I think that this song is a kind of satirical description of the world of the late 1960's. The monk burning at the zoo is obviously a reference to the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest the Vietnam war, but there are also other things in here that reference things that happened during the time. "The Bentley Driving Guru" is Osho, who was also known as the Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh. He was the popular leader of an idealistic spiritual community at the time, and it became public knowledge that he owned a fleet of Bentley automobiles, which many people found to reflect religious corruption. It became public perception that he was cheating his followers out of their money so he could spend it on himself, and he was eventually deported from the US.
The overall tone of the song is deeply cynical. "The prophets" give out "messages of hope with jingle bells and fairy tales and blinding colliding scopes", which implies that even what the prophets of the day say is a lot of superficial stuff that means nothing, and in the end, they are "all the same underneath the pretty lies". The whole world is chaotic, but no one has any kind of vision of truth or sincerity. That's what the line "Anyone for tennis, wouldn't that be nice" implies. Everybody in the world seems to be focused on trivial nonsense and amusement, while the world plunges into darkness and "fate is setting up the chessboard while death rolls out the dice". Civilization may be in its "fading years", but the world will continue to go its selfish and superficial way, right to the end.
I think that this song is a kind of satirical description of the world of the late 1960's. The monk burning at the zoo is obviously a reference to the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest the Vietnam war, but there are also other things in here that reference things that happened during the time. "The Bentley Driving Guru" is Osho, who was also known as the Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh. He was the popular leader of an idealistic spiritual community at the time, and it became public knowledge that he owned a fleet of Bentley automobiles, which many people found to reflect religious corruption. It became public perception that he was cheating his followers out of their money so he could spend it on himself, and he was eventually deported from the US.
The overall tone of the song is deeply cynical. "The prophets" give out "messages of hope with jingle bells and fairy tales and blinding colliding scopes", which implies that even what the prophets of the day say is a lot of superficial stuff that means nothing, and in the end, they are "all the same underneath the pretty lies". The whole world is chaotic, but no one has any kind of vision of truth or sincerity. That's what the line "Anyone for tennis, wouldn't that be nice" implies. Everybody in the world seems to be focused on trivial nonsense and amusement, while the world plunges into darkness and "fate is setting up the chessboard while death rolls out the dice". Civilization may be in its "fading years", but the world will continue to go its selfish and superficial way, right to the end.