with lyrics by John Lennon
Imagine a world without John Lennon's song.
I used to enjoy this song. I used to enjoy musing about the world that Lennon imagined. Now I can't stand this song. I suppose that some people might claim that I sold out, or lost sight of my ideals. I think I grew up.
"Imagine" has become a liberal anthem. Ironically, Lennon also composed what he called "the utopian national anthem," which was several minutes of silence. Lennon believed that nations, religions, and possessions were the root causes of war. Nations and religions caused prejudice, and possessions caused greed, and we all know that war is about prejudice and greed. Ironically, as I said, Lennon's minutes of silence are not the anthem of today's liberals. Instead they chose another of his songs, and in so doing have defined themselves as a group that includes some people and excludes others... in other words exactly the kind of thing that the song calls on us to abolish. Most recently these words rang out at a high school during an official visit by Adrienne Clarkson, our new governor-general and dyed-in-the-wool small-l liberal.
I despise these lyrics because their hypocrisy: both the hypocrisy of their being adopted by the most hard-line, intolerant, smug, arrogant group of people since the Second World War, and the hypocrisy of their being written by John Lennon, who in many ways embodied the opposite of what the song espouses. At the very least, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were an example of not practicing what they preached, of taking the easy way out. In that sense, they were poster kids for the Boomers.
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
If there were ever a religious battle-cry by the Boomer generation, this would have to be it. Of course, what Lennon is ignoring here are all of the good things that religion does: the companionship it provides for people, the social interaction, the charity, the contact for people shut into their homes and unable to get out on their own. What it ignores is that religion is a binding force in society and even as it separates people into groups, and creates an "us and them" mentality, it also causes cohesion and caring inside the group, and the strength for a few members to reach outside the group to help others.
What Lennon is ignoring here is Mother Theresa, social teas, and Sunday afternoon visits to old age homes. He's ignoring christenings, marriages, and the way that people band together and help one of the group who suffers some terrible misfortune.
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
Talk about naïve. The idea that if we had no nations or national borders, nobody would be tempted to kill on a massive scale. Now, I'm no history scholar, but even a simpleton like me looking at what's going on in the world today can see that war may be about a lot of things, but it's not about national boundaries or religion. Those are just convenient scapegoats and markers after a war starts. Kill the Catholics! Down with the Timorese! These are just ways to rally the troops, but they're not the central point of war. Without these labels wars would still occur; we would just find some other way of identifying the enemy. As such, Lennon is being simple-minded here by thinking that if only we could remove the rationalizations for war then war will go away. He's trying to cure the disease by relieving the symptoms.
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Considering the next stanza, Lennon is being so hypocritical here that it's hard to believe. But hey, this is really the way small-l liberals think: all of the problems in the world boil down to the fact that not everyone is a small-l liberal. If everyone adopted their touchy-feely philosophy, then war, starvation, disease, and bad art would all disappear and the world would become the paradise that was taken from us so long ago. All small-l liberals secretly believe that Adam was a sexist brute and a conservative.
Of course, pretty-much everyone believes that the world would be a better place if everyone else thought the way they do. For all of their touted tolerance, small-l liberals are extremely intolerant of anyone who is not a small-l liberal, which makes me laugh given that the Boomers, the biggest group of small-l liberals, royally roasted their small-c conservative parents for being extremely intolerant of anyone who was not also a small-c conservative.
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...
This bit makes me roll my eyes. John Lennon singing, "Imagine no possessions / I wonder if you can." Gee, John... help us out. Can you imagine giving away your multi-million dollar mansion in New York? What about all of the royalties to all of the songs you wrote, which would probably be enough to bankroll the long-term recovery of some small African nation or the annual entertainment budget for the Federal Liberals? Set an example by pulling a "Cat Stevens" and giving away everything you own and immersing yourself in spiritual rebirth. Oh well you can't—you're dead—but even when you weren't I didn't see you turning your back on your fortune. I don't see Yoko moving to a modest apartment in New Jersey any time soon, and I doubt that you would have, either.
It is here that Lennon most resembles the generation he inspired, a generation that could at once sneer at their conservative, money-making, traditional parents; rant and rave about the ideals of socialism, the beauty of eastern religions, and our duty to care for the earth; and then run out, create a start-up company, buy a gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle, make millions of dollars, and move the company headquarters to some country in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes.
The joke is that Lennon wrote and performed this song after he sold out, but convinced everyone that he never sold out. If wealthy Boomers have a hero, it must be Lennon.
Lennon gave up religion and nationalism in the name of his song, but the joke was on him. The one thing that causes the most wars and bloodshed is neither of those things. It's the third subject of his song: possessions. It's scarcity of resources, either locally or worldwide. The biggest sticking point is land, because land is the genesis of all prosperity. However, there have also been lots of fights about money, food, and the way people are treated. If a people has everything that they need: if everyone is comfortable, then they won't fight. What is the point of fighting for something you already have? Even the mild breach of personal rights and freedoms don't garner much interest, let alone outrage, so long as the people being oppressed are comfortable.
The Israelis and Arabs are fighting over land. The Northern Irish are fighting over land and historical mistreatment. The Germans set upon the Jews over wealth. The Indonesians are busy murdering Timorese over land. The Tamil Tigers and the Shining Path were making war over the treatment of people by their respective governments. In Somalia, two tribes are slaughtering each other over political power, which translates into wealth, which translates into relative comfort.
In this sense, Lennon's utopian vision, besides being hypocrisy on his part, is shallow and naïve. The truth of the matter was better expressed recently by The Toasters, who sang, "Talk to me about unity / That only works when the beers are free...." Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision was more realistic: peace on earth and everyone sharing all the world, but peace and sharing because someone invented the replicator. As such, nobody would ever go to war again because everyone could have whatever they wanted just by asking for it. Gene Roddenberry understood the motivation behind war; John Lennon didn't.
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Can't you just hear all of the good little liberal girls and boys singing their hearts out while Adrienne Clarkson beams with pride? Sorry, people, but John is dead and his vision was never anything more than the hollow words of a man who had everything, and so was perfectly willing to share leftovers, as all rich people are.
For those of us who don't have leftovers, there are only four responses that I know of: try to join the comfortable rich, get annoyed and try to limit the power of the comfortable rich, give up what we do have and drop out of society to become a mystic like Cat Stevens, or try to pretend that none of it is happening, believe in magic, and sing along with John.
