Articles/Essays/Notes

Bali's Serangan Island: an international financial centre rising on reclaimed land tangled in New Order dynasties, tax havens and mangrove destruction.

Indonesia to 2030: a monitorable framework of scenario probabilities, 12 indicator thresholds, event triggers and falsification tests.

Indonesia's 2026 crisis: record-low rupiah, disputed GDP data, and a state reasserting control via Danantara, capital controls and export monopolies.

How Prabowo's New Order military formation shapes Indonesia's 2025-26 institutions: Kopassus, the 1998 abductions, Danantara and Suharto's hero decree.

Gary Dean recalls the 2016 Jakarta Starbucks bombing from his 12th-floor office window—eyewitness photos, messages, and Indonesia's swift aftermath.

An anarchist in Bali, a 15,000-document knowledgebase, a 40-year question: how this unlikely dharma series was built, sourced and written.

Dharma means 'that which holds', not destiny or doctrine. Tracing its Sanskrit root shows why every society builds an ethics to hold itself together.

How did dharma arise? When cities outgrew face-to-face morality, humans engineered explicit codes—and the Axial sages answered, not revealed, that need.

An illiterate Javanese farmer built a dharma from scratch in 1890. A century on, his heirs set feet in cement to defend the same principles.

Five dharmas—Ubuntu, Stoicism, Aboriginal Dreaming, Sumarah and the Abrahamic covenant—disagree on nearly everything, yet rhyme underneath.

A dharma feels like truth because it was grooved into gut, habit and brain wiring, below the reach of the self that could doubt it.

Every strength of a dharma has a dark twin: the fence that unites also excludes, the authority that frees also rules. No dharma escapes its own failures.

'Spiritual but not religious' isn't dharma's absence but its search — without gods, without ritual, against an attention economy built to fight it.

Dharmas were built, not found. Gary Dean asks what happens when we build them on purpose—for a warming planet, for AI, and for ourselves.

What is a dharma? A concise definition, four defining features, and two tests for judging whether a way of living holds without crushing.

Gary Dean's two-part test for judging dharmas: holding without crushing, and staying revisable by those they bind—applied to real cases and objections.

LLMs recovered the linguistic key from text alone, and confabulation research shows human minds were guessing too. We aren't as smart as we think.

48.7% of developers use Bash, yet 80% of scripts have code smells. Gary Dean argues Bash deserves real engineering discipline, not cargo-cult scripting.

Oxytocin isn't the 'love hormone' fuelling tribal hatred—evidence shows it strengthens in-group bonds far more reliably than out-group hostility.

Europe built a sovereign office suite in 72 hours. Indonesia has talked digital sovereignty for 20 years. Gary Dean on why that must change now.

Gary Dean: Eropa luncurkan Euro-Office berdaulat dalam tiga hari. Mengapa Indonesia, setelah dua dekade wacana, harus segera bertindak.

Gary Dean's 2026 update on doing business in Indonesia: how Javanese culture, patronage, musyawarah and law shape investment 25 years after Reformasi.

Bali's nominee land schemes for foreigners are now criminal offences under Indonesian law. Learn the risks and legal alternatives available.

How Gen Y and Gen Z employees at Okusi Associates in Jakarta communicate and collaborate across departments, per this qualitative case study.

Explore applied anthropology's practical methods for solving real-world challenges in public health, sustainability, urban planning, and social justice.

Youtube censorship, bizarre, odd

Explore dharma's Sanskrit roots and its evolution into an adaptive ethical framework—still relevant for secular life, ethics and modern culture.

Why do taxonomists still argue over species after centuries of data? Gary Dean explores splitters, lumpers, and how naming forces continuums into boxes.

Indonesia's SMEs face pandemic fallout. Gary Dean urges consolidation, market pivots, and strategic responses to survive the post-COVID economy.

A review of Batchelor's After Buddhism: sharp philological demolition and vivid history, but a secular dharma left without institutions to sustain it.

A journalist on compassion fatigue after Indonesia's 2004 tsunami and years of disasters—empathy, exhaustion and self-preservation.

a journey to the kyoto imperial palace in 2017.

Gary Dean recalls life as a quiet 14-year-old in suburban Perth, Western Australia, and the yearning for escape that shaped a lifelong journey abroad.

