Pup Pup Tot Tot: Observation on Authority

May 31, 2025Original language

Pup pup tot tot.

That sound again. You knew it before you saw it — the Patwal escort slicing through Jakarta traffic. Everyone shifted. Motorcycles squeezed closer to the curb, cars edged into impossible spaces. We all knew the dance. Another official needed to get somewhere important — probably to discuss something urgent about discussing something urgent.

I sat on my motorcycle, trapped between the heat rising from the asphalt and the humid air pressing down like a wet towel. 5:30 PM Jakarta special: the smell of knalpot exhaust fumes, shrouding heat from vehicle engines, and the symphony of horns that somehow meant both “move” and “I can’t move” at the same time. My shirt stuck to my back. My helmet felt like a personal sauna. The exhaustion from nine hours of pretending to work while actually working sat heavy in my shoulders.

The siren kept wailing. Pup pup tot tot. Patwal. The sound of authority, I thought. And then — maybe it was the heat, maybe the fumes, maybe just my brain trying to escape the present moment — something weird occurred to me. Authority. That word we used for these people we automatically moved aside for. Authority has the word “author” in it.

Weird, right? Like when you realize “emergency” has “emerge” in it, or when you’re a kid and discover “Indonesia” has “done” hidden inside. Except this one stuck. Author. Authority. I kept rolling it around while the official’s convoy passed — those dark SUVs with tinted windows, carrying someone whose face I’d never see but whose passage I’d always make way for.

Did he write anything? That government official? Is he an author enough to be called authority? Our president, our ministers, our councils — what exactly did they author to earn their authority?

The next morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Author. Authority. That gap between writing and ruling.

Then I watched it happen in an elevator.

You know that thing we all do? Elevator doors close, sudden silence, five or six people in a metal box. And suddenly everyone’s phone becomes the most fascinating thing in the world. Urgent emails that aren’t urgent. Instagram stories from people you don’t even remember following. That one person scrolling through Shopee even though they’re clearly not buying anything.

Nobody wrote the rule that you must look busy in an elevator. There’s no manual titled “How to Avoid Awkward Eye Contact in Confined Spaces: A Guide for Modern Indonesian Offices.” But we all perform it perfectly.

It’s like those unspoken rules everywhere. The way family WhatsApp groups have invisible hierarchies about who can send what when. My cousin once sent a meme right after my oldest aunt shared a prayer. The silence that followed was louder than any scolding. He learned. We all learned. Through silence, through patterns, through the subtle violence of being left on read.

Later, scrolling through Twitter during lunch, I read threads about some new regulation. Everyone angry about rules that feel like stepping backwards. Then another tweet caught my eye — someone quote-tweeting a confused Google review: “Went for massage, but atmosphere was weird?? Staff kept asking if I wanted ‘petik mangga’?? What is petik mangga?? do the spa have mango garden nearby???”

The quotes were full of laughing emojis and “sweet summer child” comments. Someone replied: “Brother came for back pain, got offered agricultural activities 😭”

Made me think — when did we all learn this code? Nobody sends out a newsletter: “Dear Jakarta Residents, ‘petik mangga’ now means that specific service involving… fruit-picking motions.” Yet somehow, people knows. Like how everyone understands what 🙏 means in different contexts. Nobody published the official 🙏 Semiotic Guide. We all just agreed without agreeing.

The coffee shop where everyone knows which tables are for laptops and which aren’t, despite no signs. The precise timing of when you can leave the office without looking like you’re not a “team player” — 4:59 PM is slacking, 5:01 PM is acceptable, 6:00 PM is “dedicated.” The way we all understand what “nanti saya kabarin” really means — that beautiful Indonesian phrase that translates to “I’ll let you know later” but actually means “this is never happening but I’m too polite to say no directly.”

Who wrote these rules? Who authors these small authorities we all obey?

Sometimes I catch myself doing it too.

Like when I’m scrolling through Instagram and see those reels. You know the ones. Girl dancing in… minimal clothing. And I feel this instant judgment bubble up. “Cheap.” “Attention seeker.” Even while my thumb hovers over the screen, secretly wanting to watch. That weird mix of judgment and desire.

Sometimes I write these tweets — something I actually think about. Then I stare at it. Delete. Too cheesy. Too corny. People will judge. But who are these “people”?

Then there’s real life. My friend’s been trying to approach this girl. The desperation is painful to watch — double texting, immediate replies, anxiety if message is only seen and not replied. “Stay cool,” I tell him. As if I’m some dating guru.

