Imagine

Take a look at yourselves....... 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.

I love this song because I relate to it totally. I have a very similar world view to John and even though some people say I'm crazy to believe it ("I'm a dreamer..."), but based on the popularity of this song I'm definitely not the only one. Instead of just agreeing with the message in the song though, people have to start implementing the message in this song. 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.

Despite the hymnal-parlor arrangement, what Johnny Rebel wrote about in Imagine is a complete refusal of rules and restriction that the world system gives us and takes away. Imagine is all about liberation and something we must all believe in if we want to make a better place for humanity. Lennon understood this better than anyone an this why Imagine will always be the best song associated with the Beatles because it chrystalizes and encapsulates what the Beatles stood for. However, the brilliant idea behind Imagine is that it's an essential Rock Anthem! Even though John is gone, he'll always live in my heart because of Imagine. What Johnny Rebel is saying is this: We are dreamers but we're not the only ones. Rock in Peace, Johnny Rebel! Imagine is brilliant because there's still hope in the world! Rock

It's about world peace.

I don’t know if this song is really about peace. The way I know John’s character, he wrote his songs in a very simple- not so simple way and he would be laughing either way we interpret it (direct reference to I am the Walrus). To me: 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....

is it simple? i find it cynical... "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.

Scheisse, everybody who says that us not being able to get over ourselves is exactly what they said to John about world peace. They called him a dreamer, but God knows he's not the only one. Everybody who has been touched by this song knows that even if they are just a dreamer, they're not the only one, and that gives me hope.

So what if his ideas are communistic. If we could live in a communist world without people being selfish, it would be great. People just look down on communism because of its misuse in other countries. Are you saying that his idea to live as "A brotherhood of man" is something that we should not strive for? Lennon sings of peace, and having a God has NOTHING to do with peace. You can not prove the existance of God, and even if you could, you could definitly not prove that he plays any role in our world. Obviously, if God was omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent, as most religions claim he is, then there would be no suffering in the world for good people; but suffering does happen to many people that are good, just look at Princess Diana, so this kind of God does not exist and possibly none does, at least not one that does anything but perhaps observe us. It is people like you, obviously needing your possessions and God for support, that make his ideal unrealized.

I love how you believe in imagining things

Moulingalette: it was a joke. Read both my posts--if you took that seriously, you really need to wake up. 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 :)