Beringharjo Traditional Market, Yogyakarta

circumcision celebration in jakarta, indonesia

Gary Dean: Perth-born, Indonesian citizen since 1996. Founder of Okusi group, exploring prosociality, Indonesian business, and open technology.

Gary Dean's journey from Australian programmer to Jakarta business consultant, on Indonesian bureaucracy, investment and three decades in Indonesia.

Guide to Indonesian land law for foreigners: UUPA rules, land titles (HM, HGU, HGB, HP) and legal ways to secure property in Indonesia.

A fiery 2002 polemic: an expat Australian explains why he prefers Indonesia's chaos to Australia's smug, bureaucratic certainty.

Dikotomi: atmospheric MIDI compositions from 2002, including Absolute Uncertainty, Sky Cruising and Airships at Dawn—Gary Dean's early digital music.

Guide to Indonesian business culture, law, joint ventures and investment—essential context for Western entrepreneurs. Written 2001; see the 2026 update.

Why understanding Javanese and Indonesian culture is vital for foreign business success, illustrated by a consultant's real case from Tasikmalaya.

Analysis of the 1999-2000 Maluku conflict: how ethnic tension, religion and Jakarta's power struggles turned communal strife into war.

Examining Australia's complex relationship with Asia, from colonial ties to APEC diplomacy, cultural barriers, and the challenge of regional acceptance.

How Singapore's FDI-driven industrialisation compares to Taiwan and South Korea's approach, and what it reveals about technology transfer and innovation.

A critique of Brian Toohey's 1999 'Jakarta Lobby' article, exposing Australian ignorance towards Indonesia during the East Timor crisis.

How Indonesia's 1994 Tempo banning exposed a deeper clash between New Order corporatism and Western liberal individualism under Soeharto.

Examining the 1997 East Asian crisis: how Western neoliberal assumptions clashed with Asian collectivist business and state-capital ties.

Comparing Indonesia, South Korea and Taiwan: how patrimonialism, Confucian values and education shaped divergent economic development paths.

Exploring Javanese Santri Islam: the santri-abangan divide, traditionalist vs modernist strands, and how mysticism shapes religious identity in Java.

How security concerns shape Australia's foreign policy: the US alliance, forward defence, ASEAN engagement and UN multilateral diplomacy.

Weighing joint ventures against 100% foreign-owned PMA companies for investing in Indonesia: key risks, restrictions and management demands.

Trace Australia's foreign policy shift from British colonial dependency to US alliance and independent middle-power diplomacy in Asia.

How trade shaped Southeast Asia from Srivijaya and Malacca to European colonialism, transforming societies and politics before 1870.

Tracing the nation-state from hunter-gatherer bands to Westphalia and colonialism, and its decline under globalisation and the rise of global cities.

How financial globalisation and neoliberal ideology erode nation-state sovereignty, policy autonomy and territorial governance.

A critical review of Marx's Capital on capitalism's origins, weighing feudal breakdown and wage labour against his prophetic voice.

Milgram's obedience experiment examined: collective morality, war crimes, and how individual freedom clashes with bureaucratic authority.

Personal photo collection from Yogyakarta 1998 featuring a traditional Indonesian home with tiger-proof walls, Mercedes car, and daily life scenes.

Javanese cosmology and aliran streams, not Western political science, explain Suharto's 1998 fall—an anthropological analysis.

A March–May 1998 Yogyakarta diary: "conversion" to Islam, a Javanese marriage, and eyewitness scenes from Indonesia's reformasi protests.

Analisis akademis tentang dampak globalisasi terhadap kedaulatan negara bangsa, peran AS dan MNC, serta potensi konflik masa depan. Esai UGM 1997.

Analisis calon pengganti Suharto: Hartono, Sutrisno, Harmoko, Habibie, dan Megawati sebagai alternatif kepemimpinan Indonesia.

Pelajari sejarah Hukum Agraria Indonesia dari era kolonial Belanda hingga UUPA 1960. Pahami hak milik, HGU, HGB, dan hak pakai atas tanah.

Analisis risiko pembangunan PLTN di Semenanjung Muria, Jawa dan alternatif energi terbarukan seperti geotermis dan gas alam untuk Indonesia.

Rare 1983 acoustic recordings by Gary Dean: solo guitar and voice tracks captured in Fremantle, Australia, with raw, original compositions.