Benedict Anderson Describes Social Innovation Tools – 1 of 2

Note: This post has been re-written in a more accessible and longer style. Please click here for link to Post 136, the better version.

In Fuzhou, far away, my wife is watching
The moon alone tonight…
When will we feel the moonlight dry our tears,
Leaning together on our windowsill?

In 1983, a special friend implored me to gaze at the moon while at the same time she looked at it in Taipei. This was to be one bond in a separation that sadly became permanent. I did not know then that she was staging a scene from Du Fu (paraphrased above from Vikram Seth). This poem is also beloved by huachao who learned it while still in China.

What does a left-of-center historian like Benedict Anderson have to do with Innovation and Du Fu?

Professor Anderson first saw the insight and defined it as the key ingredient of nationalism in his book, Imagined Communities. “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” These images define nations more than location, the physical border or ethnicity.

In turn, the good Professor says that what defines these images is simultaneity. This is described when Rizal starts the Noli me Tangere with the party at Capitan Tiago’s house in Binondo and for Manilans that “immediately conjures up the imagined community.” Among Filipinos today, Luneta also quickly calls to mind pasyal na walang pera or Rizal’s monument.

Unisonance as when hearing the Lupang Hinirang or Bahay Kubo is another mode of simultaneity. Folklore as with Du Fu’s popular poetry likewise binds the Chinese together and, in my case, was a keen call for connection. The poem that is part of Chinese culture is a perfect example of simultaneity. It has the same power as hearing from another Filipino, “Padre, akong bahala sa ‘yo,” anywhere in the world.

The test of simultaneity is disinterestedness given that “the ties are not chosen.” This feeling of belonging is unconditional. The idea of “national interest”, for most people of whatever class the whole point of the nation is that it is interestless. Just for that reason, it can ask for sacrifices.”

“The family has traditionally been conceived as the domain of disinterested love and solidarity.” In fact, Ho Chi Minh used the idea of Vietnam as extended family to defeat two intruding superpowers, France and America.

Click here for Part 2 of 2.