The Future
Chapter 16 of Love and War includes: Love the Ones You're With, New World Symphony, Imagine That, and Eternal Life.
Love the Ones You're With
In the 60s and the 70s
The economy was booming
Guns and butter
Better times were looming
But not for everyone
Sit-ins and marches
Riots and rebellions too
Trying to level the playing field
Tired of not making do...
New World Symphony
“I envision a world where water, electricity, food, and education would be for free in the next 25 years for everyone on this planet,” said Carlos Santana during an interview at the Latin Grammys.
The need for the essentials of life to be made freely available is obvious: Three billion people now live in poverty, half of them subsisting on less than a dollar a day. Yet everything is being privatized: education, health care, the very cells which make up our bodies.
The agent of privatization, the corporation, was once an organic part of our society. In 1949, U.S. corporations paid 49% of all taxes. They pay just 7% now...
Imagine That
Capitol has just released remastered versions of John Lennon’s entire catalog, the best of which remains the Phil Spector-produced Imagine. The title track has become an integral part of the world’s cultural fabric--the centerpiece of a ghetto high school halftime show at a basketball game in New York or a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor (“Imagine Whirled Peace”). Artists ranging from Madonna to A Perfect Circle have covered it. All this is somewhat amazing, considering that the message of “Imagine” is among the most radical imaginable. John Lennon described “Imagine” as “anti-capitalistic” but his message is more than that. The song, a top five hit, not only imagines a world without war or religion, but as a communal society in which money no longer exists...
Eternal Life
I don’t wanna end up DOA
Until I embed my DNA
In the world around me
I don’t wanna die like my father
In a hospital bed for over a year
With no idea what’s wrong
His body filled up with water
And like any drowning man...