
I used to think everyone wanted to be free, now I’m not so sure
In this Open Column submission, Intan Sugianto faces the air of hopelessness and exhaustion with a sliver of hope—which speaks to ones of us who’s losing energy in the face of political defeat.
Words by Whiteboard Journal
For the past two years, I’ve been working as a grassroots activist in Surakarta, Central Java—the city of Batik, the Spirit of Java, where the streets seem to have been built to hush dissent, and where our former president built a political empire out of Javanese calmness. I voluntarily joined a student-led gender rights NGO with the kind of naïveté only a 20-year-old could have.
I believed in organizing. Not in theory, but in practice: hosting workshops and discussions, leading campaigns, and showing up even when the rooms were half-empty. I believed we could start something from the ground up. If not a revolution, at least a safe space. At the very least, a circle of care.
But now, two years in, still unpaid, still showing up, I wonder:
Am I in this alone?
What if I’m building something no one else wants?
Mama, There’s A Ghost Behind You
The disillusionment didn’t arrive all at once. It came slowly, in group chats, in exit messages, in the deafening silence of “seen” but not answered. People ghosted the work. One by one.
At first, I understood. Life happens. Internships, family, burnout. We removed their names from the recognition list—not out of spite, but out of respect for the ones who stayed. But over time, the disappearance felt less like an accident and more like culture.
Maybe we’re tired of being contrarian. Maybe we’re tired, full stop. But sometimes, I wonder if we’ve mistaken disengagement and nihilism for resistance, or worse, apathy for freedom. I thought feminists would treat each other better. But even within our “progressive spaces,” I began to feel lonelier than ever.
As I near graduation—still unpaid, still organizing—I find myself asking the question I never dared to before: should I just go corporate? Chase comfort. Burn the moral compass. Would that be betrayal, or survival?
What I Found Abroad
Earlier this year, I flew to Trondheim, Norway, for an international student festival. There, I witnessed something I had been starving for: a city that cared—a whole city! Students, host families, academics, and local government came together to create space for youth from around the world. They volunteered because they believed in dialogue, in global solidarity, in youth power. They believed in something bigger than themselves, they gave honors to student activists.
Meanwhile, back home, people turn a blind eye to activism. “Politics is messy and dirty,” “Let’s not waste energy; nothing will change,” They just want to vibe with their pacar and scroll past the chaos.
And the government doesn’t need to silence us — we do it ourselves.
Out of fear. Out of exhaustion. Out of routine.
It hits me hard. Not because I expect everyone to be a changemaker. But because the very people who need change the most are the ones most afraid of it. Activism isn’t supposed to be colonial in reverse. I can’t force someone to desire liberation. But what happens when their lack of desire perpetuates systems of violence? When apathy becomes complicity?
While We Sleep, The State Rewrites
While we’re distracted by aesthetic reels and pop-up markets, the Indonesian state is busy repackaging our past.
They want to revise textbooks to erase our darkest history.
They label NGOs as foreign agents.
They push a nationalism that rewards loyalty over truth.
They publicly declare civil engagement a threat to national unity.
And I’m afraid people are just going to let it happen. Why wouldn’t they? We were raised in classrooms that reward memorization, not critical thinking. Good citizenship was merely reduced to obedience.
This is how authoritarianism comes back. They erode democracy—not by violence, but by invitation.
The Myth of Moral Exhaustion
Every day, I scroll past posts about burnout, rest, and softness—all important. But I worry we’ve turned our pain into permission to abandon the work entirely. That we’ve aestheticized our apathy.
I don’t blame anyone. The system is cruel by design. But if we don’t resist, if we become spectators to our own disempowerment, then we’re not just tired. We’re complicit.
What #KaburAjaDulu Really Means
This trend is not just a joke. It’s a collective sigh from a generation that feels stuck.
But most of us don’t want to flee for the sake of escaping.
I don’t want to run away from Indonesia, I want to run toward something.
I want to fly to soar.
To live somewhere I don’t have to explain what “gender justice” means.
To build a life where I don’t have to defend idealism like it’s a character flaw.
But what can we do now? As pretentious as it might sound, I still believe in “thinking globally, acting locally.” When patriotism and nationalism are weaponized to discredit marginalized voices and silence criticism, embracing a global mindset can be an act of resistance. If we’re all dismantling injustice—across borders, across contexts—they can’t divide us so easily. And they can’t keep calling our movements foreign when they’re rooted in the realities of our own communities.
Here’s what I’m scared to say out loud:
Maybe we’ve internalized colonialism so deeply, we’ve started to self-cannibalize.
Maybe we’ve grown so used to control, we mistake it for safety. Maybe we crave dictators because we don’t know how to operate without one. Some people don’t want liberty because they don’t know what to do with it.
We are a generation that desperately wants to escape, but not enough to stay and fix what’s wrong. And I don’t blame us. We were handed a system built to drain us. But if we don’t resist it—if we just let it swallow us whole—then we’re not just victims. We’re participants.
We self-censor. We ghost. We gatekeep.
We mock those who still care.
We accept brokenness, then defend it as “realism.”
This isn’t a callout. It’s not even a call to action.
It’s a tired whisper, sent into a noisy void.
If you’re burnt out: same.
If you’ve ghosted a cause, I get it.
But if you’re still here, still angry, still trying, I see you.
And if no one else will say it:
You’re not alone.
I’m here too.
Still believing we can be more than governable.