Running amok: Indonesians ‘going postal’

Cultural traits around the world are sometimes not obvious to a new arrival and take time to learn. Comparing the way westerners and Indonesians deal with confrontation / anger is interesting. In general, westerners tend to become louder and more direct when angry, hoping to force a solution there and then. Many people in Indonesia do not do that, preferring to remain reticent, saying nothing and storing up their feelings for some later date. At some random point in the future, feelings often overflow, sometimes with a tip off from a friend ‘be careful he’s very angry with you’.

Malay / Indonesian culture has a particular method employed by some people who cannot control their anger anymore. It is called loosely, running amok.

Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok (also spelled amuck or amuk), is derived from the Malay word mengamuk, meaning “to go mad with rage” (uncontrollable rage). In typical cases, a man who has shown no previous sign of anger and no inclination to resort to violence will take up a weapon in a sudden frenzy and attempt to kill everyone he meets. Amok episodes of this kind normally end with the amok-runner being killed by bystanders. The contrast between what was seen as the normal placid character of Malays and a sudden outburst of frenzied violence played to Western perceptions of the ‘irrational’ East.

Many explanations for amok have been offered by observers, including suggestions that it is a physical consequence of alcoholism, drug addiction, heat or internal parasites. Nineteenth and early twentieth century investigators were unable, however, to find any real evidence to support these speculations. Psychological explanations include the suggestion that amok is a sudden explosion of internal tension created by life in a highly hierarchical society; both Malay and Javanese traditional societies are said to have been extremely hierarchical, with an emphasis on deference to rulers. It is doubtful, however, whether these societies are unusually hierarchical in a global context. Other observers have described amok as a form of spirit possession.

The explanation which is now most widely accepted is that amok is closely related to male honor (amok by women is virtually unknown). In many cases where the background of the amok-runner is known, there seems to have been some element of deep shame which prevented the man from living honorably, as he saw it, in his own society. Running amok was both a way of escaping the world (since perpetrators were normally killed) and re-establishing one’s reputation as a man to be feared and respected. Some observers have related this explanation to Islam’s ban on suicide, which, it is suggested, drove Malay men to create circumstances in which others would kill them. Evidence for this explanation is that the incidence of amok seems to be less where amok runners are captured and tried, rather than being beaten to death on the spot.

•W. W. Skeat wrote in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:
“A Malay will suddenly and apparently without reason rush into the street armed with a kris or other weapons, and slash and cut at everybody he meets till he is killed. These frenzies were formerly regarded as due to sudden insanity. It is now, however, certain that the typical amok is the result of circumstances, such as domestic jealousy or gambling losses, which render a Malay desperate and weary of his life. It is, in fact, the Malay equivalent of suicide. The act of running amuck is probably due to causes over which the culprit has some amount of control, as the custom has now died out in the British possessions in the peninsula, the offenders probably objecting to being caught and tried in cold blood.”

•Cultural equivalents
Early travellers in Asia sometimes describe a kind of military amok, in which soldiers facing apparently inevitable defeat suddenly burst into a frenzy of violence which either so startles their enemies that it delivers victory or at least ensures an honourable death. This form of amok appears to resemble the berserker of the Norse.

Amok is sometimes described as a culture-bound syndrome or a culture-specific syndrome, that is a psychological condition whose manifestation is strongly shaped by cultural factors. Other reported culture-bound syndromes are latah and koro. Amok is also sometimes considered one of the subcategories of dissociative disorders (cross-cultural variant).

Behaviour strongly reminiscent of amok is also found in Western societies, and indeed the term is often used to refer to the behaviour of someone who, in the grip of strong emotion, obtains a weapon and begins attacking people indiscriminately, often with multiple fatalities. The slang term ‘going postal’ is similar in intent and more common today, particularly in North America. Police describe such an event as a ‘killing spree’.

In contemporary Indonesia, the term amok (amuk) generally refers not to individual violence, but to apparently frenzied violence by mobs. Indonesians now commonly use the term ‘mata gelap‘ (literally ‘darkened eyes’) to refer to individual amok.

Norse berserkers and the Zulu battle trance are two other examples of the tendency of certain groups to work themselves up into a killing frenzy. The 1911 Webster Encyclopedia comments:

‘Though so intimately associated with the Malay there is some ground for believing the word to have an Indian origin, and the act is certainly far from unknown in Indian history. Some notable cases have occurred among the Rajputs. Thus, in 1634, the eldest son of the raja of Jodhpur ran amok at the court of Shah Jahan, failing in his attack on the emperor, but killing five of his officials. During the 18th century, again, at Hyderabad (Sind), two envoys, sent by the Jodhpur chief in regard to a quarrel between the two states, stabbed the prince and twenty-six of his suite before they themselves fell’.