ACTIVITY 1 Analytical Essay

Give a summary of Anderson and Rizal’s concept of Nationalism/Nation. Based on their

concepts give your reflections, your thoughts about the Filipino nation today.

According to Benedict Anderson, the concept of nationalism has never been discussed
in depth. Never has a great thinker treated this concept as thoroughly as other concepts.
Anderson suggested that nationalism should not be viewed as an ideology like "fascism" or
"liberalism." Still, he should be linked to "kinship" and "religion" to understand the similarities
between groups and why the territory in the Living helps people understand our borders today.

Furthermore, Benedict Anderson's historical study of nationalism, "Imagined

Communities," first rejected the assumption that nations are natural or inevitable social units.
Instead, Anderson described the country as a cultural structure whose detailed history is rooted
in the fall of the monarchy and empire and the concrete progress of culture, technology, and
capitalism. In order to understand the basic characteristics of states and the extraordinary
powers they seem to have over their citizens, Anderson points to the continuity between states
formed at different times and places, many of which, according to him, are the result of
conditions plagiarizing each other. But it also turns to the fundamental differences between
countries, both in the era when they were formed or today, to point out how they rely on history
and show how they retain the many structures, trends, and inequalities inherent in countries,
and the social and political organization they superseded.

On the other hand, Rizal’s nationalism is of the inclusive, caring kind. This he spelled out
in the aims of La Liga Filipina: mutual protection in every want or necessity, defense against all
violence and injustice, and encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce. It is a kind
of nationalism that is compatible with a caring, globalizing and interdependent world. Rizal in
Noli Me Tangere writes to borrow an expression from Faulkner, of a past that is not past. The
Noli is at the moment of immense topicality when one considers that the novel is about the
cruelties and abuses of a tyranny that enslaves under the name of religion. Many parts of the
world, including details of the Philippines apparently, are threatened by movements to impose
this tyranny. The ways of the friars live on in the refusal of the Church to leave couples’ exercise
of their reproductive rights to their judgment.

The Filipino nation today is somnolent- it is far from what we expected. Indeed, a nation
rendered almost numb in its seeming insurmountable struggles against crashing poverty and
incorrigible corruption in government. Hence, the realization that the power to effect change lies
in each of us and not in the candidates, so we wake up, and time we claim that power by
casting our votes.

Leaders of the political opposition and the President’s critics can howl and grumble in
protest that most people will ignore or even detest.

Mr. Duterte remains popular because the people are tired and desperate for having been
long abused and neglected. They voted for him because he promised to address their
grievances and champion their welfare and interests. They are cheering him on because he has
repeatedly sworn that he would go after the wealthy and elite to evade or underpay their taxes
to the government and be responsible for the widening economic disparity and the continuing
poverty of the masses. With the pandemic still disturbing their minds, the people will cling to Mr.
Duterte for being one among them. And this is the real state of the nation today.

What President Duterte is trying to do now is to alleviate the sufferings of the destitute
and allay their fears of the crisis confronting the nation. In addition, what ails the Filipino people
today is not just graft and corruption, the drug menace, or the economic recession. The cancer
gnawing at the minds and hearts of our people is moral depravity and decadence.

There is hardly any president who sincerely loved our country and our people.