Here's the real deal: This world is a furnace of suffering. Always has been and always will be.

I'll remember that when I'm cutting roses from my garden. What an idiot.
WoMomma! | 09.30.06 - 7:12 pm | #

Mark's essay spoke to what I have always felt for some time, that "Imagine" was John's communist manifesto. I agree with him on some of the song's antiwar aspects (I am against the *need* for war; until the reasons for war go away it'll sadly be with us).

John always lost me with the "imagine no possessions" line; he was a millionaire many times over, and if a pure communist government assumed power, he would have to give up his riches, and I wonder what his reaction would have been.

Regarding the "and no religion too" line, I suppose his perfect world would have allowed none. That, too, is at odds with his earlier pleas for freedom of expression.

John tells it like it was a lot better in Working Class Hero, for what it's worth...

www.forgotten-ny.com
Kevin Walsh | Homepage | 09.30.06 - 7:23 pm | #

I thought J. R. R. Tolkien said that the people most hostile to escapism are jailers.
Joseph Hertzlinger | Homepage | 09.30.06 - 7:32 pm | #

I agree with Mark. I can't imagine a dumber song.

However, I can imagine a dumber advertising slogan, namely, the one for Outback Steakhouse:

No rules, just right.

If there are no rules, how do you know it's right?
PMcGrath | 09.30.06 - 8:30 pm | #

How funny - I LOVED that article! I found it very funny. I've heard many people remark on what a vapid and stupid song "Imagine" is. Thanks Dawn for providing the link - I had cut out the newspaper version and made a few copies for friends, but sending it electronically is a bit easier.
Joanne | 09.30.06 - 9:24 pm | #

""The atheist's common complaint is that religion is 'escapism.' "

I actually don't recall ever hearing another atheist say this - although I was just thinking today that I don't read enough atheism-themed stuff.

"Peter Kreeft replies that the people most concerned with stamping out escapism are jailers."

You know, if you think about this for a while it starts to sound a bit double-edged . . .

I still think C.S. Lewis' riff on this general idea on The Silver Chair

"Suppose we have [said Puddleglum to the Witch] only dreamed, or made up all these things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good bit more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think about it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world that licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

Certainly there is much nobility of spirit here, (along with a very Lewisian outlook), and it's almost impossible not to cheer for Puddleglum as he limps over, having put his foot in the fire to momentarily clear his head of enchantments. (And in the story we're certainly right to cheer, along with Jill, "Oh hurrah! Good old Puddleglum!"). The downside of this, though, is the idea that the earthly world is a "black pit of a kingdom" - or as Mark puts it, a "furnace of suffering" - an outlook that has been all too reasonable enough in many places and times, but tends to spill over, perhaps.
________
There was a fascinating essay on Imagine somewhere on the web, by an Orthodox rabbi, if I remember correctly, but I can't find it and recall almost none of it, so oh well . . .

Certainly on one level it's a call to abolish all divisions and (claimed) delusions, which is on another level a repudiation of . . . not exactly the Self, or the ego, but close enough.

In the end, I can't agree with many of the specifics, but of course, to answer Mark's astonishment that people view it as an inspiring hymn, that's not how songs - especially songs by slain culture heros harkening back to an increasingly mythical time of hope (lost, false, mistaken, temporarily mislaid, you decide) work. The specifics get passed over in favor of the general - a world of peace where people don't kill each other over absurdities, where we're not slaves to material things or petty encumbrances. Given his beliefs, Mark's entirely right to attack the song - all else aside, it's competition.
_______

But back to that furnace of suffering. Mark writes
""Imagine" tells us that we are trapped here under a blank void of nitrogen and oxygen, surrounded by trillions of miles of vacuum blankly indifferent to our birth or death."

I have to admit a certain lack of imaginative sympathy here. I mean, yeah, so? I don't expect the grass in my yard to love (or even fear) me, the sun to happily smile down at me, or even the birds to settle on my shoulders and tweet along in passerine harmony. So? I should expect that it should?

But it's more than this. Mark sees trillions of miles of uncaring vacuum - but isn't it full of countless suns and bizarre planets and all sorts of weird physics stuff that I completely fail to grasp but that sounds completely fascinating? And "trapped here"? I can certainly understand this applied to certain conditions of life, all to common ones, but . . . I dunno, out back the goldenrod is blazing yellow, a color to make you want to laugh or weep, while pollen-heavy bees bumble back and forth. Our cat perks his tail up and dashes after the squeak-ball I toss down the hall (a d-o-g toy, but don't tell him that - and of course he'll never fetch it, although he will drag it up the stairs and mew insistently when he wants to play). My wife's away for the weekend,
: (, so I'm going to make, ridiculously late, a bowl of soup - savoy cabbage, melon-seed pasta (think orzo but smaller), onion, caraway seed, broth - while listening to NPR, and then settle down to slurp away and read some Terry Pratchett.

