How It Feels To Be A Moralist In A Religious Country

"Imagination is the eye of the soul -Joseph Joubert"
Source: "JOSEPH JOUBER – FRENCH MORALIST UND ESSAYIST" by Natalie Hush < http://nataliehush.wordpress.com> Retrieved : 11/06/204

It feels terrible. Not many people can get you. 

Indonesia is one of the populous countries in which most of the people embrace one of the official religions available*. For us, acknowledging one of the religions is important. Your religion is your identity. It tells who you are, where you come from and what kind of conversation people can share with you. You will not find any forms that do not request the access to know what your spiritual belief. Your religion information is on your official ID/ documents (except your passport**). Anyway, have i sounded racial yet?

However, now, more and more young people*** are trying to separate themselves from the religious identities. Many reasons drive this social change. However, I do not want to talk about the social change at a macro scale here but I am one of them. I would like to call myself a moralist. Aside from the good notion that you might get, still many people can't get me. 

What is a moralist?

Principally, the term moralists are associated with the French Moralists. Again, what is this "French Moralists"? Are they French and they have such good moral situations? Well, actually they are. So they are a kind of nerds who really love the ideas of  Michel de Montaigne. They have like Blaise Pasca, Jean de La Bruyère, Nicolas Chamfort, Joseph Joubert, François de La Rochefoucauld, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (cool names, huh?). 

Mons. Montaigne mostly wrote about how to live life at the best, through his own perspective. In fact, the way he wrote his works in such bubbly anecdotes makes him one of the most relateable thinkers from his era. Not to mention it's in French. 

The more I read about the French Moralists, the more I get fascinated by them. Why wouldn't I? They're kind of people who investigate - ask - people as moral beings. As La Rochefoucauld (Henri Chamard, 1930) explains moralists study human beings in such a broad sense. Not only a moralist observes the way someone thinks, feels, wills or act as a moral being, but also other things that constitutes his real life. However, the idea of a moralist as an observer of humans as a moral being and things that constitutes them are not constant. A moralist has a great favor to frame moral ideas and put guidance how to live it up. Somehow, they both can work in two ways and support each other. 

Hey, and these are other moralists' work ... in visuals. 

"Nicholas Chamfort"

"Jean de la Buyere"

Who Else?

This guy!

 "Louis C.K" 

* I don't know the best way explain it in academic sense

**That's a good thing

*** They don't have statistics for this. I could just make it up, but if you're interested in funding that kind of research, I am available.