I hate the song "Imagine." You know, the one with John Lennon playing the piano and singing about his dream for world peace. I hate it. This is part one of a two-part column.
I'll explain that in a minute.
I once had an e-mail conversation with my uncle, a retired Air Force officer, about the current global clash of civilizations. He suggested mandatory military service similar to Israel's might be beneficial to America. He thought it might help toughen up the younger generation and get them to grow up.
I respectfully disagreed.
Israel maintains a mandatory military service program in part because it is surrounded by larger nations bent on its annihilation. The threat of death and destruction is an ever-present one, and there are very few families in Israel that have not been affected by terrorism or war. Israel knows that the way to peace doesn't lie in the imagination. America, meanwhile, is stuck in "dreamer" mode.
At the time of the e-mail conversation, I said on my blog that "The media would spend all their time focusing on the 'sensitive' guys, the ones who stay in their bunks all day writing poetry about the tragedy of their tender souls being taught to kill, etc., etc. and no one would get any actual training done. Sure, they might learn to scale a wall in full gear, but I doubt they would learn the mental discipline to take a nasty job and see it through."
I stand by that. We - and by "we," I mean my peers - have forgotten how to put up with unpleasantness. From the moment we're born we're swaddled in comfort, taught that being happy is more important than being responsible. We've forgotten what it takes to keep the good things we've got. We go all gooey over the cost of war without actually paying it. We've forgotten that the only reason we can lounge around watching TV and eating Cheetos is because somebody from our country killed somebody from another country. But therein lies part of the problem: Our wars are always far away. America is too big and too well-defended by its position on the globe for a traditional military invasion. If there is a war, it will be a war of ideas. The next great change in the history of the world will be decided by which philosophy has the greater will to win. On the one side is the tribalistic, pre-Enlightenment, "My way or the highway" philosophy of the Islamic fundamentalists, fueled by a concrete belief in its own righteousness and the will of God. On the other side is Western civilization, birthplace of individual rights, democracy and the greatest achievements in music, science, art and mathematics the world has ever seen.
That's why I can't stand "Imagine." Lennon envisions a world where there's "Nothing to kill or die for," where the heights of human achievement aren't worth saving. If there's nothing to die for, then there's nothing to live for. The idea behind "Imagine" is an adolescent world view, one in which there are no conflicts because no one cares enough to have strong emotions. It's a utopia.
And utopias, frankly, suck. Stay tuned for part two next week.
Write to Joanna at jllees@bsu.edu
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