Mayssa Chehata Blog #1: The Psychology of a Nation

A nation is a psychological construct which is then manifested in the way humans behave, interact, and organize. Anderson describes a sort of emotional attachment felt by its members which defines a nation. Despite the fact that any member of a nation will never know or even see all the other members, they feel connected to them. This connection can go from something surface level and superficial, such as physical features or dialect, or can be deeper, such as common history/suffering, religion, or shared beliefs. It is these different levels of connection, and the associated emotions—which can be very strong—which cause people to act upon nationalism (could be through wars, revolution, civil service, community service, etc.).

I’m not sure there is a true “purpose” of creating nations, as it is something that happens in the mind, sometimes even within the subconscious, and is not necessarily done consciously. However, I think that nations do ultimately serve the purpose of allowing humans to categorize themselves. This is important not only in the organization of humans, economies, etc. but also in making us feel a sense of connected-ness, even at times when we are completely alone. One could look at the films we watched, Finding the Circle and Passing Through and note how although people in both films did not necessarily live in communities with people of their “nation,” (Nathan a Korean living in the Midwestern United States, and Native Americans becoming more assimilated into their American communities) they were able to still feel a sense of being connected to far away, and also deceased and not yet born, people.

Going back to the idea of organization, nation-ness also allows us to create the idea of “us” and “them,” rather than viewing the entire world as “us,” aka human. It would be difficult for people to feel a connection with the simple idea of being “human,” and is much easier to try to categorize and classify people according to various criteria. I think the idea of wanting to feel “connected-ness” even when you are alone is very important to humans, and if we classified the entire world as one nation, it would might revert us back to that sense of aloneness, as it is hard to feel a strong connection with 7 billion people, many of whom are so different from yourself. But on the other hand, viewing the entire world as a single nation, could encourage finding things that connect us all and focusing on those things. Today’s global society focuses on things that make us different, but if those differences were less important in the eyes of every human on earth, we would all feel connected to 7 billion other people every day.

In conclusion, defining the word nation is no simple task. We should recognize that, although nations are physically manifested today with lines drawn on maps (often arbitrarily by colonial rulers and imperialists), a nation is something that is created and exists in the minds of humans. Nations are dynamic, always moving and changing. The nation system we live in today didn’t even exist in most of the world until after World War II. It would be interesting to consider the question, how will the idea of the nation, and the way we think about nationality, change in the future? Will we always divide the world into “pieces of cake,” as the King Leopold II of Belgium described Africa at the Berlin Conference where the continent was dividing among the European powers? Or will we someday look at ourselves, each other, and the way we group and classify members of society very differently? Also is one way (the current way or a different one) better or worse? I’m very interested in hearing people’s thoughts.