When I talk to suicidal people that I care about, I get angry. I recognize that we can’t really save these people, that a will to live must come from within, and though we might help others regain this, we ultimately can’t do it for them. This painful frustration combines with a deep revulsion for listless, dejected, and lifeless modes of thought.
I end up in a similar rage when listening to John Lennon’s Imagine. Read through the lyrics with me and I’ll show you why.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Lennon is doing more than criticizing religion here; he is affirming plain, boring, hopeless materialism. Lennon preaches that this earth, this dirt, is all there is. All is merely meaningless atoms, occasionally being bound in a solid, but usually just wandering randomly and bouncing off other atoms. Nothing has any value or purpose beyond, we presume, human desires like fame, money, popularity and other palliative distractions.
It’s certainly easy for modern people, who have had no contact with traditional religion, who have no real understanding of what heaven is, to imagine it doesn’t exist. They don’t even have to try; they were born into this belief and follow it unquestioningly. This belief is the official view of science, government and most artists, just as it was the official policy of the French Revolution and Bolshevik rebels.
Despite this, the wife batterer presents this materialism the same way a teenage atheist smugly announces that he’s noticed that there wouldn’t be room for all the animals in the Arc, and so there is no God, and aren’t you amazed at how smart he is for figuring this out?
Imagine all the people
Living for today
This we don’t have to imagine! We already live in a sea of myopic hedonists with no attention span, and we’ll be seeing even more of them if current trends of low fertility of the highly intelligent and mass immigration from high time preference populations continue. Might as well tell a fish to imagine water.
Even more, in this statement we see Lennon’s real solution to humanity: stop aspiring, stop dreaming, just hang out and be cool with each other like good little hippies. That sounds groovy until you realize that someone will have to grow the food and fix the roads, so there’s going to be some kind of Soviet society to enforce that so all you hep cats can keep the love-in alive.
Is this as bleak as the USSR? You bet. It shows what happens when, like Lennon, your belief system is based in the idea that your own troubles are the fault of civilization, and the correct answer is to dismantle civilization and reduce it to a hipster party. Then when morning comes, the good feelings are gone and you must find some way to force the beautiful people to start the cleanup.
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
The underlying assumption is that wars happen because there are countries, that conflict is merely the by-product of arbitrary lines in the ground. Conflict is in fact present in every ecosystem, and is a necessary result of very basic factors like resource finiteness. Borders, well defended borders, actually shield against this conflict.
Pacifism is another negative emotion. Where a sensible view would be that struggle creates evolution, the pacifist vision — a lot like heat-death — is to eliminate all conflict and just go with the flow. Endless compromise, settling, rationalization and justification, but no forward action.
Nothing to kill or die for
Here is the most depressing line in the song. It’s so blatantly chilling and bleak that we should question the sanity of those who enjoy the song. Do they not notice? Is this actually appealing to them?
Nothing to kill or die for means that there is nothing worth killing or dying for. All that exists is mundane, petty, worthless. It’s not clear how Lennon imagines children fitting into this picture — does he wish people didn’t love their children enough to kill and die for them, or does he wish no one had children? Does he imagine a loveless world or a suicidal population? Either way, this fantasy of his is fundamentally horrible and miserable.
And no religion too
Well, except Islam. We can’t ever oppose or offend Islam in any way. Our minds are so overthrown by political correctness that we can’t even imagine doing so.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
Lennon really double-downstrokes that pacifism chord. Here we have the belief that the best thing to do in a knife fight is put down the knife and hug the opponent. A pattern emerges: this entire song is comprised of Leftist ideas that only work, only play out in the intended manner, in the imagination of a leftist.
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
When a leftist says “we hope you’ll join us”, consider it a threat.
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
He means communism, and that’s sad enough, but consider the words at face value and it sounds like poverty — no one has anything. It’s no coincidence that that’s the reality that communism has historically moved towards. It is also not coincidental that those who preach “no possessions” tend to be, like John Lennon or Hugo Chavez, immensely wealthy.
