Imagine indeed.

Imagine a world where people stop spending money on "wants" and save their money for "needs". You know - save their money in a savings account. Remember what that is / was?

Imagine a world where women don't buy purses or carrying bags that, due to their special initials and corporate logos, cost $600.00.

Imagine a world where men don't buy automobiles that have nothing to do with transportation but are designed to build your "sexual image".

Imagine families that shop in regular grocery stores and stay home and cook and don't waste money on buying food at restaurants except maybe once or twice a year to celebrate birthdays or special events.

Don't be a slave to the man. John would be proud.

Lennon went from being an angry, needy, young man, as Greg describes most are, to being a caring one through meditation which taught him what his true needs were. I agree with Lennon and Socrates, "the unreflective life is not worth living".

TA mentions the season and his death. The atheist display currently in the Washington capitol building could be taken from Imagine: “At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

T.A..... I was fortunate to be able to see three on your 'died too young' list: Jim, Harry and Steve...... I can attest to to each one being an incredible performer which I think flows simply from their personalities and souls. I too miss each one dearly along with John.

Amen...though I tend to remember and celebrate the memory and legacy of John Lennon on his birthday (since we share it).

Peace and Love.

TA, With the right Lennon memorabilia Blagojevich would probably make you Senator of Illinois.

I guess I was thinking about what Greg was saying, towards what Lennon would have to say to young people today, and thought of an interview from 1967.

Q: "Are you deliberately using the power of the Beatles to spread the word about transcendental meditation?"

JOHN: "Yes, because we've never felt like this about anything else. We want the younger generation, especially, to know about it. It's for everyone. For 'householders' as the Maharishi calls them. Just for ordinary people. You don't have to be some sort of freak to meditate. We've got to convince people we are not mystic... get through our million images to show people that what we can do, anyone can do.

Q: "Are you convinced that meditation will last your life, that it won't be just a phase?"

JOHN: "I've got some reservations, of course, but I'm convinced it works in the way they say it works. There's a lot more to learn yet. But I'm willing to find out. You don't have to have a great faith or anything. The whole thing is so simple - as though it's too marvelous to be true. You think: 'Why haven't I heard about it before?' But in fact, it's been around for a long, long time.""

I think he must have had some self-consciousnes from an early age, regardless of the beaviour that Liverpuddlian ethics elicited. My fav is his telling his step-mother when she'd thrown his drawing out as a kid, that she would regret it someday when he was famous.

Zarathustra typed:

"TA mentions the season and his death. The atheist display currently in the Washington capitol building could be taken from Imagine:

“'At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.'”

Religion is multi-faceted. Whoever came up with that display is building a strawman. There is fundamentalist religion, which is appropriately mocked above, and then a wide-range of non-fundamentalist and yet respectful approaches to religion, which should themselves be respected, and not castigated as mere "myth and superstition." The self-proclaimed atheists who came up with the above display are in some ways just another brand of fundamentalists, putting down everyone and anyone who doesn't agree with their own approach to resolving unanswerable and timeless questions.

Want an example of what I'm talking about? Read Spinoza's Ethics and Theological-Political Treatise. Then check out the religious views of his disciples, Einstein and Goethe. Then tell me that they're all about superstition and myth.

Huh? Spinoza would accept the "myth superstition" argument from theologians talking about the Bible! Check out Chapter 14 of the work you cite. "However, I will not level the charge of impiety against those sectaries simply because they adapt the words of Scripture to their own beliefs."

Try talking to a child that doesn't have the cognitive maturity to understand something is happenstance and you'll hear the same level of argument. People make models to explain the world. Anything their model can't account for is religion/god/mystical. That is why God is shrinking and is nearly dead.

I'm usually misquoted on that, by omission. Yes, "God is dead", "and it is you that have killed him". That extra bit usually doesn't get included. (BO is my untergang).

Zarathustra,

You started off your latest post with "Huh?" But that would be my reaction to your comment as well. The sentence you pluck out of Chapter XIV of the TTP hardly responds to the broad point I'm making. Spinoza's followers include many philosophers who have adopted an essentially religious attitude toward life -- including embracing the word "God" -- even though their religion is not Scripture or revelation-based, and even though their God does not work outside of nature (though their God may transcend those attributes of nature that are accessible to the human mind).

If we're not communicating, fine. But I'm normally able to communicate with people who are schooled in Nietzsche and Spinoza, and I sense that we're two ships passing in the night here. I'm not responding to you to score debators points. My point is merely to remind you that you don't have to decry religion -- even God -- to reject an anthropomorphized or supernatural diety. Even Nietzsche could be viewed as a religious man (who venerated life, nature and fate) and as one who could potentially embrace the word "God" ... but simply not the traditional conceptions of God that have come to dominate western religions throughout history. After all, Spinoza has been called a God-intoxicated man, and Nietzsche once wrote that, because of Spinoza, he is now a "dualitude."

I'm not going to argue Spinoza on a thread about John Lennon and "Imagine". Some respect please, if not for the man and the tune then for what they mean to a lot of people. If you want to teach Zarathustra about Nietzsche, bring it!

First of all, Zarathustra, I love John Lennon. I may a member of the "religious left," but that doesn't prevent me from appreciating a guy like him. I grew up with two bands in my pantheon -- the Stones and the Beatles. Yes, I'd place them in that order, but that's hardly a knock on the Beatles.

Secondly, your beloved Nietzsche isn't so far from Spinoza -- and the "intellectual love of God" -- as you might think. Yes, he trashed Spinoza sometimes in his books, but he couldn't praise Goethe enough, and Goethe treated Spinoza similarly. Moreover, I'd like to attach the entire quotation that I alluded to in my last post. This was from Nieztzsche. You may find it in Yovel's "Spinoza and Other Heretics," if you want a cite.

“I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted. I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now was inspired by ‘instinct.’ Not only is his over-all tendency like mine – making knowledge the most powerful affect – but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters; he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world order, the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the differences in time, culture, and science. In summa, my solitude, which as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and made my blood rush out, is at least a dualitude.”

<h2>Locke is the American philosopher - Since man is born a blank slate, he/she is an inherently an atheist at birth.</h2>