by FlyingHighNow 22 Replies latest jw friends
''I believe in everything, until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists even it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams aren't as real as the here and now?'' John Lennon
What point do you think John trying to make?
Mature, serious answers welcome.
We're heading in to right-brain territory that for me at least, kills the imagination. Language codifies. This is something that defies classification.
"Fairy tales don't teach children that monsters exist. Children already know that monsters exist. Fairy tales teach children that monsters can be killed."
-- G. K. Chesterton
Your trying to make my mocking thread seem silly arnt you >.< ? I disaprove. Ive had fun mocking this quote and i dont want to give it any credance by discussing it.
But i will anyway :-)
I take it as a statment on the wonder of life and a willingness to believe in all things positive.
Thank you, Jgnat. I think you're right about kids and monsters.
I take it as a statment on the wonder of life and a willingness to believe in all things positive.
I like that.
John Lennon said that? Really?
You mean the same John Lennon who said this?
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, 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 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, 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 live as one
Sounds to me like John believed in God, until maybe he found good reason to disprove that belief. You going down that road, FHN?
Imagine, one of my favorite John songs. Unfortunately, helped me be vulnerable when avalanched for months by JWs.
The meaning of Imagine deserves a thread of its own.
More John Lennon quotes (a very wise soul, indeed):
(From http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/John_Lennon)
Lyrics From his 1970 song "God" (album "Plastic Ono Band"):
God is a concept by which we can measure our pain... I don't believe in magic, I don't believe in I-ching, I don't believe in bible, I don't believe in tarot, I don't believe in Hitler, I don't believe in Jesus, I don't believe in Kennedy, I don't believe in Buddha, I don't believe in mantra, I don't believe in Gita, I don't believe in yoga, I don't believe in kings, I don't believe in Elvis, I don't believe in Zimmerman, I don't believe in Beatles... I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality.'
In a 1965 Interview:
"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity."
"I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong."
1971 interview by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn:
Tariq Ali: Your latest record and your recent public statements, especially the interviews in Rolling Stone magazine, suggest that your views are becoming increasingly radical and political. When did this start to happen?
John Lennon: ... In my case I've never not been political, though religion tended to overshadow it in my acid days; that would be around '65 or '66. And that religion was directly the result of all that superstar shit--religion was an outlet for my repression. I thought, 'Well, there's something else to life, isn't there? This isn't it, surely?'
Later in the interview:
... At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness. It was therapy that stripped away all that and made me feel my own pain.
... Well, his thing is to feel the pain that's accumulated inside you ever since your childhood. I had to do it to really kill off all the religious myths. In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of your life--it's excruciating, you are forced to realise that your pain, the kind that makes you wake up afraid with your heart pounding, is really yours and not the result of somebody up in the sky. It's the result of your parents and your environment.
As I realised this it all started to fall into place. This therapy forced me to have done with all the God shit. All of us growing up have come to terms with too much pain. Although we repress it, it's still there. The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realising your parents do not need you in the way you need them.
... Most people channel their pain into God or masturbation or some dream of making it.
... It's a bit of a drag to say so, but I don't think you can understand this unless you've gone through it--though I try to put some of it over on the album. But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the God trip or father-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for some kind of heaven.
The complete interview is available online at CounterPunch and is also included in Tariq Ali's book, "Streetfighting Years".
Sometimes a song is just a song.
