Mackenzie Wenner Blog 1

What makes a nation? What are its purposes? How do you know you belong to it?

Though in this country we seem to often confuse the word with terms like “across the nation” the true definition of a nation has nothing to do with physical borders because it is the assembly of a community. A nation is formed not with a pen or a map but out of generations or even millennia of shared culture or ethnicity and decent. People make nations from shared perspectives and a cultural camaraderie, rather than with the express intent to govern or organize. This is not to say that the two cannot go together. In the United States we have a history of forming a nation out of a shared set of ideals about how a country should be governed and what relationship citizens should have with their government. Ours is a nation whose common ties are a set of ideas rather than ethnicity. For that we are an outlier, and I believe, a fortunate one.

A nation itself in the technical sense has no express purpose with formation. The formation is a phenomenon of accident and human socialization that draws people together. Though as I said above occasionally nations can be formed with purpose in mind. Our nation was formed with the intent to create a governing system based on equality and individual inalienable rights. I said above that I believe America to be stronger for this. There are nations around the world that have specific ideals as part of their national heritage: Iran’s national identity is based on rule of law through religion, and Israel’s prioritizes a homeland for Jewish people around the globe, however a nation itself does not need a goal or purpose to be formed.

Inclusion in a nation I imagine in their inceptions to be similarly informal, however today most national identities are marked either by borders or by explicit cultural or hereditary traits. In the US, as well as in several other nations fortunate enough to have had control over their own borders, nations typically fit into countries quite reliably. Though within our borders we also have distinct nations, specifically the many different native tribes. In the cases of those nations not reinforced by recognized legal barriers there are other means of “nation maintenance”, typically culturally based, so that no member can be unsure of their affiliation.  This tendency however, makes me reassess my earlier claim that the nation itself needs no purpose. The pains taken to maintain nations and keep future generations from straying seems to suggest a cross-national cause devoted to continuity. A nation serves to self-preserve, protecting the identifying traits or beliefs that cause individuals to join. Thus protecting every member’s highest regarded personal tenants or qualities.