I'm supposed to insist on more?
I mean, sure, it would be nice if we had forever, and I only mean 'more' in the cosmic sense - I'm all for less poverty and hatred and killing and more care and good schools and decent heath care and stuff - but still .. . .

I mean, yeah, I believe (proof being a bit hard to come by) that we come out of nonexistence and ultimately return to it, continuing to exist only in people's hearts and memories, and in the things we leave behind, the things we've done . . . but while this can be a bit disconcerting to dwell on at length, frankly it mostly makes me think of what an unimaginably astonishing thing it is that we have the here and now. We can eat peaches, pet kittens, look at rainbows, raise children, fight for justice, make love (in all senses), plant gardens . . .! This, I believe, is all there is, but what a this it is! And what a responsibility, to make it - not a heaven on earth perhaps, since history suggests that such attempts have an unhappy habit of producing the opposite - but a pretty darn decent place to live. Even, we might imagine, a good one.
Dan S. | Homepage | 09.30.06 - 10:27 pm | #

WoMammal, the kids in Dafur and Sudan, however, have a different perspective from yours.
Christina | Homepage | 10.01.06 - 5:57 am | #

I'm supposed to insist on more?

What if there actually is more?

Yeah, you've got a pretty cool life, checking out the bees and playing with your cat, but the bulk of humanity throughout history has had a pretty spitty life, and it would suck if that was all the universe had to offer them.
Christina | Homepage | 10.01.06 - 6:02 am | #

"but the bulk of humanity throughout history has had a pretty spitty life"

All too true.

"and it would suck if that was all the universe had to offer them."
That's a very kind and decent thing to want (I don't mean that to sound patronizing, hope it doesn't). I just think that in this case such wishes have all the force of nonbinding resolutions. I guess you could argue that yes, I should insist on more, on all those who have led a life of miserable and apparently pointless suffering finding something better. I just don't see any reason to think that the universe is going to pay any attention.

It's certainly not absurd to want life to be such that the universe is, in a certain sense, all about us, that we are ultimately loved, that in the end it's a just world, rather than just a world (but again, what a world . . .). I could also want life to be such that snowflakes were made of sugar, so everyone could have at least a little sweetness in their lives ( though if you think that one through a bit, it is pretty absurd) - but . . . so?

Certainly religion can be a blessed consolation for the so, so many whose lives mostly feature or have featured suffering, starvation, fear, endless backbreaking work in bitter and inescapable poverty and worse, rather than cute cats, easily available food and pretty rainbows. But more than that - there may well be a deep-seated need to believe in a just world, with some very interesting results. In my mind, just as we tend to project our assumptions of intentionality and social interaction (which work very well with other people, indeed, are vital) onto things that aren't people (or necessarily animate, or visible), we're projecting our moral desires out into the world. And that's a good thing - spiders spin web, beavers build dams, and we construct amazing structures of purpose and meaning and knowledge and morality - but I tend to think we overshoot a little sometimes.

And since I think that this is all there is, as I've said, we have an enormous responsibility to try to help our fellow people, as much as we can. I don't think we can make heaven on earth - to touch on something Mark Shea was saying - but I believe it's the closest - or the furthest - we can get. Those children in Darfur (who, as a nation we're doing damned piddlingly little for) - we're all they got. Given that I don't think they're going to end up rocked in the bosom of Abraham, it becomes if anything even more important to do something.
Dan S. | Homepage | 10.01.06 - 9:20 am | #

Yes, there are nice things in this world. I love my dog and cat. I love my mother and sister. I love flowers and music. I even bought an new car recently. Those are wonderful things in this world.

However, I do want more, because my heart tells me there is more.

Because in this world, I saw my brother gradually die of a brain tumor and literally saw my father die of lung cancer. Both of them suffered. A lot.

I see my mother live everyday with the heartbreak of losing her only son and husband within nine months of each other. Even after this many years.

I see my sister trapped in a terrible marriage.

I have chronic pain in my back that is screaming at me this very second. Pain that can only be alleviated by taking pills that I don't want to become dependent on. However, I took a pill and will drag myself to church this morning.

And then I see things in the larger world. Crime, suffering, evil of every form.

So while cutting roses in your garden or watching you cat play are nice and all, I hope that they are just a hint of something better. There has to be something more. To me, it's the only way anything makes sense.
Susan B. | Homepage | 10.01.06 - 10:53 am | #

Hmm. I was trying to address the idea that, if there is "above us only sky," then life is this sort of barren, meaningless furnace of suffering - but I really didn't intend to rhetorically laze about admiring flowers and petting my cat while smirking at the totality of human suffering.

No, life isn't just rainbows and sunsets. My mom died many years ago. I still miss her. I got married last summer; I really wish she could have been there.

My wife teaches little kids in an extremely bad neighborhood here in Philly. One time the very scripted curriculum they use required her to open the window and have the children talk about what they could hear outside. She immediately closed it, because what they could hear happened to be the crack whore who gave birth to one of the little girls standing on the corner loudly screeching a constant stream of obscenities at someone.

