John Lennon: Imagine Meaning
Song Released: 1971
Imagine Lyrics
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the...
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wow above good!
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This is my (rather long) opinion on John's Imagine @ Nooventures [http://wit.110mb.com]
## GOD, FREEDOM AND SURVIVAL. COMMENTARIES ON JOHN LENNON'S "IMAGINE" ##
** Ideals, understanding and life **
This surely is one of the greatest songs of our time.
Heralded by peace activist around the globe for its captivating simplicity, the lyrics actually depict how perplexing human nature really is. Beauty and hostility interchanges in our history through the expressions of religious zeal, patriotism and the struggle to survive. Properly expressed, beauty shine through. Overtly expressed, calamity erupts.
Yet, just exactly how does the same roots produces such paradoxical fruits ? What went wrong ?
The most fundamental reason probably lie in the fact that humans seems to possess ideals as a built in feature. We need to live for something, to strive for something, and to die having done something of worth in life. The belief we have in our ideals will take us to the far end of strife and sacrifice, even when that would mean to die or to kill trying. And clearly, god, freedom, and survival, supply three of the most powerful ideals a man can aspire for in life.
Everythings fine with ideals, until one forgets that most of the times, our understanding of them are anywhere but perfect. And things deteriorate rapidly when men understand them differently and willingly strife to enforce their understanding to others.
** In God we trust . . . . . for God we kill ? **
In God alone men believe perfection and perfect bliss are attainable. Yet, as theologists and philosopher have reasoned, it is impossible to attain perfect understanding of God, and to attain perfection in God during our mortal lives here on earth. Perfection is to aspire for, they say. . . . . and attainment is beyond our effort, though certainly is not despite of our effort. And religions, have indeed shown the way, each to each people in each time and each place, and if we are wise enough, I believe, each to all people in all times and all places.
When one dwelves into the depths of Buddha, Lao Tze, Confucius, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or Gandhi for recent example, it is simply unimaginable that they would meet and then mock and throw bombs at each other, let alone command their followers to nuke each other. Yet, precisely because the devoters forget that each religion teaches no enforcement on beliefs to others beyond their consent, wars and conflicts were precisely what happened here and there throughout history.
The unity in God simply can not produce divides. It’s our imperfect understanding and actions alone that produce the divides and blinds us from the unity that binds us. And it seems to me, diversity is God’s way of saying, “unite all believers of the world !” in the style of the Marxian version for workers. This is so apparent when one reads the sacred scriptures of the worlds religions. One would find so many overlapping essence throughout, expressed in different wordings, in different languages, and in different contexts, with the prime example being the “Golden Rule” : Love thy neighbour.
So I would say, religions are expressions, the diversity. While towards God and in God, essence and unity emerge. Meaning, we should be humble in our imperfection, in our imperfect understanding of God, in our imperfect strife towards God, and learn from our mistakes and from each other. This should apply for any open minded atheist too, since they too are destined as imperfects, with their own ideal and their imperfect understanding of it, or more precisely, of religion and the Ultimate Reality.
** “Freedom and prosperity for our people and our nation !” . . . . . How about the others ? **
Another ideal the world grew up with is that we should strive for what is ours, with our people and our nation among our most precious.
In schools and the media, teachers and politicians preach this line of thinking to innocent minds. In times of struggle for a counry’s indepence, it might have been sufficient, but for the world that we now live in, it simply is not enough.
Peoples and nations has become so interdependent, that the sole prosperity and freedom of ours can no longer serve justice to all of us. And with recent development in the crisis the planet is experiencing, the freedom and prosperity of humanity can no longer violate the freedom and prosperity of other species and the earth itself. And thus we come to the culprit of our ignorance : war and economics.
