Nation?

The questions and theories, which Mr. Benedict Anderson came up with, are very interesting and different to say the least. The idea that a nation is an imagined community and only is a community that is socially constructed, even imagined, by people is an idea which most of us would never think about. To an extent though, I concur with his thoughts on the matter. He stated that people in this community haven’t met everyone else in this community, but they still imagine themselves as a whole though many haven’t met each other but they have similar interests and this makes up a nation. This is a good, sound theory and it makes a strange bit of sense if one puts it that way.

While reading I came upon a concept that I thought rather interesting and decadent at the same time. Mr. Anderson alluded to the fact that even though people have certain prejudices or inequalities in a nation, it is always conceived that the people in the nation are under a deep influence and obligation to comradeship. And as such, this makes is possible to willingly go to war and die for this imagined idea of nation. To me the concept is rather morbid that people in a nation are fighting and dying for an imagined concept. But it is a thing that needed to be done. Imagined or not, people need to stick together to form a civilized way of life, even if everyone in the “imagined nation” don’t know each other. If the true concept of nation, where only those who know each other personally were invited to join the nation, there would be millions of nations around the world and more than likely more fighting between the groups than ever before seen. Nations are a form of unity between many people, whether they all know each other or not. The people of the nation all have common interests and needs and most will proudly fight for their nation to keep it in tact, proving that it’s not merely an imagined thing but in fact a real idea of nation that people fight and die for.