Imagine - apropos a Facebook meme

 I wrote this years ago. Now it seems more in place than when I wrote it.

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...

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
 - John Lennon, 1971.


I have no problem imagining all these things. My problem is imaginig all these things simultaneously. Because this calls for a world filled with idealistic, altruistic people, who always opt for the common good. And history - and a simple look inside myself - tells me that humankind is not made like this. Or rather, we were made like this, then something happened. What that something was, what to call it, we do not agree. Some tell us the story of a snake and an apple, some tell us about shadows outside a cave, some about gods with many arms and gargantuan appetites, some about private property. But the fall of Man exists everywhere.
After this fall it's only the hope of reward or the fear of punishment, that makes people behave.
A brotherhood of man means that we have a common father, but mostly we act as a fatherles bunch.

 Eliza Jane gives a speech on her first day about how she intends to rule by love, not fear: "Birds in their little nests agree!. Laura and her friends find it embarrassing and don't think it will go over well when the older boys start schoollater in autumn ... as it turns out, they're all too right. (Somewhere in the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder cited and translated from memory)