairs. Every citizen was expected to engage in deliberations (through institutions such as the ekklesia or assembly) and had the right to contribute to determining the policies of their polis.
Hosking emphasizes that the concept of freedom in ancient Greece differed from the individual freedom we understand today. For the Greeks, freedom meant freedom from external domination and the ability to determine their own fate as a community. This freedom could only be achieved through the dedicated participation of citizens in collective decision-making. In other words, the polis and its citizens were interdependent, where the welfare of the polis depended on the citizens’ awareness of their responsibilities, and vice versa.
Thus, it can be said that the concept of the polis in ancient Greek history was more than just a “city” or “city-state” in the modern sense. The polis was a unique political and social structure that evolved from the early Greek Dark Ages (around 1100–750 BC) to its heyday in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. At its peak, the polis reflected a sovereign community where citizens actively participated in shared affairs and decision-making.
During the Greek Dark Ages, after the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, Greek society fragmented into small villages and independent communities. Geographical isolation and communication difficulties led them to live in isolation. However, around the 8th century BC, signs of more complex organized life emerged with the rise of the polis. Factors such as population growth, increased agricultural production, and trade interactions began to influence this development. The polis evolved as a response to the need for political, social, and economic order.
Each polis consisted of a main urban area surrounded by countryside (chora). At the city center, there was usually an agora (market or public space) and an acropolis (a high area serving as a place of refuge or religious center). In the polis, social, economic, and political life was centralized and regulated with the direct participation of citizens.
Unlike modern states, the polis prioritized community relations, where citizens had duties and rights tied to their polis. Citizenship status (citizenship) was an honor accompanied by obligations, including participation in political decisions and military defense. This right was only granted to adult male natives of the polis, while women, slaves, and non-citizens (metoik) did not have full citizenship status.
In ancient Greece, particularly in polis like Athens, the idea emerged that individual freedom was achieved through involvement in public life. This concept developed with the birth of Athenian democracy in the 5th century BC, which gave citizens the right to participate in government through the people’s assembly (ekklesia) and courts. Citizens were directly involved in decision-making and felt bound by the rules they collectively created.
In this context, the polis was seen as the embodiment of collective freedom. Ancient Greek freedom emphasized the freedom to determine a shared destiny rather than individual freedom. The polis allowed communities to maintain their identity and independence from external domination, and this freedom became a source of collective pride.
By the late 4th century BC, the polis began to lose its independence as large kingdoms, such as Macedonia under Alexander the Great, started to dominate Greece. The political structure of the polis weakened with the rise of the vast and complex Hellenistic kingdoms.
However, the concept of the polis as an autonomous community unit, along with the ideas of political participation and commitment to collective freedom, left a deep legacy in political history. This model became the foundation for political thought in Europe, inspiring many concepts of city-states and democracy in the modern era.
Even possibly extending to the land of Java, where the concept of chora or rural and suburban agricultural areas becomes the supporting region for the business center or agora located near the acropolis. In Java, the concepts of centralization, hierarchy of power, and elementary social functions are reflected in the spatial arrangement of the city center, which consists of a town square surrounded by a grand mosque (vertical legitimization), the regent’s pavilion (factual power), a prison (judicial function), and a market as the center of community activities, all located in the innermost circle of an area that becomes the epicenter of power.
The tradition of urban planning and the use of symbols in social structures are inseparable from cultural dynamics that produce agreements as social bonds. Within a society or community, myths sometimes serve as signs to be actualized or interpreted within a tradition to communicate politically among community members as a shared identity or to communicate with other communities. Therefore, in relation to the semiotic approach, a tradition will emerge as a marker of a community. In this view, as an activity, tradition is created as a marker of a community’s existence. The British historian Eric Hobsbawm (1983: 1–2) argues that:
“Invented tradition is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.”
