Imagining "Imagine" : John Lennon's gibberish-filled anthem.

Daily Standard ^ | Joel Engel

[Hillary's Folly]

Imagining "Imagine"
On the anniversary of John Lennon's death, it's worth taking a look at the gibberish in his beloved anthem.
by Joel Engel
12/08/2003 12:00:00 AM

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TODAY MARKS the 23rd anniversary of John Lennon's murder by a deranged fan, an act that at once revivified the ex-Beatle's career and established his 1971 song "Imagine" as the official utopian anthem. For millions of people around the world, the song's three minutes of bumper-sticker slogans describe the best of all possible worlds.

But before the faithful gather in memoriam to light candles and sing "Imagine" together, as they always do on the anniversary, a few of them might want to stop and consider that the lyrics are hardly a recipe for universal bliss. Chaos may be closer to the truth.

Put aside for a moment the inconvenient fact that John once admitted he'd written "All You Need Is Love" as irony. Or that, as a Beatle, his most spirited vocals may have been on the group's cover of "Money (That's What I Want)," which begins: The best things in life are free / But you can keep them for the birds and bees. Or that, on his solo debut album, recorded a year before "Imagine," he sang: I told you before, stay away from my door / Don't give me that brother, brother, brother, brother . . . Let's just take the words of "Imagine" at face value.

Imagine there's no heaven . . . No hell below us . . . Imagine all the people living for today. Okay, let's imagine that; let's imagine six billion people who believe that flesh and blood is all there is; that once you shuffle

off this mortal coil, poof, you're history; that Hitler and Mother Teresa, for example, both met the same ultimate fate. Common sense suggests that such a world would produce a lot more Hitlers and a lot fewer Teresas, for the same reason that you get a lot more speeders / murderers / rapists / embezzlers when you eliminate laws, police, and punishment. Skeptics and atheists can say what they like about religion, but it's hard to deny that the fear of an afterlife where one will be judged has likely kept hundreds of millions from committing acts of aggression, if not outright horror. Nothing clears the conscience quite like a belief in eternal nothingness.

Imagine there's no countries . . . Nothing to kill or die for / No religion too / Imagine all the people / living life in peace. Hmmm. A single, borderless entity. No passports or customs inspectors rifling through your luggage. So far, so good. But wait a second. By what laws, rules, cultures, customs, and mores would we all be living? America's? Saudi Arabia's? Iceland's? Cuba's? Obviously, organizing billions of people from different traditions around a common mindset would require some serious coercion that progressives (many of whom will be out in force tonight with lighted candles) keep reminding us is not our prerogative--not even in countries with brutal dictators. And if there's nothing to kill or die for, then there's really nothing to live for, either--not equality, not liberty, not justice. It bears remembering that those young Englishmen who declared, in the 1930s, that they wouldn't fight for king and country did nothing for the cause of peace; quite the opposite. Lennon's own Oxford Pledge may warm the hearts of pacifists, but it's true music to a tyrant's ears.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can / No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man / Imagine all the people, sharing all the world. . . . Let's begin implementing the third stanza's message by splitting up the royalties to this copyrighted song. Mrs. Lennon, I imagine, will be only too happy to share with the rest of us the proceeds from the semiannual checks she receives for its licensing. In fact, why don't we all participate in every revenue stream created by John's invaluable catalogue? No, even that's not good enough. John wants us all to own everything, so we're each entitled to an equal share of not only his catalogue but also every album, tape, and CD ever made--by every artist. True, in such an egalitarian world, there soon won't be any record stores from which to take home recorded merchandise, since the owners will have nothing left to sell and are anyway no longer the owners (we all are). Nor will there be anything to play or record the music on (assuming any artist still wants to record), since there'd be no one to build the equipment. Why should anyone volunteer to work in a factory making hard goods when everyone else is living in the poshest houses and eating at the finest restaurants for free? Of course, housing and food are going to be problems, too, unless someone volunteers to mine the quarries, hammer nails, plant corn, and catch salmon for the rest of

us. In John's imagined world, su casa es mi casa. So is su radicchio.

And the world will live as one. One what? Violent mess, apparently.

Imagine that.

Joel Engel is an author and journalist in Southern California.

[AmishDude]

If someone, somehow proved to you today that there was no god, would you run out tomorrow and rape your neighbor's wife, rob a bank and shoot a cop?

No, I would probably begin by embezzeling funds from everywhere I could get my hands on. I'd "key" every car that was parked funny. If somebody pissed me off, I'd just haul off and punch them in the face. If I got very depressed, I'd probably end up going on a killing spree instead of just doing myself in. In short, I'd do whatever I could get away with, because I could be totally solopsistic.

[F16Fighter]

IMO, The Youngbloods' 'Get Together' was a far more substantial lyrical/melodious/ song than 'Imagine.'

'Imagine' keeps in line with Satan's great lie -- NO judgement, No accountibility, NO reward for the righteous.

[dmz]

There is some interesting (IMO) irony in this discussion.

Freepers, generally speaking, would like to see children use their imaginations more, and decrease the anti-imaginative activities (TV, video/computer games, etc.) they are involved in.

What kind of world do we think a child would tend to imagine...a capitalist society or one that is more utopian? Would they tend to imagine "World Peace" or "World War"?

I'm thinking they imagine something more resembling utopia than something resembling the real world. My opinion only.

Is it not possible (and probably more correct) to view Lennon's Imagine as the child-like musings of a utopian?

Just a thought.

As an aside, (and sure to get me in trouble), I refuse to vet the musicians I listen to for political appropriateness.

[stuartcr]

From which religion did pre-Christian Roman law stem from?

[stuartcr]

Why?

[Taliesan]

Did anyone watch CSPAN this weekend, the Democratic National convention? They were playing Imagine and everyone there was swaying to the music. It was so classic. Liberals everywhere, dreaming of a perfect world with no religion to.

