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Imagine by John Lennon - agree or disagree

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Of course the world and the people who live in it are horrible and shitty, but wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't like that. It can't not be, because... well, human nature. But wouldn't it be nice?

Or in the words of Captain Sensible

You've got to have a dream
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?
 
It's an enjoyable song if you can seperate it from Lennon himself. It's a fine ideal about creating a less hateful, divided world.

Unfortunately, there's a reason those things that divide us exist and will continue to exist. They're not that easy to be rid of.
 
Jonnax said:
And it's undeniable that a lot of war has been caused and its reasoning defended using Nationalism and Religion. To say there are other reasons for people to go to war is just nitpicking. It's a song not a political speech.
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It's not nitpicking, it's a sad reality.
 
It's more or less completely vapid.

We have private property laws precisely because they lead to greater prosperity and quality of life. We have large private businesses precisely because the economies of scale allow them to produce important things more efficiently and improve life for everyone. Religion in reality is responsible for a staggering portion of the private charity that has existed throughout history, but only a small fraction of the wars, and an even smaller fraction of the casualties from war. We have countries and peoples precisely because humans are social beings, but are psychologically unequipped to fully grasp a worldwide brotherhood of 7 billion people. Not to mention the fact that if we took the song's economic advice, society would be far more local and isolated, not more global. And on and on.
 
It is pretty funny, hearing a rich man yearn for a world without wealth. Other than that, I've never liked this song.
 
PSqueak said:
Lennon implies that all the things listed (religion, capitalism, patriotism) are the only exclusive reasons for hate and war, not even going into detail while this generalization is stupid on itself, the idea that without this things humans wouldn't fight over anything is dumb, as long as free will exists, fighting and disagreements will exist, so the song is full of shit, because it describes giving in to a "hive mind" (becoming one of us, the world as one) which, besides being impossible in real life, it's a despicable idea.

The idea that people only go to war because one of these (be it Religion, Greed or Nations) or that nothing good comes from each one is down right wrong.
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Free will doesn't exist. Whereas the idea is impossible, I fail to see why it would be despicable. Peace sounds good to me.

Nowhere in the song does he say those things cause nothing good. What he claims is that they cause more harm than good.
 
I do like Imagine but Lennon is the most overrated Beatle along with being a shitty person and hypocrite and I'm sure had he not been murdered he wouldn't have been put on the pedestal he's been placed on since December 8th 1980.

And this is one of IMO most memorable scenes from Quantum Leap.

https://vimeo.com/19174318
 
Gonzalez said:
You'd take stock advice from a crack head off the street.
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406326_065.jpg


:P
 
Chainsawkitten said:
Free will doesn't exist. Whereas the idea is impossible, I fail to see why it would be despicable. Peace sounds good to me.

Nowhere in the song does he say those things cause nothing good. What he claims is that they cause more harm than good.
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Free will exists, people just choose to conform, at any given moment people can choose to break all the laws that make their lives easier or harder, defy any constructed social conventions and basically do whatever they want, but they choose not because they don't want to deal with the concequences, society for all their flaws and fault is currently too convenient, even if injustice still its a factor, people choose ideologies to subscribe and make their own conclusions based on the information and resources they have access to, you can say that other factors limit the choices and information people have access to, but there always is a degree of choice in the actions of everyone, regardless of how much people actually make use of their ability to choose.

You take the right to choose from a person, you force every one to think exactly the same, you eliminate individuality and what you're basically doing is erasing every single person in the earth and replacing them with mindless copies. The world would have peace, but nobody would enjoy it, because "nobody" would exist as an individual.

I disagree with the notion that they cause more harm than good, because in the end the human angle is what causes that harm, it's easy to pin the blame on things you don't like, but the truth is, everything comes back to the human mind and free will.
 
Chainsawkitten said:
What he claims is that they cause more harm than good.
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Which is harmful to say in itself.

Can we please stop slagging religion like it was made for people to go to war? Religion was created to give people to hope in their existence in the face of abject tyranny. That some how some way, their shitty plight was seen and heard. Besides the fact that only a small minority of any religion are actually extremist.

And I'd like to live in a world like Lennon described, but it's not our world. That's some Giver shit, where even then they had to do some horrific shit to reach "utopia."
 
it's like, childish utopia to the maximum possible level, thus being absolute fantasyland. never liked the song, tbh
 
More Fun To Compute said:
Lennon's attempt to top McCartney's Hey Jude. Look at the lyrics that way and they make more sense.
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Yeah, I'm starting to think it may have been Lennon's cynical attempt at making an anthem.

Considering the rest of the album is pretty dark, with songs about John beating his wife and a diss track at McCartney (which he couldn't admit was).
 