Wars served our egoes well in the past and present, while economic prosperity seems to serve our egoes better in the present. War is inherently destructive for life, yet some nation can’t shake of the addiction of building up military prowes, even with mutual destruction staring back at us from the future to be. On the other hand, economic progress, or to be more precise, economic growth, with so many inherent paradoxes entailing, becomes the unofficial religion of the world, carried ever forward with the fervor a staunch religious devotees would have by the professional work we carry out in society. The link in the deterioration of earth’s life-support systems and our economic activities grows ever clearer by the day.
While nukes can blow humanity out of existence in a single blow, economic growth sucks the life out of earth, and leaves us dying glimmering with money, and with pride of our material wealth. And yet still, we compete, wage war, and kill directly with bombs or indirectly through wrongly accumulating and using money.
We feed our fears and insecurities by saying that “the others” hates us and wants us to suffer, with the Russians a little while ago, and with Osama bin Laden recently, as the prophet of destruction. We take for granted the statement that our nation and our people must remain competitive to survive and to thrive, forgetting that in a competition, some win, and some lose, and that we can no longer afford to survive and thrive alone.
We strike and preempt, but forget to fix and to prevent. We compete and become professionals at that, but forget that in cooperation lies the harmony of life, in humanity and in the entire planet.
Life surely is worth more than killing and competing.
** To survive, to have, or to be ? **
Life entails survival. Life seeks to prolong itself, the best way it can, or any way it can.
It is very natural that each person, each family, each people, each nation wish to live on and prosper. We want enough food, enough clothes, a roof over our head, a comfortable spot to sleep on, a fulfilling and meaningful work, the warmth of relationship and time for leisure, art and spirituality . . . . In esence, to be.
Things used to be tolerable, until humanity multiplies unprecedently and compete mindlessly.
With six and a half billions of mouths to feed, bodies to clothe and cover, jobs to provide, and others eager to beat us to survival, “to be” simply is not an option anymore. First and foremost, to survive, next, to have, and if we made it through and manages to remember, to be.
Yet reality wakes you up from your dream and bites you in your real life.
Money is the blood of the economy, and the economy is the life of everyone. Thus, to survive, one must earn enough of it, in ways and jobs often far from the path to be. Conditions seems to prescribe nations to follow that path, the path of economic growth. Our jobs often divides families and communities, and destroy nature, but more than anything, they destroy our soul.
To have becomes our next goal after survival, and most of the times, they become our last. Thus, we become insensitive to the needs of others, humans or not, and ignorant to the needs of the planet.
Poverty and diseases persists despite the tremendous growth in the size of our economy. Garbage, waste and pollution, literally are the by-product our world economy excrete to the air, to the water, to the soil, and to other life on earth.
We refuse to except the reality that if they deteriorate, humanity goes down the drain into the abyss. Thus we end up with the chicken and egg kind of paradox. We survive they die. They die, we die. But we must survive, and they must survive. What to do . . . . . what to do ?
** Questions . . . questions . . . questions . . . and imagination **
Maybe what John really meant for us to do on hearing his song, was not to become atheists, anarchists, hippies, or communists for that matter, since a man of John’s stature should long ago have lost the interest in the glitter of isms.
Maybe he’s just trying to make us question, question so hard to the point that the fantasy of our world, the waking dream we are living, the half truths we behold as ideals, will crumble, so we can start rebuilding the foundations peace should rest upon. Meanwhile, hoping time will have mercy on us in getting the job done for our posterior to build upon.
Competition and cooperation have their proper places. We just need to figure out where for each.
Religions, nation states and the economy merely are tools . . . . . means. We should never become a tool of our tools. We should never mistake the means from the end. The means should never and can never become the end.
What will be your end ? Your ideal ? Make sure it’s worthy of your life.
What should we have as our means ? as our tools ? Let’s make sure we have the right ones.
Imagination rule the world, as Napoleon and Einstein would agree.
Let’s all spend a little more time to imagine what our end should be, and beware of the things that blinds us from the unity that binds us.