Ah, there is the point exactly of the article exactly.

Except that the point has nothing to do with religion; it has to do with the essence of liberalism, which is that a liberal likes feeling good without regard to the content accompanying the feeling.

The swaying libs WERE NOT dreaming of a world without religion. The song does -- they were not. Many of them are very religious people.

What they were doing was dreaming of a sweet utopia. It made them feel good to so dream. (As it should.) They were not aware of the lyrics, except as a general idea. Such an awareness would not be desirable, since it would BREAK THE SPELL.

That there is OBJECTIONABLE CONTENT associated with the dream does not bother them. They are liberals. The end is a good end. The dream is sweet. The song is pretty.

Like many on this thread, they would say, to this article "it's just a frickin song."

And that is the essence of liberalism. As long as we can feel good, let's get too hung up on the analysis.

[AmishDude]

Why?

The better question is: Why not?

[F16Fighter]

"Unfortunately, as songs go, this one has become a motivator for many people, not unlike the Communist anthems sung by Communist hero Pete Seeger."

Heh -- Which reminds me -- Has anyone nominated 'Kumbaya' as a "motivator" for peace and harmony? I'm sure had the Chinese only sang it at Tihanimin (sp) Square, things would have turned out differently...

And then there is that old Coke anthem ("I'd love to buy the world a coke and keep in harmony...")

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Come on now...you are reaching and you know it.

Yeah, I know it. But if everyone agreed...this place would get boring pretty fast. Imagine that.    =;^)

[Taliesan]

I refuse to vet the musicians I listen to for political appropriateness.

I agree. I enjoy lots of songs by John Lennon. I don't care what his politics are. Except when his politics creep into his song, and then I gag.

That's simply a distinction I offer you, for what it's worth.

And, when my 5 year old muses about utopia, he includes no method in his utopian dream (no religion, no countries, no property?) And that is what makes it cute. And I ask for nothing more out of him.

When he is 35, if he still has that dream, I'd be tempted to ask him how he thinks we ought to get there.

Another important distinction, I think.

[BSunday]

True that!

[A Navy Vet]

What does that have to do with anything I've said above? Of course, society should resist evil, from whatever basis it comes. Even as a deist, I recognize the difference because I have a heart and a conscience.

[Trampled by Lambs]

No, I would probably begin by embezzeling funds from everywhere I could get my hands on. I'd "key" every car that was parked funny. If somebody pissed me off, I'd just haul off and punch them in the face. If I got very depressed, I'd probably end up going on a killing spree instead of just doing myself in. In short, I'd do whatever I could get away with, because I could be totally solopsistic.

Well, I would not. I do not. If the above is true then you are a person who only behaves civilly under threat of punishment (hell) and not someone I would trust or associate with.

I believe that most people are intrinsically "good" and do not need the threat of punishment to behave decently. As far as people like you are concerned, I am grateful that we do have religion if for no other reason than to keep you in check.

[mc5cents]

Some of Lennon's songs make about as much sense as the famous poem "What The Blind Man Saw" which goes in part:

One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
He came and killed those two dead boys
One bright day in the middle of the night

As I was walkin' up the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh how I wish he'd go away

John could have written that I suppose.

[stuartcr]

No, it's not the better question. I assume you don't do these things now, why would you want to do these things if someone proved that God did not exist? Why wouldn't you just continue on as you are now?

[SamAdams76]

Yeah, I think it's a goofy song lyric-wise. Nice melody though and I don't mind hearing it every now and then. I even learned to play it on the piano some years back. I'm a fan of Lennon's music for the most part but there are Lennon songs even more annoying than "Imagine." Such as "Mother" and "Women are the n*gger of the world" and just about anything he ever did with Yoko Ono. I really like Lennon's material on "Double Fantasy" (his last album) minus the Yoko stuff, of course, which ruins an otherwise brilliant album. Point it, Lennon had plenty of good material left in him and had he not been killed, he would have been putting out a lot of good music during the 1980s and 90s. Certainly better stuff than what Paul McCartney has been putting out.

I sometime wonder that if I was born 10 or 15 years earlier, if I would be a 60s hippie. I came of age in 1980, the year of Ronald Reagan, and I've been pretty much a conservative since then. I shudder to think of how I might have turned out had I come of age in 1967 instead.

Anyhow, the evening of December 8, 1980 is etched in my memory. Definitely a "JFK" moment in my life. I remember exactly what I was doing. I had Monday Night Football (the Patriots were playing) on the TV and I was practicing situps (I was to report to Marine boot camp in just a few more weeks) and I overheard Howard Cosell mentioning "John Lennon" and "shot" and "dead on arrival" in the same sentence. My heart skipped a few beats and I immediately turned on my radio and you could hear nothing but Beatles music across the entire FM band. For the next week, most rock stations played nothing but Beatles and Lennon music around the clock. I'll admit, even though I now deplore the liberal ideology that Lennon stood for, I am still very sad for what happened. The man didn't deserve to die that way and I hope they never let that assassin out of custody.

[Hillary's Folly]

I really like Lennon's material on "Double Fantasy"

Me too. Still have it in Album form, in fact. Good post, and as a similarly situated contemporary of yours, I share your "shudder" of how I would've turned out had I been born a mere 6 years earlier.

[CyberCowboy777]

I like it...!

[CyberCowboy777]

Are we to imagine this because it is good or bad?

That is the point my friend - no point in imagining if John thought the situation would worsen. And If I had no Religion, no Property - your situation WOULD worsen.

[CyberCowboy777]

History has shown that man is NOT intrinsically "good".

Capitalism (directly opposed to "Imagine") is in and of itself a stabilizing force. Keeps us busy.