"The last temptation is the greatest treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason." Just because something rhymes and TS Eliot said it (and I like Eliot), does not mean it is true, or even intelligible. There are lots of greater treasons.
John Lennon, empty icon of my Boomer generation, wrote one of the worst pieces of crap ever sung, the grandiose, narcissistic and delusional anthem, Imagine. Anyone who likes this song is, if not morally bankrupt, at least partly braindead.
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that 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
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that 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
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that 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
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that 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
No wonder Plato hated poets. A lie that rhymes is still a lie.
2 comments:
Story about an ex MINE for a change. She once had her youth group (oldest was maybe tenth grade) in a rather hard-luck white neighborhood sing Imagine for youth group Sunday. The song choice was made by the children -- I guess somehow it's religiousness came through despite Lennon's refusal of theistic satisfaction. I guess it was the only song they knew of and enjoy'd that involved the word "heaven." Anyway, kind-of amusing to hear it sung by youngsters at a church, but mostly magical because this ex of mine really was magical interpersonally: that UCC church had never had a youth Sunday before, where the youth put on the service. (Don't cringe: a UCC service always lacks valid priests; there's no there there, according to the Teaching Church. Thus no possibility of sacrilege, right?) ... Anyway, the congregation (sc an 'assembly' -- not a bureaucratic committee of cardinals) approved, as did the senior clergy, and me. I wasn't in great shape back then, but I attended and could relate somewhat.
I misspoke myself. The youth group surely selected "Imagine" as the hymn to sing because it expresses the foundation proposed for Christian religion ever since "social justice" ascendancy: internationalist anarchist communism, opaque cosmology, freedom from war in a technical sense, plenty of "dreaming." ... This may seem an impoverish'd version of Christianity compared with Catholicism, but doesn't social-justice Catholicism find the riches of Catholicism an encumbrance, a bunch of obstacles? If stripping down Christianity (curiously figured still as a brotherhood, not gender-inclusivized) to "Imagine" enables "us" to arrive at the situation we "want," then Imagine is the true version of Christianity, and this meek UCC youth group a more unerring theologian than the Teaching Church is.
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