John Lennon's Song- Imagine is a Utopia

(I note that my opponent says I made an argument without supporting evidence. I'll try to correct that, but I cant suppress You Tube thumb nails, so the page looks rather ugly. I apologise, and hope the readers can parse out where the links should go.) Well, first- it is a fact that nothing to kill or die for means no point in killing, which is opposite not having a point to living. Life in the modern world is a fantastic, wonderful experience that can be valued for just about any part of it, and for most of us will never involve a literal body count. Further anyone who would fight to the death in order to have a point to living is clearly someone who has surrendered their claim to humanity. You next questions, Con, are troubling in that same way. As a veteran myself, I can assure that the service members I know were there to make "the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country" as George C. Scott said in Patton. Being willing to accept a risk of death to protect others is patriotic, but wanting to die for your preferred cause is simply patriotic suicide. Perhaps you didn't think through the logical endpoint, of elevating suicide bombers to a paragon of virtue. The next point, that of pacaem per conformitatem [http://translate.google.com...|la|peace%20through%20conformity], is simply wrong. Peaceful states have always been the foundation of cultural golden ages [http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com...] and it is only ever through coercion or force that diversity is extinguished. Through the Inquisition, through the fatwa, through conquest and re education camps, it has been the use of power to remove difference in dress, word and deed for the purpose of destroying the difference in thought. Sooner or later, the people will rebel to establish peace and freedom to express themselves [http://www.guardian.co.uk...]. Citation for further reading: [http://books.google.com...] Also, my 'choosing what I wake up for', in other words my setting my own goals and amending them on a day by day (or month by month or minute by minute) basis is the very foundation of diversity. Finally, the line you quote, in context of the verse it is in, is to think and act in terms of our everyday reality instead of focusing on a hypothetical afterlife- but more on that later. Con, your next paragraph concerns "are you able to have ambition without a little greed". Taking your own quoted definition of greed as "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions" neatly destroys as a slippery slope fallacy your entire argument. It is clear that ambition is a desire for yourself, as you said, but if it is reasonable ambition it doesn't rise to the level of greed, which again doesn't exist in a minor scale. A good job leads to a roof over your head, food on your table, savings for retirement- all of which is a sufficient ambition without being excessive, or worse rapacious. It also leaves time for hobbies [http://philanthropy.com...] [www.indierockcafe.com]. The other big failure in your argument is that you argue that Imagine calls for complete subjugation of the self to the group- on an altruistic scale from 1 to 10, you only seem to recognize the 1 and the 10. It is in the 4-5-6 bracket that creative tension works, most of us reside, and Imagine sings to in the line "no NEED for greed or hunger/ A brotherhood of man". In the last argument, you correctly say that art can be about religion- without noting I have already said that it can also be about mythology, which is old religions after the toxins have been leached out by time. People with mythologies do express themselves through art[http://tattoos-and-art.com...] [http://www.artdecoworld.com...]- those with religion tend to add bigotry and violence as well [http://www.youtube.com...] [http://www.youtube.com...] [WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT http://www.youtube.com...]. As such, I am convinced that no religion means that there are no desecration of art [http://www.youtube.com...], no book burnings [http://www.youtube.com...], no prosecution of free thought [ http://www.youtube.com...]. As for your question that is written as a statement, it is religious beliefs themselves that are a threat to diversity, as Imagine alluded to religions. Religion is a type of tyranny after all, and has been demonstrated to be very conformist and hostile to divergence to the very last degree. And "religion is worth fighting over", or even 'for' which I believe you meant- that last was a bald, risible assertion, that you may wish to make into a debate topic itself. I have already begun to demonstrate that various competing collections of fables, unverified assertions and fantastical delusions are probably the least worth fighting for concepts in the human mental inventory. World War 2 was to protect the Jewish people from exactly the sort of religious bigotry that itself always attempts to end diversity. I'm also going to call foul on the claim that religion ended slavery- the true story is much more complicated, and secular, than that. Overall, Imagine is a call for an entire world, where the tolerance, happiness and high living standards of nations and states such as Japan, Sweden, California and Massachusetts should progress through out the world, supplanting the relatively harsh governments and ignorance of places like Iran, North Korea, Texas and Missouri (and I know that there are exceptions within all those groups, it an overall statistic) [http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org...]. It cannot be a dictatorship, but would encourage one to succeed on their own and to be kind to other while doing so. It is built on freedom of persons, freedom of expression, freedom from want and fear. That is as Utopian as it gets. I thank my opponent for this debate, and again encourage a topic on "Religion Is Worth Fighting Over"- or "For". That should be interesting, I may do it myself, although I am chronically short on time. I will close with a quote. "Doubt everything. Find your own light." -Last words of Gotama Buddha, in Theravada tradition