The Olympics opening ceremony was quite the display. All at once creative, interesting and as even noted by those who are not religious, pointedly offensive to Christians. In fact, specifically Christians. It could be pointing to all religion but I somehow doubt it. I mean, try this with Islam. Just sayin’…
Enter John Lennon’s Imagine. Ostensibly, a call to “a better world”. Cue the angels…or not.
And it brought to mind this article from 2019.
The Soft Nihilism of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’
Nihilism is a family of views within philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as knowledge, morality, or meaning.
In 1971, John Lennon asked us to imagine a world with “no heaven,” “no hell,” “no religion,” and “nothing to kill or die for.”
Well isn’t that nice. 💐🌷🌸🌹🌺🌼🥀🌻
Today, “Imagine” has all but replaced the Nicene Creed as the official statement of faith of the Western world. In Lennon’s world, you can believe anything you want as long as you don’t believe it too sincerely.
What the former Beatle failed to realize is that a world with “nothing to kill or die for” is a world with nothing to live for [either]. A belief for which one is unwilling to either kill or die is a belief too weak to provide the vital energy necessary to sustain civilization.
Everlasting peace requires the absolute triumph of a transcendent good—a.k.a. “heaven”—over evil. A world that refuses to “hate what is evil [and] cling to what is good,” will be populated by men without chests and plagued by acedia. If we follow Lennon’s advice and “imagine there’s no heaven,” we will soon find ourselves in hell.
Acedia is our word for the day. And I think it aptly describes John Lennon and the actual philosophy of this song. Apathy has become a goal and perhaps aspires to a religion.
What do you say? Great song or just a word salad?
Do we have the opposite of Bonk’s Omnism or just another form of it?
Southernstar
Article URL : https://intellectualtakeout.org/2019/02/the-soft-nihilism-of-john-lennons-imagine/