In memory of John Lennon, why 'Imagine' is a terrible idea

By Alexandra Petri

I love John Lennon. He was always my favorite Beatle. My mother loves Paul, and I know J.K. Rowling's favorite is George, and that awful girl in 500 Days of Summer preferred Ringo, but I've always enjoyed John. He's responsible for my favorite Beatles song -- In My Life -- along with countless others, and I'm always sad to think of all the other music he would have been able to keep enchanting the world with had he survived Mark David Chapman's bullet.

But as it is, I think I'm obligated to make this point: "Imagine" terrifies me. If you just allow yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security by the piano part, you might think it's some sort of song about world peace and justice. But listen to the lyrics, and you're plunged into a dystopic nightmare.

Whenever I hear it, I actually indulge in the imaginings John suggests, and by the time it is over, I am cowering in terror behind a rock snarling at passersby. I don't know if it produces this effect on you, but let me explain, lyric by lyric.



Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

For millennia, most great thinkers have maintained that a looming lifelong concern about a pleasant or unpleasant fate in the afterlife is one of the few threads holding civilization together. Voltaire said that "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." I hate to argue with Voltaire.

Imagine all the people

Living for today...

If we were actually living for today, without the threat of some sort of supernal reward or punishment, we would in most cases be running around looting and pillaging and finally telling Old Mrs. Feeny next door what we really think of her and her twenty-six cats. There would be a lot of orgies. Nobody would hold doors for anyone.

When the world inevitably failed to end, everyone would be disappointed, and when we ran into people we'd met at End-of-the-World orgies, it would be awkward.

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Are you sure, John? Countries are widely viewed as a fairly logical way of organizing space into chunks of people who (in most cases) share a common language, governing system, popular culture, and some sort of general enthusiasm for the place in which they live. So, all right, I'm imagining life without countries. But without countries, are we just sort of wandering around en masse? How are we organized? Has the whole Earth decided on some sort of one-state solution, some Pan-Continental World Order? This doesn't seem like something John would advocate.

I can only assume that the reason there aren't countries is because, say, a giant icemass has overwhelmed an entire continent and we have reverted to a herd mentality.



Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Hopefully "Nothing to kill or die for" refers to "no countries," but in case it doesn't, that knocks out pretty much everything that is worthwhile and beautiful in this world.

That's the difficulty with this song -- by eliminating everything that has caused controversy and violence in the past, you wind up without anything worth having.

And -- maybe this is wildly controversial -- but I hear some people, well, like religion. It's a source of hope. It's a way of explaining your relationship with the cosmos. And most religions tend to agree, at least in public at summits about The Fundamental Similarity of All Religions, that deep down they do not mean to encourage violence against non-believers or "heathens," in spite of what it says in the book of Jeremiah and all that awkwardness in the Middle Ages.

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

I have difficulty picturing people doing this after all the above, since pretty much everything just eliminated is something that keeps people in states of relative peace at most times.

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

The phrase I was actually planning on applying to John Lennon in light of this was not "dreamer," although it did end with "er" and implied his mind was in an altered state. However, even if everyone joined him and followed this example, I don't think we would wind up at peace. For every John Lennon and Yoko Ono who sit around peacefully playing the tambourine, making tea, and singing about giving peace a chance, there is a Hunter S. Thompson who has ingested roughly the same substances and is off stealing someone's Cadillac and assaulting a police officer.

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

Oh, I can. But I will miss my elaborate collection of ceramic celery.



No need for greed or hunger

Wait, hold up a second. I got through the no possessions part, but I'm not certain how you go from having no possessions to having no greed or hunger? I think that's the opposite of how these things are generally viewed as working.

So in order for this to work, we must be sharing everything. But who is working to provide food? Who is organizing the sharing? Are we all on some sort of commune?

Or are we back to my original explanation, where a giant ice floe has covered most of North America, and we have just hunted down an elk using the communal spear, which I think works so far.



A brotherhood of man

At this point in the song I think I am naked and starving on a frozen steppe somewhere, and now I am waiting in line to use the communal shower.

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world...

I want to mention the Tragedy of the Commons, but I am too faint from inability to hunt, and somebody else already gathered all the low-hanging fruit.

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

Yes, you're a dreamer! What about capitalism? What about the economy? What about --

Still, I hope you're not the only one.

Oscar Wilde said a cynic was someone who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. John Lennon seemed to understand the value of everything. He was wise enough to know that cynicism is not the price of intelligence. I miss him, and I wish there were more people like him.

But I wish he'd come up with different lyrics.