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.

The first importance is economic value, the second is morality value, now the third importance of preserving Indonesian cultural heritages that the people of Indonesia have to be more aware is the fact that culture gives a nation an identity. Identity is the thing that makes a nation unique and can be told apart from another. That is the most basic function of an identity. But the actual benefits of having an identity goes much deeper. If we trace back to the previous paragraph, having an identity helps to attract more visitors to the archipelago. How it works is that it gives a unique trait that only exist in the nation itself.

If a nation doesn’t have an identity, then it will be the same as the other nation, therefore there wouldn’t be a reason to visits them.  Another example of the benefits of having an identity is to boost the wellbeing of the nation and the people living in it by giving them a sense of belonging. Take an example of an organization. When the organization have a strong identity, a uniqueness that they hold dear, it will make the members to be more confident and more active to keep improving their organization to reach their goals. 

They feel that this organization is theirs, this is the sense of belonging that is mentioned above. For a bigger social system just like a nation, this benefits still holds, and can even holds more power than the one in a small organization. When Indonesian residence felt their identity as Indonesian by all the cultures that they have seen and practiced every day, they will try to keep improving to give back to the country because they now have a sense of belonging. 

Now, what about if the people of the archipelago doesn’t preserve their own cultural heritage? The things that will happen is the exact opposite of the importance above. Indonesia will not be able to hold its identity, and lost the benefits of having it in the first place. The number of visitors will fall down, leading to a much bigger series of disadvantages, and their own people will not be fighting to improve their life and their country. 

The passage above shows that having an identity is clearly one of the importance of preserving Indonesian culture that when being ignored will be a disaster, and the local residence once again have to do the preservation to avoid it from really happening.

The last but not least importance of preserving the cultural heritages of Indonesia is the unity of the nation that is being obtained by the very act of trying to preserve the thousands of different cultures in the archipelago. The key here is unity, because when a nation doesn’t have any culture that they fight for, a custom that they are trying to maintain, the very difference between them and the other country, a nation will crumble as it will not have a reason to unite anymore. This importance can differ from country to country, but for Indonesia, they even has their own slogan, that is ”Unity in Diversity”. 

When another country might think that having difference in culture can make a separation between areas, in Indonesia, the opposite is true. The difference itself is what make Indonesia as it is. When the people don’t preserve Indonesian culture anymore, what would happen is of course the culture won’t be as diverse as it used to be, even could be a singular cultural country. It destroys the fundamental part of Indonesia in itself, and they will lose the unity that based on diversity. In a simpler manner, they will surely be separated. 

Preserving Indonesian cultural heritage is very important because a lot of things, but the last but not least in this essay is the unity that the diverse culture will give out.

There are a lot of importance of preserving the Indonesian cultural heritages, such as mentioned above. Starting from the economic value that they give, the moral value, the identity and the unity that it holds. Those are the ones in this essay, but in reality, there won’t be any paper big enough to list all of its importance. Knowing this, the youth must get a sense of responsibility to keep all the cultural heritage in Indonesia running and existing, for the sake of themselves, or even the next generation of youngster in this rich of culture archipelago.