People have a tendency to only base their judgement on appearances. I’m also “people” and I know this too well. Just the other day, a stack of books I ordered arrived and, contrary to my initial reading plan, I watched my hand instinctively pick the book with the most captivating cover. Proverbs warning us against this sort of thing are many (like the one that literally tells me not to judge a book by its cover) but I just couldn’t help it. These proverbs are all cautioning us to look beyond the surface, but, alas, the allure to do otherwise is stronger.
Two Kinds of Beautification#
Appearances matter a great deal to us, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. To make things aesthetically pleasing is to be encouraged, by all means. However, you may ask, if I must ‘beautify’ something, doesn’t it mean it was ugly to begin with? And if so, wouldn’t that be an exercise in futility? Well, it depends. There’s a world of difference between whitewashing a tomb and adding icing on a cake: the first conceals the rot with a pretty facade while the other crowns what was already beautiful. In other words, what dignifies the beautification is the content or quality of what’s being beautified — the corpse or the cake.
I find thinking this way to be a very helpful tool to evaluate works of art like songs as they mainly transact in beauty by embellishing objects/themes of their message. Songs either shine a spotlight on wonderful and beautiful themes/ideas or they just become a thin veneer on top of overt depravity. This method can be applied to any song whether by John Lennon, or Taylor Swift. Since the song “Imagine ” has garnered countless accolades, and because of its melodic merits, as well as how passionately people recently told me about its lyrical depth, I decided I should find out what kind of ‘beautification’ John Lennon was engaged in.
It’ll be helpful, as we proceed, to keep the words of the first verse in mind as I speak about the song in general.
Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try. No hell below us, Above us only sky. Imagine all the people Livin’ for today Ah, ah, ah-ah
Charming Ideology#
For starters, and without wasting a minute, I have to point out that this song sure sounds like it promotes communism, because, I have to ask, which other system would have us shun personal belongings in favor of collective ownership as a way to fight hunger and greed? In fact, John Lennon himself, in his own words , agreed that this song is “virtually ‘The Communist Manifesto’” in disguise. To be fair though, he says that he’s never seen true communism anywhere in the world and he certainly was against its Russian flavor (which failed miserably). But, he hoped there was a possibility for a nicer kind of ‘British socialism’. Given its historical record as one of the deadliest of ideologies (upward 80 million people killed), most people might recoil being associated with it, but ironically have no issue singing what communists might as well make their anthem.
I’d perhaps, to his credit, commend his motive of promoting world unity and peace through the song. A world where there’s no reason to kill each other is to be desired. Who wouldn’t want that? But how do we get there? Lennon leaves it to our imagination. This is where I would have preferred he at least gives us a clue. It felt like what you’d see if someone were to walk towards two men fighting vigorously with only one piece of advice to them: they should “try to agree”. The motive is, again, to be commended, but the gesture shows no concern about what the fight was about; whether the issue was worth fighting for, and most importantly, it doesn’t show the path to reconciliation and harmony. John Blaney was right :
Lennon’s lyrics describe hypothetical possibilities that offer no practical solutions; lyrics that are at times nebulous and contradictory, asking the listener to abandon political systems while encouraging one similar to communism.
Selling One’s Birthright for Stew#
The world painted by Lennon doesn’t address the deepest challenges this world faces. Obviously, I shouldn’t really expect this 5-verse song to address the complexities of the world, but in this case I have reasons to bring this up; if you’ll hear me out for a moment. Take the theme of justice as an example — and this is just one example among many. As I reflected previously , our human institutions are not capable of administering justice properly. How do you punish a person who killed your loved one? No matter what punishment our justice systems might come up with, your loved one is gone and never brought back and the following (years of) sorrow will not vanish just because the murderer got life in prison (or even execution). Nothing is put right! The consequences of evil remained! Your suffering wasn’t and won’t be addressed! So, if evil is thought about seriously, you’ll realize how far reaching its consequences go and how difficult (if not impossible) it is to uproot. How many nations have been fighting for generations and generations with no end in sight because of evils committed against each other decades (if not centuries) ago?
Lennon calls us to abandon notions of heaven, hell, the afterlife, and eternity (none of which are human inventions btw) yet they’re precisely the themes that are oftentimes brought up as the only way to take present evil in its power and perversity seriously. ‘Living for today’ as the song says, and believing only in ‘today’ because heaven and hell won’t come doesn’t offer any solution to evil. And why would we exchange ‘religious’ solutions that do not turn away from issues of this magnitude but address them head on for vague and shallow ideas? Why ‘heal our wounds lightly’? Isn’t he asking us to ‘sell our birthright for stew’?
The better way to disagree with this ‘religious’ way of thinking as Lennon does, is at least to offer a solid and truly viable alternative. But alas, it seems to me that his recommendation is that we should just ignore these questions altogether and that we should, like an ostrich that buries its head in the sand, pretend we haven’t seen the vicious and vile and terrifying evil dragon clearly and unmistakably standing in front of us.
Implicit Dishonesty?#
Lastly, I’m not sure if he intended it or not, but Lennon’s advice to “live for today” exalts worldviews that affirm that this life is all there is. If there’s no afterlife, it then follows that evil will not be sorted (regardless of our tiny efforts) and that’s the harsh reality we have to accept. Moreover, the heaven that offered us hope that our current labor and current good works are not in vain is just an illusion; or our way to cope. It doesn’t matter whether you were a saint or a demon, nothing will make a difference, we all die tomorrow. The sooner you embrace this despair the better and the faster you’ll start doing whatever makes you happy today — whether good or bad and whether it comes with consequences or not.
Anything short of this harsh and bracing honesty is wishful thinking. Deluding oneself into believing in an afterlife place of bliss like heaven is only for naive, simple minded folks who cannot accept reality in its harshness. Fair enough. However, said worldviews should maintain their pessimism, be truly consistent, and sell themselves as such; but by all means they shouldn’t not try to, as I keep insisting, disguise themselves as “dreams” to aspire to — especially when they implicitly mock truly optimistic views as lacking in “imagination”. Why be dishonest when you pride yourself in being the most honest person around? John Lennon again, in another instance, stated plainly:
Anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugarcoated it is accepted … Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey.
Ah, the little honey. As I see it now, the melodic beauty of the song is not the kind that adds icing on a cake, but the kind that, unfortunately covers a pit of despair — like the whitewashing of a tomb. Something about it glittered from afar, but it wasn’t gold. “The bee has honey in its mouth and a sting in its tail” as the (honey-related) saying goes.
In the words of yet another popular song from the 80s , sometimes we just want someone to “tell me lies, tell me the little sweet lies”. Sometimes, we are aware of imperfections in the song and choose to sing along anyway and enjoy the moment. Maybe as you read this, you maintain that I thought too seriously and too much about a song that clearly didn’t call for such rigorous analysis. You may be right, but I’ll ask this: can anyone really go on and pretend to celebrate the (former) luster of the devil after he was unmasked and his disguise as an angel of light was removed? Can anyone really go on and on about the gentleness of a sheep after discovering that there was a ravenous wolf underneath all along?