Permalink @ Nooventures -> http://wit.110mb.com/2007-03-12-god-freedom-and-survival-commentaries-on-john-lennons-imagine/ -
This song should not offend anyone, a song's meaning is just what you make of it. I for instance don't think it has to be about atheism, but about how most religions teach peace and love but yet is the cause of so many wars.
It is a comment on society. -
I think lennon's main goal in writing this song is to get people to stop living life for what happens after we die and start living life for today. "imagine all the people/living for today." He's trying to get the point across that all of us focus way to much on religion when in reality religion is just another separation of people that creates arguments and even wars.
Live for today. -
This song is a great song. But that's in my opinion.
He wasn't dreaming of an ideal place, he wasn't saying if you don't have religion then there will be no wars. He was saying just forget about it for one minute, just imagine you have no one to impress, no one to worship... Imagine about a world of peace where we can look at someone a with different society, and social behavour and just forget about that and basically not genrealise anyone for what they are. He wanted people to stop fighting over these topics, that make us sterotypical and just live as one, not as a lot of religions. He might have said "imagine no possetions(sp?>.<)" while in the video he was in a big brilliant house but he earnt that house, he didn't ask for everyone to give him that money he earnt it making great music.
By someone saying they are offended because it's anti-religous, they are just proving that lennon was right in a way. They don't like the song because they think he meant harm to them, and their opinions. -
How sad is it that texts that these get the terms "hippie" and "communist". Peace and a united world isn't communism - it is universal love. But we are too caught up in money and cell phones to see the big picture - and yes - this is more relavant than ever
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I think that John was strong about the world that we live in and thought what a better place it could be. I love the song because it tells what he thinks the world should be like.
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I feel that this song is about socialist ideology and how he beleaves in a perfect society socialist would be the best way to go. But since we arnt in a perfect society, we should live it up because he sure did.
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One of the greatest songs ever written apart from Stariway To Heaven. A little biography on Lennon when this song was written many people such as Christians got offended with ths first line "Imagine there was no heaven". They took that in offence assuming Lennon was a believer of god. But Lennon than corrected himself to the media sayin, "wait a second, Im just telling you for a minute just imagine if there wasnt I'm not saying that there is but just imagine (thats why the song is called imagine). Now not only imagine no heaven but no hell. These are all things that we believe in and religion as we knows creates wars. Just imagine if no one in the world belived that, there would probably be no wars, hate but more happinness. If we were all equal, its hard to imagine that because its impossible. But my song is just basically makes you reflect on these things, the impossible". Im a huge Lennon fan and know many things about his life. Also I can tell you Yoko Ono helped him write this song but she was never creditted on her help.
So this is what Lennon is saying, imagine if we were all equal and we didn't have different beliefs, with different beliefs we would have no religion, with no religion there would probably be no wars. "Its weasy if you try" this means a lot of people back then were disturbed and would not but he's saying just try, we all hate but why can't we love, why can't we imagine the good things in life? Why do we always have to experience hate and war?
This song is so great and powerful, I think bush should read it at least a million times. -
Yeah I really like this song, but it is also the birth of why conservatives call liberals "communists." I quote "imagine no possesions... a brother hood of man..."
read Marx people. Lennon kept a copy of his book where ever he went.
-Frizzle Fry -
I like Porcelina's thoughts that it's the atheist's anthem. I agree with that (I am an atheist myself). It implies no religion, war or any other divisions among men. As well as that, it is a relaxing song anyway. I like this song when I need to chill. It stands out a bit from my metal collection, though!
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I think it's a speculation or a dream of what could be or what's running through his mind. He could be asking the listener to think about what war, death, & the world is all about. I don't wanna sound mean er anything but, he was probably thinking really hard & speculating the universe or he was high when he wrote the song.
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Agreed with silverbeatle.
a quote though...
"A dream you dream alone is a dream. A dream we dream together is reality"
or something. -
Imagine was originally inspired by a instructional poem in Yoko's book Grapefruit.
He was saying imagine what life would be like if it was like this. If we ALL imagine it, it could be real.
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