AES 12: Flimsy Photograph

Greetings, dear reader. I'm not really in the mood to talk with the usual verbosity for myriad of reasons, so I'll be pretty straightforward here today. I'd like to write about Sumba, or rather anything related to our (soon-to-happen) expedition to Sumba. I think today's session with Kak Andy was quite productive, because it made me realise how many assumptions we've made before... well, doing everything related to this project: The one that hits me the most is, "Why is LC (Learning Center) is built there?" This question is so utterly simple to the point where the question itself was taunting us (or me especially) for not asking such thing.

I like to imagine that all of us━KPB students━have received an image out of everything we've researched regarding Sumba. The image that came into our mind is obviously still all flimsy, and blurry, and shadowy, and many other things that's left unclear; but instead of asking what these shadowy figures in the image are, we liked to make our assumptions instead. I asked one of few questions I wrote today: "What's the motivation behind the facilitators in LC?" And... I think most of us━including me━would immediately answer with, "Of course it's because they knew it's the right thing to do!" Stop, no, we really thought of that albeit unconsciously, because we were never bothered to ask such question. 

But rather beating an already dead snake onto the ground, I have an idea to make this a positive thing: Have you ever watched or read a... crime novel or a detective movie? Yeah, exactly. Although exaggerated, I think the plot of these kind of medias is the same in essence. You see, in whatever investigation case the protagonist (or the investigator in this case) is facing, they ALWAYS make assumptions first if there isn't any detail left to be observed or analysed; what the protagonist thinks of these assumptions may or may not be relevant, because these assumptions impact the viewers the most; it is the thing that allures the viewer into asking, "Is that true?" And depending on the delivery, some viewers may have seen these assumptions to be true, until the plot twist hits! 

I would like to highlight the question "Is that true?" from above, because it is the most crucial thing to ask in an investigation. 

I think you're already picking up the pace at this point for how does this analogy relate to our case at all: We were very busy playing the role as the investigator to the point where we forgot to distance ourselves from the whole exhiliration of being absorbed in this case and ask, "Is that true?" And to truly make confirming these assumptions our mission there. Still, imagine a flimsy photograph again, and now we're trying to recover the photograph instead of assuming the shadowy figures in it

Being blunt here, I also feel the need to criticize most of my classmates for acting seemingly not very excited into this project; it's almost as we've been driven by sunk cost fallacy instead of real, actual curiousity. I could've save face for them today by immediately asking a few questions at once when Kak Andy asked for it, but I didn't feel doing so. Granted that half of them does not even participate in the expedition, but those who do should've asked some more. If any of you are reading this article, I advice you to contemplate the reason why have we been doing this for. No, it's not written in the proposal, it should've been written in yourself.

I'm going to wrap it for today. Forgive me for making the narrative of this essay to be rather periphrastic, but... I dunno I suppose I wanted to write whatever I feel like writing. It may not be very meaningful, which you may criticize in the comment down below.

Thank you for reading, as always.