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
Yeah, we get it, international communism. It’s not a good idea, and it’s always accompanied by loads of greed and hunger. When does he stop to think that if it were this simple, it would have been solved already. Or that long-haired drop-outs have been preaching this kind of philosophy since the dawn of time, and every time it has been tried, it has failed.
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
You are a dreamer, John, and your dream is a miserable lie. So then why is this so popular? How can such an evil, depressing song be so popular?
The music itself is highly simplified and dull. If I play the tune in my head and allow an image to form (try it) what I see is padded walls and drooling patients being soothed by bland melodies as they’re beckoned to take their medications, sup their mush, and have their backsides wiped. This is not so far off from its intended purpose.
The song promises extreme comfort, complete shielding from nature and all its dangers, like hunger and death. It promises a sterile freedom from consequences and ultimate safety, showing us a world where nothing bad ever happens. This will all happen, if we only just imagine it. Ironically, it’s very similar to the popular notion of heaven conceived as a kind of Earth II, where things are pretty much like they are here, but without the meanies and bad stuff, and with comfy clouds and smooth jazz.
Now, no healthy person wants to die, or wants their loved ones to die, but retreating from danger into a psychology that denies its inherent value, a psychology that refuses to accept that death and pain are not just unavoidable, but vital to life results in a mind that has disengaged from life. Someone who adheres to this utopian pablum has abdicated from life, from actively participating in this world. This means they are also cut off from everything good. Blindfolded and groping, they will still experience pain and death, but won’t see why, won’t understand, and can only find solace in delusion.
These people, those who are moved to tears by this song, want to sleep, sleep forever in death. Freedom from conflict is impossible in this world, and can only be achieved by slipping into death.
Next time you see this song played in the wake of a terrorist attack, consider the audience as members of a death cult. They’ve just witness a terrible tragedy, an attack on them and their people, and they steadfastly refuse to address the cause, or retaliate in any way. They remain committed to the demise of their people.
It’s depressing observing a single suicidal person, and far more so observing a suicidal people. That’s why this is the most depressing song ever: it’s the song of a suicidal people.
Tags: atheism, communism, john lennon, suicide
Excellent! You’ve pretty much expressed everything I hate about that song. I’ve hated that song for as long as I can remember and roll my eyes to this day every time I’m forced to hear it in public.
“Next time you see this song played in the wake of a terrorist attack, consider the audience as members of a death cult. They’ve just witness a terrible tragedy, an attack on them and their people, and they steadfastly refuse to address the cause, or retaliate in any way. They remain committed to the demise of their people.”
Man, you nailed it. Did that piano playing jackass play ‘Imagine’ after the Brussels attacks? I don’t remember him doing it that time, so maybe the public are getting tired of it. I don’t know, but you’re right. That song acts as a kind of ‘soma’ to temporarily calm the people and bring them back to a state of complacency in their world of problems they don’t want to face. It’s pretty much the unofficial anthem of globalistic communism. Truly disgusting.
I never cared too much for the Beatles and cared much less for John Lennon as an artist. He’s very overrated. Mediocre at best, but mediocrity has always been a hot commodity, hence pop radio.
Great breakdown of the song.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/brussels-attacks-compel-crowds-sing-7612802
Crowds sang it as a “show of solidarity.”
Replace these songs by ones similar to « La Chanson de Roland ».
Yes!
When I think of Lennon, I think of this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-2Tcuzy0I
“Imagine” was the theme song to the movie “The Killing Fields”. Quite appropriate, because that’s exactly what the “Imagine” philosophy leads to.
Lennon said this song is “virtually the Communist Manifesto.”
Excellent break-down. The song is put to calm and good sounding music, which helps to push this through. Most people sing this song without even noticing.
I respectfully disagree with the author.
This song is actually life-embracing.
This song also embraces the human condition , whereas Christianity condemns human nature. The reason Christianity condemns human nature is so that they can shame us into tithing. A big part of why the church pushes “morality” is so they can control you and tax you . NO DIFFERENT THAN BIG GOV. ( just another form of Big Brother). Big Brother Lite if you will…
Tip that fedora harder! Harder, I say!
