The Beatles Bible - Topic: Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/ Simple:Press Version 5.2.6 Ben Ramon on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56281 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56281 In my opinion, John's "love and peace" motive was far more convincing and realistic when approached from the spiritual and poetic side of 1967 than from the militant political side of '69-'72 or so. John's grounding in realistic, official political matters was not very stable, rather naive at times, and I think it was dangerous for him to throw his weight around in that area so much when someone of his cultural stature could have had devastating consequences. However, the John of 1967 knew where it was at because his approach to love and peace and movement for change was ...]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:59:27 +0100 meanmistermustard on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56272 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56272 Bit of both for me. Yoko and his idea to spread the idea of peace was very good as its what needs to be heard, we need more peace -"make love not war" right? Totally buy into that. Not sure about all the stunts tho but then how else would they have gotten the message out. And Give Peace A Chance is the Peace Anthem regardless of when it was written, it still has a good relevant message to me anyway,

 

As for Imagine, sorry but Yoko and her crusade to shove it down our throats at every point has ruined ...]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:08:26 +0100 Eilwynn on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56269 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56269 Yeah, I see what you're saying.  Again, as with most things concerning John's politics: more about the idea than the literal meaning.  Very abstracted.

]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:49:54 +0100 jackhayman on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56264 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56264 Interesting point Eilwynn, I think John slipped into the usual trap with the 'no possessions' socialist ideology, I think it's easy to say when you have a million in the bank. I do the same, I try to be this hippy dippy minimalist, but I still salivate over any product made by a certain fruit based technology company. I think John wanted people to be free from authority more than anything, freedom from God, freedom from politics, freedom from big business. As said by Christopher Hitchens, any religion is a celestial North Korea. Songs like imagine are expressing this in ...]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2012 08:53:18 +0100 Eilwynn on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56263 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56263 I did a blog post on it here if anyone's interested.  An optional alternative interpretation of Imagine, if you will:

http://aimlessthinkgirl.wordpr.....ng-utopia/

]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2012 08:16:16 +0100 kedame on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56202 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56202

Eilwynn said
I think it depends on which era of his life you're talking about.  He seems to have lost a lot of that naivete as he got older, but he was very naive as a young man first getting into politics.  Overall, I think he tried to do what he thought was best and believe the best of people, so I would agree with others on here that the ideas of his messages were more important than the messages themselves.

 

I think Imagine is an interesting song -- because I know someone else has mentioned it on here -- ...]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:55:56 +0100 Eilwynn on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56201 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56201 I think it depends on which era of his life you're talking about.  He seems to have lost a lot of that naivete as he got older, but he was very naive as a young man first getting into politics.  Overall, I think he tried to do what he thought was best and believe the best of people, so I would agree with others on here that the ideas of his messages were more important than the messages themselves.

 

I think Imagine is an interesting song -- because I know someone else has mentioned it on here -- simply because John ...]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:24:09 +0100 fabfouremily on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56185 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56185 He cared about politics and the effects that it could have and I suppose he made people more aware of what was going on in the world, which can't be a bad thing, but I'm not sure if I would go as far as saying that he was a positive political influence as I don't think anybody actually made a good decision about something because of him or something that he said.

This is a thing I don't really know a lot about though so I would love to be proved wrong.

]]> Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:39:02 +0100 GeorgeTSimpson on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56176 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56176 He was a positive political influence he did much for the peace

]]> Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:36:26 +0100 kedame on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56175 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56175 This is an interesting question and one I'm not sure how to answer. Overall, I believe John's actual political insights were very narrow and naive, but it's not really John's insights that people cling to...it's the idea of them. So John's actual political contributions are very small, but the contributions people perceived him to have made are rather larger, inspiring other political actions. For instance, the song Give Peace a Chance was written a long time after people had started protesting the Vietnam War, but it was sung outside the White House as a protest song. People then associate John ...]]> Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:36:22 +0100 jackhayman on Overall was John politically good or bad? http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56152 John Lennon http://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/john-lennon/overall-was-john-politically-good-or-bad/#p56152 Of all the Beatles solo and together John took political problems to heart. Some of his actions, the Bed In, The Imagine anthem, Nutopia and War is Over can be considered as positive. But the other aspects of his political ideas were poorly thought out and probably a bad thing, meeting with the Black Panthers, allegedly funding the IRA, his political nievety was sometimes clear.
So, on balance was John a positive political influence?
Comment and inform!
[sp_show_poll id="12"]

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