"Imagine" as written by Yoko Ono and John Lennon....
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 (ah ah ah)
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
You may say that 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
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
You may say that 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
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today (ah ah ah)
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
You may say that 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
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
You may say that 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
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Read the nonsense above.......
Read the song......
That's what John was getting at, Imagine if we could get over ourselves and live for what's important.
Things like religion, countries, and money are the reasons for war and fighting, and if there was none of this then there'd be no war. And by religion I think John is saying that organized religion is the problem and not just believe in God because I don't see how that would adversely affect world peace. I think he's talking about how theres so much fighting in places like the middle east because of religion, even though the religions are very similar like all religions are.
It is people like you, obviously needing your possessions and God for support, that make his ideal unrealized.
This song is really about non-conformity. We usually are so used to believing that imagining is to *construct* something but here he challenges us to imagine by *destructing* in the sense- imagine there’s NO heaven.
He’s also quite sarcastic, John Lennon hated conformity (“A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint– express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin’ dentist or a teacher. And then the fuckin’ fans tried to beat me into being a fuckin’ Beatle or an Engelbert Humperdinck, and the critics tried to beat me into being Paul McCartney. “) and here is literally mocking conformity (which i hate too, hence this interpretation). People are so used to believe that heaven,religion,countries, are necessary for man to exist (Go and tell someone to think of a world without any countries or borders, 99% you get a flat out refusal that “it’s not possible”).
“You may say I’m a dreamer”...was a bit harder to interpret (did it on acid though). It seems like he’s rallying for peace, but he’s not. What John is basically saying is how people are so ready to label the different and uniques ones in the world as “crazy” and is saying he’s not the only dreamer, the only who’s calling him a dreamer is also a dreamer.
Sorry If I couldn’t explain properly but those were my thoughts.
Ah, the genius of John....
"Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can..."
while i like this song regardless of its meaning, i sometimes wonder if, while sounding so simple and hopeful, he's really pointing out that we DON'T live as one, and so on... and that we never really can. all of this is just a fantasy... not realized, and never will be.
but maybe that's just me.
Doesn't anyone notice that this looks like a world wide communist country?!!!!
And so you're saying that everyone should be like JL? An egotistical, drug-addicted, lazy/uncreative (he didn't write a single original song for Sgt.Pepper) ex-hippie?
Zamzara:
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Have you done any actual research?
Surprisingly, many people DID wat to waste their lives slaving away for the common good of humanity. People can be like that--during the Early Middle Ages, people tried to spend their entire lives slaving away for the common good of Christianity--and if that means slaughtering a few heathens here and there, so be it :p
People want to do what they are trained to want to do. You see, there is NO reason why Communism could not work theoretically. If a country has an equal amount of wealth, and the wealth is evenly distributed, on the whole everyone should be happier but the top 5%. In practice, although nobody technically "owns" anything, that doesn't stop people from *actually* owning things. PROPERTY is what one cannot own. Property should be evenly distributed.
No, Communism failed because Communism never existed. True Communism is enlightened anarchy--a perfect system, if it could be put in place. The world of Imagine.
What we ACTUALLY had was Totalitarian Socialism--the entire country and every aspect of it in the hands of the government, and the government entirely in the hands of a few. In paper, this is needed to condition the people to live together without class rivalry (yes, people, class rivalry does exist today--90% of all crimes committed by blacks are against whites. It's not racism, it's true.). However, in practice, the admirable goal of decreasing rivalry instead merely gets warped into a full-blown tyranny. Shows of power are the only way such a government can support itself, and it doesn't help that you are invariably threatened by a very unhappy Western Hemisphere. So you militarize, while still keeping the economy stagnant as a byproduct of opression. Uh-oh! You can't afford that! Better just keep building and let the standard of living plummet--can't show the world weakness or you'll get invaded, right?
We didn't win the Cold War through ideology or through flaws in communism. We outspent them. Gov't spending tripled during the Reagan years, the Soviets tried to match us--after Kennedy, they were pretty much doomed, but Reagan managed to expediate the process.
Have you been to China? I spent 9 months there last year--and amazingly, they're just as happy as we are here...some more, some less. As long as you're above the poverty line and as long as people around you have comparable wealth, income has very little impact on happiness.
Dui le, Dui le, wo hui jiang hanyu. Bu hui shuo Zhongguo hua, Zenme ke yi qu Zhongguo?
Now, see, people WERE unhappy during the Great Leap Forward. Indirectly, Mao ended up killing more people than Hitler did (discounting WWII). But that wasn't communism, that was the result of a foolish attempt to westernize a nation overnight. And that wasn't an ideology giving the orders, that was a power-mad dictator.
Finally...most of the reason people like this song is because of its innocence. The world has never been changed by people who say it can't be, and on some level we all inherantly know that. Innocence and purity are beautiful, and as such this song is beautiful. Very few people would like the following song:
"The world is miserable
Nobody likes me at all
Nobody ever will
We'll all go to hell
Pain and suffering forever
All that will ever come
And I know this song doesn't rhyme
Because I'm a failure at this too"
...oh, right. Sorry. I forgot about much of rap, heavy metal, popular music...never mind.
I'm going to go cry :)