There’s this guy in my neighborhood with a modified exhaust — knalpot barong — that shakes windows when he passes. BRAAAAP BRAAAAP. And I lie there thinking violent thoughts, cursing him to have a mortal accident for violating unwritten noise pollution laws. Like I’ve never done anything that annoyed the neighbors.

Even my family does it. “Cukur dong kumis sama jenggotnya.” Every visit. As if facial hair is a moral failing. And it’s not just direct comments — it’s the forwarded articles about “professional grooming,” the stories about successful clean-shaven cousins, the subtle ways they communicate disapproval without saying “we disapprove.”

At the office, different rules, same game. I see someone wearing the same shabby clothing every same day of the week. That automatic thought: “Can’t they afford better clothes?” The weird part is, I know it doesn’t matter. I know their work quality has nothing to do with their wardrobe choice. But still, that judgment rises up, automatic as breathing.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re all just enforcement officers who forgot what law we’re enforcing.

The split of in our existence. From “don’t worry about what other people think” to “let’s secretly think for other people”. It’s not that we’re fake — we’re authentically different versions of ourselves for different time and situations.

Take social media. We all somehow agreed that Instagram is where your colleagues and family watch, while Twitter is where some people think their actual thoughts live. Same person, different audiences. You see it in what people post where. Those deep 2 AM thoughts, the unhinged jokes, the questionable opinions — all on Twitter. Meanwhile their Instagram stays carefully curated. Sunsets. Coffee. That one achievement they’re milking for content.

LinkedIn is another universe entirely. Everyone becomes a “thought leader” spouting productivity gospel. The same person shit-posting on Twitter at 2 AM could writes “Excited to share my journey of professional growth” at 9 AM.

I saw this example perfectly at a jazz bar in Jakarta Selatan last year. Guy next to me taking notes from an online course on his laptop before the show. Curiosity got me, so I asked what he was studying. Macroeconomics. Turns out he manages assets for companies — deciding which stocks to buy, keeping portfolios healthy. Very consultant vibe, very serious, talking about market predictions and risk assessments.

Then the show started. He closed his laptop, walked to the stage, and sat behind the drum kit.

Same person. Asset manager taking notes on yield curves. Jazz drummer about to improvise a wild solo. Which one was the “real” him?

Maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe they both were.

We’re not faking different versions of ourselves. We’re authentically being multiple people, for multiple audiences, all at once. Every space has its own unwritten authority, and we’ve learned to shift between them like changing clothes.

After all that thinking about multiple selves and invisible audiences, I need to came back to what brought me there. That moment in traffic. That word that started this whole spiral.

Authority. Author.

Words that share roots usually share something deeper. The power to rule and the power to write — they were connected from the beginning, they must be. It would make more sense if they were. Who had authority back in those times? Maybe it was people who could write. Priests with their holy texts. Scribes with their records. Kings with their decrees. To write was to rule because to write was to make things official, permanent, real.

But look at us now. That patwal escort clearing traffic — what did that official write to earn our obedience? Those unwritten elevator rules we all follow — who authored those? Our highest government officials who allegedly fake their thesis. Where’s the author in all this authority?

But then… what gives these officials their power? Not their bodies, not their voices, not even their ideas. It’s documents. Constitutions. Laws. Regulations. Words on paper that we’ve collectively agreed to treat as real. Their authority literally comes from writing — just not necessarily their own writing.

So authority still comes from authorship. Just not how we imagine it.

And if that’s true — if you can have authority without personally writing — then what about us? Every morning when we check our phones in that elevator to avoid awkwardness. Every time we judge someone’s Instagram stories. Every time we know which joke to play in different social settings, despite no written rule about it.

We’re not putting pen to paper, but aren’t we authoring reality through our actions? We’re all ghostwriters. And what we’re writing, collectively, through ten million small acts every day, is the very authority we live under.

There’s this hadith that keeps circling in Muslim thoughts: “كَمَا تَكُونُوا يُوَلَّى عَلَيْكُمْ“ — Kamaa takuunu yuwalla ‘alaikum — as you are, so shall your leaders be. Growing up, I thought it was about deserving our leaders, like some cosmic punishment system.

But maybe it’s more literal. We get the leaders we write into existence. The authority we author through our daily choices.

Every time we move aside for that patwal without questioning why. Every time we perform busy-ness in elevators. Every time we judge the Instagram dancer while watching, police our friend’s dating style, maintain different selves for different platforms. We’re not just following authority. We’re creating it. Writing it into tomorrow.

The government doesn’t have to write surveillance laws when we surveil each other for free. They don’t need to enforce cultural standards when we enforce them on ourselves, on our cousins, on strangers whose only crime is wearing the same shabby shirt every Tuesday.