PSqueak said:
Free will exists, people just choose to conform, at any given moment people can choose to break all the laws that make their lives easier or harder, defy any constructed social conventions and basically do whatever they want, but they choose not because they don't want to deal with the concequences, society for all their flaws and fault is currently too convenient, even if injustice still its a factor, people choose ideologies to subscribe and make their own conclusions based on the information and resources they have access to, you can say that other factors limit the choices and information people have access to, but there always is a degree of choice in the actions of everyone, regardless of how much people actually make use of their ability to choose.

You take the right to choose from a person, you force every one to think exactly the same, you eliminate individuality and what you're basically doing is erasing every single person in the earth and replacing them with mindless copies. The world would have peace, but nobody would enjoy it, because "nobody" would exist as an individual.

I disagree with the notion that they cause more harm than good, because in the end the human angle is what causes that harm, it's easy to pin the blame on things you don't like, but the truth is, everything comes back to the human mind and free will.
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Free will is a completely nonsensical and impossible concept.

I feel like I'm just copy-pasting the same argument as I've made dozens of times already but I've yet to see anyone poke even the tiniest hole in it.

The world in which we live (or any world, for that matter), is either deterministic or non-deterministic. Deterministic meaning that every action is governed wholly by cause and effect whereas non-deterministic meaning that at least one action in the history of forever has been random. It could be that there is no cause-and-effect at all or that cause-and-effect generally applies except for one thing. But if one thing is non-deterministic, then the universe is non-deterministic.

So let's examine the potential for "free will" in a deterministic and a non-deterministic universe. We'll start with a deterministic universe since it's easier.

In a deterministic universe all actions are governed wholly by previous actions. This includes all activity in your brain. If you decide to make a certain choice, it is only because the neurons in your brain and their charges are set up in a specific way, which is determined by outside causes and your genetics. But you're in control neither of your genetics nor your surroundings. By following this causality, we end up before you existed. How can you have free will before you existed?

In a deterministic universe, there is clearly no room for what we would call "free will".

But how about a non-deterministic universe? Surely that opens up the possibility for "free will"?

No. What a non-deterministic universe opens up for is randomness. Randomness, by its very definition is uncontrollable. If I rolled a dice and depending on the dice's outcome would force you to do one thing or another, would you say you had a free choice in the matter because the dice was random? That doesn't align with anything we would usually call "free will". But there's no difference between me rolling dice and the neurons in your brain doing so.

So regardless of whether the universe (or any universe) is deterministic or non-deterministic, there is no room for "free will".


But let's assume that your idea of free will is valid, regardless of what it is. Now, let's imagine a world in which no one ever gets the desire to harm another person. Would this, according to you, contradict your idea of free will? People will never intentionally harm another person as they simply don't want to. We've taken away their desire to harm someone and essentially created the hive-mind you talked about. Does that means we've taken away their free will?

If so, you would argue that taking away someone's desire for harm would take away their freedom of choice. But if that's the case, wouldn't you have no free will since there are already plenty of desires to harm people that you don't have? I'm, for example, assuming that you're not a pedophile and that you don't have the desire to molest children. But according to that line of reasoning, one can't have free will if one doesn't desire to molest children. If you can have free will without desiring to molest children, then why can't you have free will without the desire for revenge, or any other desire to harm people?

Either the hive-mind you oppose is compatible with your idea of free will, or else the world we live in isn't either.
 
Chainsawkitten said:
I don't get the point either. Please explain.
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That the utopia, as described by Lennon, is simply fantasy. It will never get realised, regardless of being a religious or secular country. And then Abstruse Moose comes up with the brilliant response that shit is less fucked up in secular countries, which, as I said, was exactly the point. It is human to fuck shit up, regardless of beliefs. So therefore this utopia by Lennon is bullshit and it only sounds good on paper.
 
PSqueak said:
It's basically a song about a hive mind.

It's dumb, in the way that it implies that if you remove all of these things there won't be anything to fight over, but religion, capitalism and patriotism are not the problem, free will is, as long as we all have our free will (which, why the fuck would we give it up?!) humans will fight about SOMETHING, because the right to choose and think for ourselves and make our own choices will always lead to disagreements, and disagreements sometimes lead to violence, war and hate.

We're humans, our capacity to hate will exist as long as we have the capacity to love, it's two faces of the same coin, to not love, to not hate is to lose our free will.
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Pretty much what I was going to say.
 
Red Hood said:
That the utopia, as described by Lennon, is simply fantasy. It will never get realised, regardless of being a religious or secular country. And then Abstruse Moose comes up with the brilliant response that shit is less fucked up in secular countries, which, as I said, was exactly the point. It is human to fuck shit up, regardless of beliefs. So therefore this utopia by Lennon is bullshit and it only sounds good on paper.
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He didn't only mention religion, though. He mentioned several things he considered wrong with the world. So getting rid of one of them (which a secular country still doesn't) wouldn't achieve his utopia. And less religion is still a positive thing, even if it's not perfect. So it sounds good in reality too, although not as good as his unrealizable utopia. The religion part isn't really the one I'd object to.
 
I'm all for the eradication of religion and national borders, but possessions are part of our identity, without them we are uniform, and that's passionless and boring.
 