No possessions, no nations, no wars, nothing to kill or die for…how is that the human condition?
Furthermore, how can one claim that Christianity is demonizing human nature to tithe when this song clearly indicates that it is merely out of ignorance that humankind have greed, hunger, friction and war? It has clear commie alignment so, how does the parallel of the Church and big government function as a positive for ‘Imagine’? What else is more demonizing of human nature, tithing, controlling and deathist in its animus than Communism? This, at the very least, is my criticism. However, I do understand what it is like to have songs I like be ruined by analyses(especially when I had preconceived notions about the artist and took their attitudes about the work seriously)as well as by political analyses that I agree with. But, either the song you fell in love with keeps playing in your head, or it doesn’t.
Life embracing???
Look again. It is human-embracing. Individual-embracing. Ego-embracing.
If all that equates to life, for you, you’re missing something called ‘life’.
Individualism is a cancer of the soul.
It’s life denying.
Maybe parts of it, but war, jealousy, possessions, religion and national identity are also among the highest values of sane people. Is it love without jealousy? Is there responsibility without possessions? Passion without war? All interesting questions, no doubt.
How many of the people that hate this song are Christians. What is so wrong about not having anything to kill or die for. Why is religion always invoked suppress freedom of individuality. I am a proud atheist that doesn’t believe in war I don’t believe in killing or dying for things like oil. I’ve been in the wars have you.
Life actually isn’t about what you want. It’s a fine point that goes right by the insane, and is too obvious for the sane to even mention.
This realization crosses the mercantile barrier. Merchants/commerce offer you products, and you choose one based on whatever is flitting through your mind. Life gives you a wide open field and you must create something in it, according to life’s rules.
Other than Anti-Dem, I doubt Christian would necessarily be a required term. Christians will invoke their religion as a basis for denouncing communism but, other kinds of people will denounce it for other reasons.
As for individualism, do you really need an ideological faux philosophy to be an individual and look out for your own rational self interest? Save for serving as a semi-Masonic social club, this is why the COS imploded. Well, and Christians in our midst would say also for being Satanists.
Much like all of leftism, the concept of individualism is an illusion. It may very well have started out with very sound philosophical momentum but then became co-opted fodder for people invoking the individual as an excuse to pretend like just because they are not keen on choosing sides that they are either inclined to when given real perspective or that the cause and effect model has nothing to do with them. Almost like an existentialist approach to “leave no trace.” Declaring autonomy from greater forces does not make it so.
I agree. Acting for the individual alone denies what gives life meaning.
Good point about not needing to be Christian to oppose Communism. Communism is obviously insane; I’m pro-sanity, adaptation, survival and other wise things. Communism favors none of these, but it does please those without purpose in life, which is most of humanity (condemned to living Hell, but too oblivious to know it, so no harm done).
Freedom is absolute, if not then this not freedom. Very few people understand what is freedom.
“Religion kill”, typical liberal argument.
Oil is out of the context. If you mean by that the useless wars waged in the middle east, then it has been motivated by “progress” and pure atheism.
I opt for not-freedom. Like free will, freedom was always an illusion. All we have is choice, and that is measured in terms of (1) baseline reality and (2) quality.
This was my underlying point. Freedom is a false concept. Whenever people do revolutions in the name of Freedom, they immediately start to chose new rulers and ideologies, thus they limit Freedom and destroy its meaning.
“My Freedom stops where others’ Freedom begin”. This highlights the very core of leftism.
I agree. They never are free of the mechanism of Aristocracy. They just have a poor one that rose to power through Brett’s “Merchant Barrier” model. We will always have elites in placement if nothing else. Also, look at how the American people esteem their president. They expect him to be solely accountable to the whole system, run it himself and even pay no attention to rights of imminent domain. When Barack Obama made a bullet list of corporate law addendums he wanted to see his first year in office (is that even legal?)everyone thought he was going to make it happen because “he’s the president.” It is strictly out of ego the idea of an outright King is not allowed.
I love this article, and want to have its babies.
