Something We Wish We'd Written

SWNID is happy to post the following quotation from Andrew Klavan's article, "Imagine There's No Heaven," a review of two significant books on atheism, in Claremont Review of Books (5:4, Fall 2005) 76, wishing that we had composed such insightful prose:

Of all the silly pop songs ever written, perhaps the silliest is John Lennon's "Imagine." "A wop bop a loo ram a lop bam boom" has more philosophical depth as a lyric--and indeed contributes more to the happiness of human society--than Lennon's thudding inanities, which are rendered truly inspiring only by being reduced to a one-word poster on a teenager's wall. Lennon, you'll no doubt remember, asks us to imagine humanity without faith, countries, or possessions. With nothing to kill or die for, he promises, "the world will live as one."

Now you may call me a dreamer, but it seems to me just such a world was imagined long before, in the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There, aliens begin to transform the human race into Lennon's world: a soulless army of automatons living as one without any of those bothersome passions that give rise to religions, nations, or private property. "Love, desire, ambition, faith," one of the aliens intones, perfectly prefiguring Lennon, "without them, life is so simple."