No Countries, No Religion - a Philosophical Analysis of John Lennon's Song

“No religion, No countries”

“Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too…” These are some of the words put together by the British songwriter John Lennon in his song “Imagine”. To many people, this thought, this scenario would remove almost all problems that are wrong with people and the world. In my opinion, this made-up world would have its pros and cons. To best explain my thoughts on this world, I want to isolate the different parts of this fantasy world, one without religion, one without countries, and speak about each one's advantages, the different events that would be different throughout history, and then the disadvantages of them both.

Religion has been around for thousands of years, has spanned across most, if not all of written history. Many places throughout history have been divided by religious beliefs, causing many deaths, wars, and a lot of pain for many groups of people. Personally, I cannot think of too many good things that have come from religion, some of the few good things it does is it unites a large amount of people, for some people it provides a different way of thinking for day to day life, and some meaning for this life. Now, to think of this world without religion, the advantages of this no-religion world would be less discrimination between countries and people, less censorship of media, such as speech, art, books, music, films, poetry and songs. To think about the effect religion has had on science, mankind would probably be rid certain diseases, like polio, due to religion prompted fear of vaccines. Technology would most likely have advanced much farther than where it is today, without religion, there would have been less religious wars between people of different faith (or even the same faith) killing for their god, the torture and murder of innocent people suspected of witchcraft, religious extremists perverting the name of God in order to justify their killings, and that could mean more people to advance the growth of scientific and technological knowledge.

To think about the “no countries” aspect of this world, there would be many things different about the way this world works, the way that people see the world, and see each other. Today, there are one-hundred and eighty different kinds of currencies around the world, so many different conversion rates for each kind of currency, so a positive would be the simplicity of a single currency around the world, so no more different dollars, pounds, euros. When I think of countries I think of the history and the different cultures, without these borders, these divisions, there would be less racism in the world because it would remove at least the division