Most of all, I am quite unsure I want to be lectured on the virtue of having no possessions by a man who lived in the most exclusive apartment building in New York City and drove around in a custom-painted Rolls Royce. I guess that makes me an unbeliever, but I’m not the only one.
Lennon was a typical yacht communist.
Depressing in two ways.
1) it sedates you and removes vigor.
2) it removes the highest aspirations that give joy to the lives of people.
“We can’t ever oppose or offend Islam in any way. Our minds are so overthrown by political correctness that we can’t even imagine doing so.” We can’t oppose or offend the eskimoes either for the same reason. It just wouldn’t be kosher if we did, would it?
One more soul to the call…
Thank you for this eye-opening article. taking advice from a wife beating heroin addict is the last thing any sensible person should do.
Always saw this as an innocuous flight of fancy but propaganda like this is indeed harmful.
Cheers!
Rock and Roll music’s appeal actually helped expedite the fall of the USSR. The Beatles and its members contributed more to capitalism than the sum of the commenters on this message board combined. ON THIS TOPIC YOU ARE ALL FAILURES.
It must be nice for you, being the only non-failure in the room.
They sold records. In fact, they started their career having something to kill and die for. They worked with people who marketed their records and did the dirty work of selling them while they created. They jumped on the pinko bandwagon and never got off. They may have generated money, but they did so off of hype. The ideas in much of their music is still red poison.
So he defeated communism in Russia at the cost of bringing communism here. Not a good deal.
American Communism is the best Communism in the world, and if you disagree, you’re a… commie.
Make Communism grate again!
In terms of just how this song embraces life – I will spell it out (for the ignorant).
A) This song says to forget about the afterlife and live for today . Meaning embrace THIS WORLD. and stop your GUILT COMPLEX and stop TITHING “for your sins”. (the elites use guilt to control you.)
B) The idea of stop killing over property / the idea of not fighting purely nationalist wars (WWI and Vietnam are good examples)-
(you may not like these ideas) but if you really think they are life denying ideas than you need to go back to your special ed. classes and stop pretending to be intellectual. Because you can use big fancy words but what you say is still bullshit.
I’d observe that it is you being the ‘intellectual’. Which is not nearly the superior trait you imagine it to be.
Believe me, nobody here doubts that the faux elite use guilt to control. Nobody here would miss the fact that even (and most especially) so called individualist cultures tithe with much more vigor that Catholicism in its corrupt zenith did.
Ideological wars are more toxic than national wars. National wars defend the space needed by a people to continue their own survival and to focus on their own thriving. It goes beyond the meagerly aspects of property and transcends into the spirit of property: defending that which does indeed belong to you. People are not interchangeable and a particular people need a particular space to survive and to thrive.
Realizing the needs of a people and seeing to them is life affirming. Ignoring what the people really need and insisting that survival itself is death because survival is a fight to the death is to embrace your own death so that the opposition can live. It is that cruelly simple.
I think this is a vital point. Wars for territory end with the acquisition of territory; ideological wars never end, until the world is conquered. Insane egotism, that.
C) In terms of modern direct effects on capitalism . Many local record stores would be practically shuttered if they couldn’t make so much $ from trendy re-issues of these old vinyl’s . And these albums are cash cows for the big record companies .
When you try and say that Lennon was communist – that lacks any skepticsm at all . That is like saying that global warming is a “good cause” and “will save humanity”
Lennon was trying to sell records. He wasn’t trying to give records away for free to free Tibet or some shit. The man was a capitalist. Whether he thought so or not – and whether you think so or not – has no bearing ion the truth of the matter.
While I love capitalism (Socialism = HIV+) that means he was insincere, making a product not a straight statement. Or did I misread?
That, and it might be that he was so resigned that he allowed his representation from his label company to do all of the dirty work so that he could brood about it.
Apologies for the minor typo at the end.
Like Lennon – modern liberals like Al Gore claim to be above money and above war. Claims to be saving the world and pursuing a global agenda .