She cares about all the kids, but she kinda has a special spot in her heart for the messed-up ones. One of her favorites is a little guy who showed up on the first day of school one year not too long ago, looking about three, and being very, very clingy. He had just been placed in a foster family, as he had been experiencing severe neglect, both emotional and physical - as in not really being fed much of the time. He's doing a lot better now, though he still sometimes talks about how the rats would crawl over him and his little brother when they tried to sleep.

Myself, I quit teaching last year, but we've both had the frantically demoralizing sense that one's doing all one can for the kids, and they're doing pretty good, they have so much potential, so much promise inside them, and they're . . just going to end up in a society that regards them as essentially disposable because their skin's too brown and their parents' wallets don't have enough green. It's like watching a kitten scamper out onto a highway.

A five year old girl - a baby, really - was shot and killed here a little bit ago. No reason, not on purpose, wrong place, wrong time. No, life isn't just rainbows and sunsets.

It's certainly understandable that one might think there has to be something more - has in the sense of really needing it to be. Empirical evidence is a little hard to come by; perhaps in this case your heart is wiser than my head (which isn't to say that my head is particularly wise or your heart especially foolish or - whatever, you know what I mean).

But what I would say is yes, there is something more. We can seek out new treatments for illness, and ways to lessen suffering. We can't (and shouldn't) 'fix' grief at losing a loved one, but people can try to comfort and console those who mourn, as relatives, friends, whatever. We can act - as a society, or a community, or individually - so that people who are trapped in bad situations have all the help, all the options we can give - which may or may not be enough.

We can try to make things better. And the thing is, we actually can, sometimes. Not perfectly, no - small things, small steps. But we can.
Dan S. | Homepage | 10.01.06 - 2:24 pm | #

So, how many songs has this clown written and sold?
Franklin | 10.01.06 - 8:51 pm | #

Franklin, John Lennon sold millions of records.
Dawn Eden | 10.01.06 - 8:57 pm | #

Was Franklin referring to Mark Shea being the clown?

I guess I have to believe there is a God b/c I don't see how matter and energy could have created themselves. Doesn't science tell us that that is impossible?
Joanne | 10.01.06 - 10:38 pm | #

Doesn't science tell us that that is impossible?

That depends. If you get into the weird "sciences" like "string theory," then yes, the "scientists" will tell you that something can come from nothing.

"And thus, God was narrowly averted."
--Ann Coutler
Jason | Homepage | 10.02.06 - 1:16 am | #

The best take-down of "Imagine" was in a column about fifteen years ago, by William F Buckley, of all people.

Curiously enough, John Lennon listed Buckley as a reference on his application for US Citizenship. The two had never met. If I remember correctly, Buckley was never sure if Lennon had done it on a lark, or if there was some perceived connection (Buckley, at the time, being quite a famous New Yorker).
Matthew M | 10.02.06 - 2:52 am | #

This is a relevant post for me, because I just introduced the song "Imagine" to my 11-year old son. He`s decided he`s an athiest, because God "took" a little friend of his two years ago, and the world stopped making sense to him. My son told me he doesn`t want to make his confirmation with his classmates at his Catholic school next year (I told him it`s up to him, but he still has to do all the study and preparation work for it).

The song is called, "Imagine," NOT, "We should all live for today, because that`s all there is."

I want my little boy to know that the questions he`s wrestling with now have occurred to other people before him.

When I was wrestling with similar questions at around the same age, my father made me read Aquinas, which was a little bit beyond my tiny brain at that time. I think a pop song is a little easier for a sixth-grader to handle.

(Also, this essay claims that "Imagine" is used at Catholic services? Really? Where? I thought it was on the Catholic "list of officially banned songs" or is that just an urban legend? Can someone enlighten me on that?)
L. | Homepage | 10.02.06 - 1:39 pm | #

I don't know about officially banned songs; but why would any group of believers willingly endorse and worship to a song whose lyrics deny many of the core realities of faith? It shouldn't have to be on any sort of list to be rejected out of hand for such purposes.
Nightfly | Homepage | 10.02.06 - 11:26 pm | #

Nightfly, if you`re talking about the specific song "Imagine," it`s about questioning faith, and imagining a world without it -- NOT denying it. It`s the difference between saying, "I`m not sure I believe," and "I don`t believe." This is a crucial destinction I am making to my son. One is normal and human, and doesn`t necessarily lead to the other.

But I forgot how sappy and trite the actual song is, even to a Lennon fan like me. (He was killed on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, in case anyone wants to make some conspiracy connection there.)
L. | Homepage | 10.03.06 - 3:55 pm | #

Years ago, I saw the film "The Killing Fields," and I remember that, as the credits rolled, John Lennon's "Imagine" was playing.

I know we were SUPPOSED to be inspired by the song, but I couldn't help wondering- isn't a world with "no possessions... and no religion, too" EXACTLY what Pol Pot and the murderous Khmer Rouge were trying to create???

How could I have been the only one in the theater to notice that?
astorian | 10.04.06 - 3:44 pm | #