Roland Barthes developed two levels of signification (staggered systems), which allow for the production of layered meanings, namely the level of denotation (denotation) and the level of connotation (connotation). Denotation is the level of signification that explains the relationship between the signifier and the signified, or between the sign and its reference to reality, producing explicit, direct, and certain meanings, such as a photo of a candidate for regent and vice-regent during an election process. Connotation, on the other hand, is the level of signification that explains the relationship between the signifier and the signified, within which implicit, indirect, and uncertain meanings operate (open to various possibilities). (Hendro EP, 2020).
According to Saussure, in the matter of signs and signifieds, there are concepts of iconic signs, indexical signs, and symbolic signs. An iconic sign is a sign that resembles what it signifies. An indexical sign points to a certain condition denotatively, while a symbolic sign is an agreed-upon sign referring to a specific subject or object, such as the symbol of a symmetric cross indicating healthcare facilities like hospitals.
This semiotic concept also makes the city a part of the symbolic representation process with certain indexical and symbolic signs related to social governance, originally born from the womb of communication and interaction culture.
Clifford Geertz is an American anthropologist known for his influence on symbolic anthropology. He presented a new concept of culture at the time. In his book “The Interpretation of Cultures,” Geertz defines culture as a system of ordered meanings and symbols used by individuals to define their world.
Thus, in line with Geertz’s thinking, the city and human habitation, which are homo symbolicums, are filled with signs that reflect the patterns and spectrum of dynamics of the individuals within them, aren’t they? Therefore, if we look at a city or a particular habitation with various unique characteristics and diverse social activities, heterogeneous infrastructure conditions, and the potential and actual state of its ecosystem, it is no wonder that we are visiting a pool that becomes the estuary of all existential expressions of the interacting humans within it.
A smart, comfortable, and safe city might not be just one equipped with cutting-edge technology but one that has resolved public relations issues about the diversity of human understandings within it, which need to be known as baseline data in the planning and decision-making process. Because the right design of infrastructure and governance systems has the potential to change human character.
One concrete example is the success of Ignasius Jonan’s concept in revolutionizing the mindset of railway service users. The application of technology such as e-ticketing and gates with a tap-in and tap-out model has brought about a culture of queuing, freedom from touts, a willingness to follow procedures, and not acting or thinking instantaneously, due to the growing awareness formed by the guidance of infrastructure and systems that make us understand that our compliance and willingness to follow procedures will result in convenience and benefits for us and many people around us. Isn’t this a concrete example of communal awareness? A real implementation of swarm intelligence?
So, frequently taking the train can help us continue learning about how systems and infrastructure can make us grow, right?
That last sentence seems like a proposition justifying my impulsive behavior of often traveling by train, doesn’t it? But seriously, to make people care about the environment and not litter, for example, a multi-disciplinary approach is needed that can accommodate decision-making elements that become targets of moderation and modulation, right? There are instruments of culture, appropriateness, persuasive psychology with its reciprocity effect, which in anthropology is known as Sahlins’ model with reciprocity in the economic, moral, and social realms reflected in kinship structures, etc.
Therefore, traveling by train and wandering from city to city, passing through one village to another, is a cultural journey to get to know the various characters of humans, societies, and their cultural loci more closely. Because by knowing others, we will gain valuable insights into the process of understanding ourselves, which has long been shrouded in mystery.
Further Reading
1. Diamond, J. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
2. Elias, N. The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
3. Weber, M. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
4. Sen, A. Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Books, 1999.
5. Marx, K., and Engels, F. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin, 2002.
6. Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.
7. Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
8. Rousseau, J.J. The Social Contract. London: Penguin Books, 2008.
9. Park, R. The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1915.
10. Spencer, H. The Principles of Sociology. New York: Appleton, 1896.
11. Morgan, L.H. Ancient Society. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1877.
12. Aquinas, T. Summa Theologica. London: Blackfriars, 1970.
13. Austin, J. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954.
14. Friedman, M. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
15. Stiglitz, J. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.
16. Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
17. Durkheim, E. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press, 1984.
18. Smith, A. The Wealth of Nations. London: Penguin, 1999.
19. Weber, M. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner, 1958.
20. Polanyi, K. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1944.