But the truth is Al Gore is a capitalist – all his investments are privately held ( though obviously the gov. has subsidized some of his green crap). Private investment wealth is capitalist – whether you are a lib or to the right has no bearing. Al Gore (like Lennon) claims to be a socialist with supranational causes. But in reality he is a robber baron capitalist exploiting the weaknesses in human psychology in order to enrich only himself. and largely at the expense of others. (capitalism)
The left has always wanted to be considered normal. They will infiltrate, co-opt, socially re-define, culturally renovate and philosophically reform the very thing they claim to be against or support from the get go. Leftism is a power grab. In fact, could also be seen as an abuse of capitalism from the start as per Brett’s Merchant metaphor (barely a metaphor at all, more like truth) but this does not mean that communism is at all exempt. Stalin certainly didn’t think so. It all starts with some lulling appeal to emotion and a nice conversation about theoreticals and what-ifs. Then, the listener is morally disarmed and the reds are free to do what they want so long as they can attach a “for the people” tag onto it. Furthermore, isn’t there a problem with there being a disconnect between what people say and what people do? Isn’t that hypocrisy?
Also worth noting:
Stalin did not smoke Royal Yacht.
He smoked Herzegovina Flor.
Perhaps his loss :)
Today, Dunhill is considered luxury brand. Was it not then? Nonetheless, his clearly elite tastes of the time indicate he and Erdogan have a lot in common.
I don’t know. Mediating factors: smoking was more common then, and Dunhill was more of a functional brand, but I think it was always high-end. Then again, once you’ve become totalitarian dictator of a large nation, isn’t it time to step up to a nicer pipe?
This is a very good find – but I think we need to dig deeper into the psychology of why to do they find these terrible lyrics inspiring and lovely.
My go-to psychology of popular leftism is an inferiority complex overcompensated into narcissism. Look at how much they dwell on stuff like being fat does not determine’s one’s “worth as a human being” i.e. they feel worthless. This gets overcompensated into self-centered narcissism.
Above all the root problems seems to be the extreme over-importance of the self. I got this from having been exposed to Buddism, I don’t know if you can get the same kind of ideas from Christian and other similar pure-West sources, but basically the idea is that it is not just about thinking your are awesome or thinking your suck, it is not just about that superiority or inferiority aspect, but ultimately about how important you find yourself. I.e. that the core problem of people is that they find ourselves too important, and whether in a positive way or negative way, superior or inferior, it secondary. So that the root problem is when ones thoughts focus too much on oneself. Not one’s own interests but one’s own perceived status, goodness or badness. In other words, that negative narcissism is totally a thing, that people who are ashamed because they think they suck they are in a way narcissistic because they assume everybody thinks about them and notices their weaknesses: being socially anxious and self-conscious is about the assumption that “everybody is looking at me”.
Conservative thinkers have figured this out partially. Chesterton wrote in Heretics that if your thoughts keep revolving around yourself that is pretty much the definition of madness. Portuguese conservative Joao Carlos Espada wrote that the definition of a gentleman is “taking your duties seriously but not taking yourself seriously”.
This is an as perfect definition of the small ego as there is.
Anyway, but I think there is not yet a general psychological theory of this, of this overly huge self-importance? And yet I think this motivates Leftism, this is why they like Imagine.
My closest idea to a theory:
– rich lefties have nothing real in their lives, like hunger or war, so they keep focusing on social coolness competition, there is nothing else
– they internalize the game at some point – if you spend all your life others judging you and you judging others, you start judging yourself and become a narcissist, focusing on the am-i-inferior-or-superior question 24/7
Some good observations in the above. Very nice to have you commenting here. A quick take:
I see this as compensatory as well. They lack purpose, and dwell in fear, so they become egomaniacs. This is common at the lower IQ levels of humanity; this places out in the tropes about how every guy in the ghetto has a mix tape and every poor white guy has a race car in the garage he’s sure will make him famous. The problem occurs when it spreads to higher groups, probably because they are seeking to reach their audience and profit from them. This is the mercantile nature of liberalism: its original goal was to bypass singular methods of truth so it could expand its market for products, and as part of advertising that the merchants promised the proles “freedom” and reality-optional living (equality).
