Some have thought that the demise of religion would inaugurate the dawn of a beautiful new world lacking the ugly divisions with which we’re all too familiar.
Listen, here, to Pentatonix, beautifully rendering a remarkably stupid song:
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
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
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
I wrote something about “Imagine” a few years ago:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765597245/John-Lennon-was-wrong-but-right-at-the-same-time.html
Unfortunately, utopian dreams are virtually always dashed to pieces against reality.
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” wrote William Wordsworth about the heady early days of the French Revolution, “but to be young was very heaven!”
And then came the Terror.
Ludwig van Beethoven first dedicated his Third Symphony, the Eroica, to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he regarded as a great champion of democracy and human rights. And then, when he learned that Napoleon had just had himself crowned Emperor, Beethoven angrily tore the title page in half and rescinded the dedication.
In the 1930s, many once-idealistic American leftists, learning about Stalin’s purges and “show trials,” tore up their Communist Party cards.
And now, dreams of a secular utopia led by irreligious “nones” seem to be fading, too:
Stephen Smoot, whose life I’ve completely destroyed, calls my attention to this fascinating essay:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/breaking-faith/517785/
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