Imagine

By John Lennon

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 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 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 a beautiful song, both because of its musicality and the thought.
But I disagree.
Not with the ultimate goal, of course. Just with how Mr. Lennon thinks humanity can get there.

Ok so let's look at the goal. "A brotherhood of man", "the world will live as one", "no need for greed or hunger". I love this. I think that's probably the best we can ask for.
And Lennon believes we can get thereby discarding social institutions like government, religion, and possessions.
In a way this is true. Social institutions are not ideal. It would be nice if they were disposable. In reality, however, social institutions indicate that our world is messed up. Explanation: Government. Some people think that we need to get rid of government to have peace. This isn't true. A healthy government benefits a lot of people because it keeps those who are greedy and evil from taking over. Just throwing out government doesn't help anyone except the corrupt. Examples: Somalia and Lord of the Flies.
So social institutions are basically the strings holding the world together, preventing it from going to crap. In what scenario would it be safe to discard of these?
Scenario: Buddy is starving to death. His neighbour isn't, but is pretty darn close. The neighbour splits what he has completely evenly between himself and his starving neighbour, or even gives all he has to the neighbour.
See how that works. That's just people loving each other as much as they love themselves. It's surreal though. I don't know people who can love like that. I hope they exist, because that's our hope for a world of peace.
Love. As per usual.
Love enough throughout humanity to share equally everything we have without envy or competition or greed.
Love enough to sacrifice one's own happiness so that someone else will be happy.
Love enough in every person for every other person that insults won't happen or matter.
That's the theory then.

So how do we get there? Like it's more or less impossible to convince someone (they all know it but no one believes it) that everyone else's life is just as important as their own.
I personally think that if people knew God, they we would stop all this fighting amongst ourselves. Because He's scary kind of, in the way a parent with mad superpowers would be. You know He's not going to hurt you, but he very bery much could. And I think people would behave if people understood God in any way. Secondarily, people need something to be passionate about. It's the truth. Some people choose pretty grand stuff, like their country or a humanitarian cause and some people choose Nintendo or killing people. But people need to care about something. Right now everyone is just passionate about random stuff. Sometimes that stuff is conflicting with another person's passion. Example: Hitler was passionate about killing Jews, and the Jews turned out to be passionate about wanting to live. However, I really believe that if anyone could actually get to know God, they would be just passionately in love with Him. And that's where their passion would go. Nothing else would be of much use or value compared to knowing what God's up to. So if everyone had that, we wouldn't fight or anything. We wouldn't need government or religion or wars. We wouldn't care if someone took our stuff, because they have as much right to it as we do on a big enough scale.

Ok so I'm running out of sense. Maybe my point got across and maybe it didn't. Either way, I hardly know where it's possible to start to live life like that.
At this time I hardly have the energy.

Closing notes:
Vanessa wanted to be mentioned. We actualy had a really fun talk (in place of homework) at the library this eve. How come whenever I enjoy time, it ends up being unproductive time?

Aaaaand.... I'm sleepy. Going to bed. Nightey-night!