Another way to view this is as a selection matrix: only those who have internalized these motivations can become rich lefties, as otherwise they eventually see through the fascination and go do anything else. The faux elites/”Cathedral” is selected not for competence but for obsession.
Thank you. Is this really an IQ thing? I tend to have some romantic attachments to the good common sense of simple rural farmers and they don’t do this. Indeed, leftist types tend to pretend to be far smarter than farmers. Which may not necessarily mean they have a higher IQ, but it may be some other factor than IQ. I think I know the racecar type you mean, but that is not merely IQ but more like a man torn from his natural surroundings where he could thrive – lower-IQ types tend to thrive as oldschools farmers, carpenters etc. where they can use physical strength and dexterity to solve problems and feel good about it. The urban or suburban blue-collar type is often like a plant transplanted from its native soil, never fully fits. (In the Middle Ages towns were small and only qualified, fairly intelligent traders and artisans lived inside the walls. Everybody else was farming outside. They did not need mass blue-collar labor. I still think cities should be relatively small and mercilessly elitist – it would be better for all if everybody else was rural, if you need blue-collar workers you can just bus them to the factory from a nearby village, it’s not expensive, it’s like school buses.)
Anyhow, my point is that the racecar type is so because he lost contact with the kind of environment where his skills can actually bring a sense of success and satisfaction. So I suspect the whole problem is rooted at losing contact with physical reality and living in a purely social reality.
I may be entirely wrong, but I always see how people get better off if they take a bit of a hiatus from social reality and start doing something physical. Lifting weights, building a boat, starting a homestead, anything, but it really reduces the ego somehow.
The term demi-brights accurately describes the type of person I see succeeding in academia: over 115, but not to 125, IQ points as a rough estimate, but high proficiency with memory and reasonable spatial intelligence. The problem I see is that they lack the ability and inclination to tie things together and to get to the root of any theoretical idea; they are poor with abstraction.
The farmer — and by my experience, it is nearly impossible to thrive as a farmer if one is born a congenital idiot — takes a non-abstract perspective, and so he has not assumed the mental load that people at universities do. As a result, he has resisted absorbing many of the nonsense theories that pass for fact these days. Instead of abstraction, he anchors to physical cause and effect, which imposes a mental need for cause and effect.
This gives us a complex situation. The farmer could do the same work the people at universities are doing; he is from the same IQ spread. If he did, he might be seduced by the same nonsense. At the same time, the physical connection that you mention forces the common sense cause and effect logic, so he is naturally resistant to it. I am not sure that it is the physicality of the labor, but the need to achieve real-world results, that does it; I have seen the same thing in English students and computer programmers, where the students who write their own books in an actual literary mode and the programmers who create independent projects tend to be more results-minded.
I concur. Most people do not want to admit this, but universities are fundamentally social reality types of places. They focus on theories and writings that have pleased the masses, therefore are a good employment bet for the average student. The gap between someone who seeks a classical education and what passes for “educated” now is ever-widening.
Agreed, and these leftists create a market for what Lennon peddles. Similarly, feminism is appealing mostly to women who think they’re ugly.
I see this all the time when arguing against mass immigration, for example. The response from leftists is always to find a way to show that the proposed policy would negatively affect you, and therefore it’s a bad idea. They consider everything in terms of how it affects the self.
Aha! Somebody gets it. In a nutshell: ego. Ego is THE enemy. Self-importance. Which is the overriding reason that a spiritual base is essential to any movement committed to reversing the decline of mankind.
Consider this:
You will never know what anything is, unless you can move beyond what it means to you.
What does this statement mean? What does it mean to you?
If you can read it without interpreting its significance to you, you may see it for what it is.
Ego is mind-rot. Observe what it has done to others. Beware of what it could do to you!
[…] way around. Leftism today is about a twisted kind of individualism, the kind Brett Stevens called myopic hedonism and it destroyed pretty much everything that ever looked like an actual community. Big Government […]
The Beatles were CIA scum. Their purpose was solely to subvert culture in order to make enslavement of the populace feasible. They’ve succeeded in their goal.