The Importance of Preserving Indonesian Cultural Heritage

For a country that consist of over than 17.000 island with a different culture for each island, Indonesia is without a doubt a country that shines in terms of its cultural heritage. But for some youth in the archipelago, the shining heritage that it has to offer is unknown to them. With the existence of the internet, an important knowledge like a culture is considered to become immortal, hence why the youth don’t give much attention to them.

Even when it is true that the internet could help in a way to preserve a culture, but a fact is need to be kept in mind that not every cultural heritage could be preserved on the internet, and it needs the attention of the people of the country itself to preserve it. Another cause of the ignorance of the heritage of culture in Indonesia is the importance itself is not being spread enough, so that they don’t know that it is even really important. The essay below will explain in an easy and inviting manner the importance of preserving Indonesian cultural heritage to help spread the importance and to drive Indonesian people to keep on preserving their country’s treasure.

When thinking about importance, the one thing that people tend to consider is its economic value, or in a simpler term, people agree that money is important. This is the exact first importance of preserving Indonesian cultural heritage. It means that in the context of preserving Indonesian culture, when people are doing it, there will be a revenue that is generated for the people living in Indonesia, whether it is for the people, or for the government. One of the examples of how this works is through tourism. 

The Indonesian cultural heritage is one of the driving forces for a tourist from its own area, from another area in the same country, or even for overseas visitors.  Those people found the Indonesian culture as an interesting thing to know, watch or experience themselves, hence why they feel like traveling to a certain location in Indonesia just for the culture itself. To be more precise, when tourist goes to Yogyakarta, one of the most famous destinations is that they want to see one of the world-protected Indonesian cultural heritage, The Prambanan Temple. 

To do it, of course they have to book a flight, book a hotel, pay a visa, buy foods from the locals, and pay the entrance fee for the temple itself. Some things may not have been listed because the list goes on and on. This one example of cultural heritage destination is already showing a large revenue for everyone involved in the tour of this particular person. In contrast, if a cultural heritage is lost through time because of the negligence of the people in Indonesia, the destination will decrease and of course the number of visitors to the archipelago will fall drastically. 

To be more precise again, if that happens, the particular person from before can’t visit prambanan temple anymore or any other cultural heritage destination in Yogyakarta. What will they do? What do they want to visit? Now that Yogyakarta has just becoming a regular city like the one in their respective area or country, they will be less interested to go there and spend money, and they will cancel their trip for sure. 

This chain of events ultimately leads to a big loss of revenue for everyone involved, for the locals that sell food, the private company that sells tickets, and the government who collects their taxes. So, the first and most common importance of preserving Indonesian cultural heritage is the economic value that it holds. The people of Indonesia will have to preserve their culture after knowing this fact.

After the first importance that mostly everyone agrees on any matter other than cultural preservation, that is the economic value, the second importance of it is the morality that a culture can hold. Most people think of a culture as a form of a real object, whether it is a temple like mentioned before, a cuisine, textile, or maybe a traditional dance. When in reality, a culture can consist of a custom that the surrounding residence have practiced for a really long time, even as far as their early ancestors.

A custom that holds a moral value can be of any forms. A famous worldwide example that is not coming from Indonesia, but from Japan is a body movement custom that Japanese people use to express gratitude to say sorry and other things, that is bowing so low that it reaches a 90 degrees angle. The moral value that it holds is to be very polite that you even have to get into a fairly uncomfortable position just to express something. The custom is just a form of an opening, because it is the most famous and therefore the easy way to understand such value. 

Now, if analyzed from the archipelago of Indonesia, these forms of customs exist all over the island, one of which is from java in the same form of the Japanese one, a body movement. In the area, most people use their thumb instead of their index finger to point something, mostly to point a direction. This custom also has similar moral value to Japanese bowing, that is to be more polite for another people. Judging by the purpose of this body movement, the importance of the cultural heritage here is to keep the moral value of politeness of Javanese Indonesian. 

When people stop doing this as a way to preserve the culture, it can be concluded that the output will be a more impolite residence. Hence why, the moral value that an Indonesian culture holds is the other importance of preserving the Indonesian cultural heritage.