In his Science of Logic and Phenomenology of the Spirit, as indeed in all his works, Hegel often talks of being and becoming, making the distinction between Being in itself and Being for itself, notions that Jean-Paul Sartre plays with in Being and Nothingness, further talking about Being for others. We can think of being in itself as when an entity exists objectively undifferentiated, as opposed to being for itself when it becomes aware of itself as an entity. Language is what most helps in the movement of a community from a state of being in itself to a state of being for itself, and this self-awareness is what gives the community its spiritual strength to keep on reproducing its being as it continually renews itself in culture, in its power relations, and in its negotiations with its entire environment. It is its culture that enables a community to imagine and reimagine itself in history.
Culture is to a community what a flower is to a plant. A flower is very beautiful, very colorful, often very delicate, but it often readily defines the identity of the plant. Most important, the flower yields the seeds that make reproduction of the roots and trunks of that plant possible. Kill the tree trunk and even the roots, but retain the seeds, and the tree can reproduce itself. It can, if you like, reimagine itself. Language, the carrier of culture, is the ultimate and primary means of individual and collective self-imagination.