The Three Wisdoms of Makassar City

(SIPAKATAU, SIPAKALEBBI, SIPAKAINGGE)

(HUMANIZING, RESPECTING, AND REMINDING EACH OTHER)
By : Habib Muhammad Shahib

As an archipelago country, Indonesia is acknowledged in the world as a country which is rich in
culture and traditional wisdom (value) because there are so many ethnic groups that live in Indonesia
and each ethnic group has different culture and value. Bugis and Makassar are two of many ethnic
groups in Indonesia that live in my city (Makassar city) and they have some wisdomsthat is
acknowledged as Sipakatau (humanizing each other), Sipakalebbi(respecting each other), and
Sipakainge(reminding each other) or popular in my city as The Three Wisdoms. The three wisdoms are
concepts of the Bugiss ancestors but as the time goes the three wisdoms become the community
wisdom of Makassar and Bugis ethnic groups and also nowadays become the wisdom of Makassar city.
In my opinion, the three wisdoms have the same characteristic with universal value that
nowadays people whole the world believein. Sipakatau (humanizing each other) is a concept of
humanism from the Bugissancestor which teaches us to treat others as the way we want to be treated
or on the other words sipakatau teaches us to do the kindness to other people. Sipakalebbi (respecting
each other) is a law philosophy from the Bugissancestors which rules people to respect the people
rights especially for the privacy and ownership right. And the last, sipakainge (reminding each other) is a
wisdom which guides us to remind others in our daily life in frame of the rightness and goodness that
majority people believe in.
Next, as a young man that active in some young organizations in my city, I got the interesting
fact that majority of youth organizations (including my organization) in my city use The Three Wisdoms
as the guidance of their organization activities. It is because, we believe, the youth organization is a
laboratory of life which will give the young people a place to learn about the reality of human life so we
need the three wisdoms as the guidance to make the young generation will be ready to face the real life
in the future. For instance; first, in youth organization, the young people will interact with many people
from different background (religion, ideology, or culture). It makes we need the sipakatau value in our
organization to make the organizations members can respect each other whatever the culture, religion,
or ideology they believe in. second, as in our daily life, each member in youth organization has the rights
such as the privacy and property right that make the youth organizations have to use and understand
the Sipakalebbi value in organizations daily activities to respect privacy and property right of each
member. And the last, sometime in our daily activities or in our organization activities we do something
bad to others for instance; sometime we lie to others, we make other become the joke object, we are
unfriendly to others, we are not philanthropist and also doing other bad habits to others. These bad
activities above make the sipakainge value is needed by the organization members to rule and remind
each other to do the good habit or the goodness in their daily or organization activities.
Finally, I do believe, the three wisdoms can help people to create the better future if the three
wisdoms always be used by the young people in their organizations activities and in the interaction with
other organizations. So the young people will be familiar and they will always do the positive habits to
others in frame of the three wisdoms in their daily life. Furthermore, we will be familiar with them in our
daily life and also we can face the better future as a form of the accumulation of the people goodness.