Imagine This and That

In my online feed earlier this week, someone had posted a cartoon illustration of The Beatles’ “Imagine.” I won’t argue the musical value of the iconic Beatles. But I do take issue with looking to them for civilization wisdom.

The cartoon illustrations, by Pablo Stanley, are charming, cute, and feel-good. But they portray a lie—because that’s what the song is.

from Pablo Stanley's illustration of "Imagine"
screenshot from here

Here are the words that are illustrated:

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.

Yoo hoo ooh ooh ooh

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one.

I hope some day you’ll join us.

And the world will be one.

What does life look like without heaven? Or without hell? Only the here and now?

It’s a philosophical and religious question. If we have no conception of right and wrong—or whether it matters whether you do right or wrong—what matters? Does it matter what you do? How you affect others? Whether you accomplish anything or treat others fairly? Can you even conceive of anything beyond satisfying your current desires?

There’s a picture of an angel realizing it isn’t an angel, or even a representative of good, since there’s no arbiter of “good,” and there’s a devil realizing it isn’t a devil, or even a representative of evil, since there’s no judgment to identify anything as bad, or even worse than anything else.

In the depiction, the devil offers up a burning heart, which cools in the hands of the erstwhile angel, who, at the point of “living for today,” kisses the devil. Without any identification of good and evil, there’s only love.

Is that what there would be? Why? Why would we even want love, if we can’t identify love as good, or better than any other feeling or attitude? It’s a pretty huge leap of logic to claim that, if we threw out all conceptions of good and bad, we would randomly all happen upon ultimate good.

Humans naturally seek for meaning. And we can’t help but identify what we see as good, better, best, or bad, worse, worst. We can’t function if we don’t value doing one thing more than doing another. If you missed Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, now would be a good time to take a break and read that. Also, go pick up Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.

Jordan Peterson often talks about doing what gives life meaning. There’s a video from last February that came up for me on YouTube yesterday, “Jordan Peterson on Masculinity, Meaning, God And Fatherhood (with Gadi Taub),” in which he spoke those truths again. Here’s a bit from that:

Jordan Peterson (right) with Gadi Taub
screenshot from here

What I’m trying to suggest to people is that the pathway to meaning—meaning is the antidote to suffering, as far as I can tell. The question is, where is meaning to be found? And my sense is that it’s to be found in responsibility

The next section is about archetypes, and he talks about what the devil is:

Let’s think about the great figure of evil, the figure of Satan. Well, what is that? Well, it’s cultural; it’s a cultural construct. It’s something that has its autonomous existence in some sense, as a meme—to use Dawkins’ terms—that’s extended over thousands and thousands of years. It’s a personality that occupies a transpersonal space. And this is independent of your religious beliefs. It’s something you interact with, whether you’re a believer or not.

People naturally believe in the personification of evil, I think he’s saying, because people experience evil and there has to be a way to conceptualize that.

What the song is saying, then, is, “Imagine there’s no evil.” OK. But if you do, and then you’re hit with it—well, that’s what causes PTSD—facing a malevolence that you weren’t prepared for and have a hard time recovering from. Elsewhere Dr. Peterson has said (and I've mentioned before) that the best known therapy for PTSD is understanding good and evil—religiously speaking: 

If you have PTSD, it’s because you’ve been touched by malevolence in one way or another. You need to reorganize your thinking along lines that are fundamentally religious. You need to start seeing the world as a battleground between good and evil—which is what it is, in the most real sense.

Maybe the song means to imagine a world where there is no evil. OK. I can do that. That’s heaven. But the song also says not to allow yourself to imagine heaven.

In other words, the song is not helping you imagine a better world. It is making a not-so-hidden claim that religion is to blame for evil in the world. If people stopped having religious beliefs, they’d stop hating one another—even though it is religious beliefs that change humans from hating one another to having a reason to consider even your enemies as human so there is a chance of finding common ground on which to build peace between you.

from Pablo Stanley's illustration of "Imagine,"
screenshot from here

The next section of the song in the cartoon talks about countries. The claim is that because countries exist, people are willing to kill for them and die for them. If we only got rid of countries, we’d have no killing. Is that true?

What is the purpose of a country? It’s a group of people, larger than a tribe, larger than a local entity, that live together under a form of government. In our country, that’s a form of government our ancestors set up in a way that would give us control over the government, rather than the government ruling over us. Not all countries have governments set up that way. Still, governments have a purpose, which they may or may not do well.

There’s a purpose in government: to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its people.

If there were no government, each individual—or each family, possibly—would spend their time defending their own life, liberty, and property. They would either subsist so that no one would want their stuff or care about them, or they would have to protect themselves from someone trying to take from them or use them. Government at its basic level allows us to thrive at pursuing our happiness, rather than spend our energies defending ourselves from the thieves, murderers, and enslavers.

What’s the quickest way to peace? Surrender.

But if you’re surrendering your life, liberty, or property, is peace under those circumstances really the outcome you want?

Smiley faces don’t really replace reality. Here’s what we know, here at the Spherical Model will lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization:

Freedom requires government limited to its proper role of protecting life, liberty, and property. Anything beyond that will cause harm—usually more of the very harm the overreach claims to be ameliorating. Government must be limited to protecting our God-given rights.

Prosperity comes from free markets—with the addition of philanthropy to deal with the problems of those truly unable to provide for themselves. Monopolies are not a free market. Cronyism is not a free market. Government subsidizing its chosen winners and punishing its chosen losers is not a free market. The freer the market, the more prosperous the entire population.

Civilization requires a religious people. As we say at the Spherical Model,

Not all religious societies are civilized (according to my definition), but every civilized society is a religious society. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.

Civilization also requires supporting the family as the basic unit of society. Whatever threatens the family threatens civilization. Preserving and protecting the family is paramount in laws and social expectations.

So, about the song. Those of us who promote freedom, prosperity, and civilization—and act in ways that will lead us away from tyranny, poverty, and savagery—are better dreamers of peace than those who lie about blaming all religious believers and all freedom-seeking nations for the lack of peace in our world.

We want peace. And we have a way to get there.

But since we live in a world in which people actually believe different things, hating religion and freedom will not get us the tolerance we would like to see in our world. With all due respect to The Beatles for their music, they're not my source for civilization. And with respect to that artist, whose work I would like if he were portraying truth, I'm just not with you on this one.

In a world where we face actual good and evil, you need to think deeper than a smiley cartoon.