The thought makes me dizzy. Sitting in traffic again — different day, same heat, same exhaustion. Another patwal escort approaches. Pup pup tot tot.

But this time, I watch differently. Watch us all move aside. And I think: we’re doing it again. Right now. All of us. Authoring their authority with our steering wheels and brake pedals. Writing their power with our compliance.

We’re all so tired. You can see it if you look. Under the makeup, under the smiles, under the productive-life mentality. This bone-deep exhaustion from maintaining all these selves, enforcing all these rules, authoring all these authorities.

And the weirdest part? We could theoretically stop. We could all just… not. Not move for the patwal. Not check our phones in elevators. Not maintain different versions of ourselves. Not police each other’s lives.

But we won’t.

The light turns green. The patwal siren fades into the distance. Traffic flows back to fill the space, like water finding its level. Tomorrow there’ll be another escort. We’ll all move aside again.

So,

The city breathes in patterns we never named. Traffic flows around invisible rules. Sidewalks organize themselves through wordless agreements. Jakarta writes itself through ten million small performances, each person a character in everyone else’s story.

I walk through it all, carrying the weight of understanding and the inability to step outside what I understand. Like watching yourself in a mirror while trying to see what you really look like.

There’s something both beautiful and terrifying about this recognition. Beautiful because it reveals the intricate choreography of human cooperation — how we manage to coordinate millions of lives without central planning, how strangers navigate shared spaces through subtle cues and unspoken contracts. We are, in our way, magnificent social creatures.

But terrifying because once you see the strings, you realize you’re still dancing. That awareness itself becomes another performance, another layer of self-consciousness to manage. The person who thinks deep thoughts about authority becomes yet another character to maintain, another audience to please.

What strikes me most is how this phenomenon has accelerated beyond anything our species evolved to handle. We used to perform for our tribe, our village, maybe our city. Now we’re performing for the global village, for algorithms that reward engagement over authenticity, for audiences that exist in our imagination more than in reality.

The jazz drummer is probably somewhere in this crowd, switching from his day self to his night self. Moving between authorities like changing clothes. Still following scripts, just different ones. But maybe that’s not the tragedy I initially thought. Maybe the ability to be multiple authentic selves is a kind of freedom — not the absence of performance, but the mastery of it.

There’s a question that haunts me: Are we becoming more human or less human through all this? More connected or more isolated? More free or more constrained?

I think the answer is yes to all of it. We’re experiencing a kind of hyperhumanity — all our social instincts amplified and accelerated to an almost unbearable degree. We’re more connected than ever and lonelier than ever. More aware of our performances and more trapped by them. More capable of empathy across vast distances and more capable of cruelty to those right next to us.

The strangest part is how normal it all feels. How quickly we adapt to new forms of surveillance and self-surveillance. How seamlessly we integrate new platforms, new audiences, new ways of being watched and judged. We’re extraordinarily resilient creatures, perhaps too resilient for our own good.

Sometimes I wonder if future generations will look back at this period the way we look back at the invention of agriculture or the industrial revolution — as a fundamental shift in what it means to be human. The age when privacy became performance, when every moment became potentially public, when the ancient human impulse to care what others think was weaponized by technology and turned into a full-time job.

But then I see the small acts of “tolong menolong sesame pengguna jalan” — someone helping push a broken motorbike to the side, drivers making space for merging vehicles even in heavy traffic. I watch people give money to beggars even though they know these might be part of organized syndicates, choosing compassion over cynicism. I listen to the endless gossips in the workplace and realize it’s less about satisfying the urge to judge and more about the deep human need to connect, to share stories, to feel less alone. And I remember that beneath all the performance, beneath all the artificial authorities we’ve created, something essentially human persists. Something that wants to cooperate, to care, to connect.

Maybe that’s what we’re really authoring through all these small interactions — not just authority, but humanity itself. Maybe every time we choose kindness over cruelty, authenticity over performance, connection over isolation, we’re writing a different story about what we can become.

Pup pup tot tot.

The sound that started this thought. The sound that reminds us who we are to each other. Who we write each other to be.

We stop. We move aside. We continue.

And in that movement, that automatic consideration for others’ passage, maybe there’s something worth preserving. Even as we question everything else, even as we see through all the performances, perhaps the impulse to make space for each other remains genuinely human.

Tomorrow we’ll do it again. The elevator silence, the platform switching, the small courtesies and large conformities. But maybe we can do it with a little more awareness of what we’re creating together. Maybe we can author authorities that serve rather than subjugate, that connect rather than divide.

Author. Authority.

We always move aside for them.

But maybe we can choose what we’re moving toward.

Pup Pup Tot Tot: Observation on Authority

Further Reading