Chainsawkitten said:
Free will is a completely nonsensical and impossible concept.

I feel like I'm just copy-pasting the same argument as I've made dozens of times already but I've yet to see anyone poke even the tiniest hole in it.

The world in which we live (or any world, for that matter), is either deterministic or non-deterministic. Deterministic meaning that every action is governed wholly by cause and effect whereas non-deterministic meaning that at least one action in the history of forever has been random. It could be that there is no cause-and-effect at all or that cause-and-effect generally applies except for one thing. But if one thing is non-deterministic, then the universe is non-deterministic.

So let's examine the potential for "free will" in a deterministic and a non-deterministic universe. We'll start with a deterministic universe since it's easier.

In a deterministic universe all actions are governed wholly by previous actions. This includes all activity in your brain. If you decide to make a certain choice, it is only because the neurons in your brain and their charges are set up in a specific way, which is determined by outside causes and your genetics. But you're in control neither of your genetics nor your surroundings. By following this causality, we end up before you existed. How can you have free will before you existed?

In a deterministic universe, there is clearly no room for what we would call "free will".

But how about a non-deterministic universe? Surely that opens up the possibility for "free will"?

No. What a non-deterministic universe opens up for is randomness. Randomness, by its very definition is uncontrollable. If I rolled a dice and depending on the dice's outcome would force you to do one thing or another, would you say you had a free choice in the matter because the dice was random? That doesn't align with anything we would usually call "free will". But there's no difference between me rolling dice and the neurons in your brain doing so.

So regardless of whether the universe (or any universe) is deterministic or non-deterministic, there is no room for "free will".
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But doesn't this ignore the context of culture ans social constructs? Things like creativity, art, and expression? if you make a drawing of a creature that doesn't exist, how can you claim that such form of expression came from everything leading up to the moment? It ain't random either, i personally see the universe as more complex than "Either or", as our understanding of it advances we'll have a better picture of it.

But let's assume that your idea of free will is valid, regardless of what it is. Now, let's imagine a world in which no one ever gets the desire to harm another person. Would this, according to you, contradict your idea of free will? People will never intentionally harm another person as they simply don't want to. We've taken away their desire to harm someone and essentially created the hive-mind you talked about. Does that means we've taken away their free will?

If so, you would argue that taking away someone's desire for harm would take away their freedom of choice. But if that's the case, wouldn't you have no free will since there are already plenty of desires to harm people that you don't have? I'm, for example, assuming that you're not a pedophile and that you don't have the desire to molest children. But according to that line of reasoning, one can't have free will if one doesn't desire to molest children. If you can have free will without desiring to molest children, then why can't you have free will without the desire for revenge, or any other desire to harm people?

Either the hive-mind you oppose is compatible with your idea of free will, or else the world we live in isn't either.
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The point most people on this thread has made, it's kinda impossible to reach a point where only the bad things are erradicated in the context of human beings, you can have YOUR free will without the desire of revenge of harming others, but due to the very nature of choice and free will, statistically, SOMEONE will choose revenge, someone will choose hate and someone will choose pedophilia. A hive mind utopia is not compatible with the idea of a human being.
 
Peace will not arise from the absence of the sources of conflict named in the song, it must arise from a greater appreciation of each other and the harm we are capable of doing to one another. It's not going to be a process of subtraction, it's going to be addition.
 
Echoenigma said:
*Insert statement by famous person* is entirely bullshit because *unrelated character defect*
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Well, when a song is stating that the removal of religion and country and possession would bring peace and happiness to people, it's apt to point out that these things may not be the root cause of his family's happiness.

Really, Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" may be a better song about moving towards peace.
 
So much bad vibes.

The song is great. The lyrics could be better. The thought begind then and principal of less is more... Bloody hell yes. I agree.
 
The sentiment is admirable. Developing the thought experiment rigorously, it's certainly easy enough to reach the conclusion that it's unrealistic, naive, and very much a "dream."

Dreaming higher than our current understanding of how things have worked and thus seemingly must work, though, is not a bad thing. Especially if you're able to use your dreams to guide more practical and grounded choices and actions. We might not be able to achieve some idyllic paradise in our time, but we can still work toward a more peaceful and loving world, motivated by our hopes and aspirations. It's pretty difficult to make that kind of progress when your mind remains focused entirely in the pragmatic view of how things are, rather than how they might become.
 
People are taking this song too literally. It's not saying we should literally be free of those things, more that you shouldn't let those social constructs determine how we treat one another. You're supposed to imagine none of the things that separate us exist so you won't be distracted by them when interacting with people.

The message is not that we should eliminate countries or religions, just that we shouldn't allow them to divide us through sectarianism, nationalism, classism, etc.

John Kowalski said:
No matter what you do, in my opinion you never have more than 10% fun in life. And that's a fact.
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This made me chuckle. Nihilism is the just the opposite of naivety, neither are intellectually stimulating.
 
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