Common Sense Outlook on Local Wisdom and Identity: A Contemporary Javanese Native’s Experience*

This paper explores local wisdom and identity as experienced by the writer as a Javanese through his common sense. The writer is interested on this topic since he is seeing the fact of the ‘lost generation’ in the society he is living in: Yogyakarta. This fact is seen in many aspects of life: be it media, language, food, medicine, and many other cultural artifacts. Therefore, the writer finds it significant to identify and redefine our identity by employing our local wisdom to cope with the challenging global influence and to give contribution to the world. Key words: local wisdom, Javanese culture, identity, global culture