There's something wrong with the world today, mercy mercy me, things ain't what they used to be. Civilization, are we really civilized? These are the things I can do without, it doesn't matter what they say in the papers, 'cause it's always been the same old scene.
Brother my brother, tell me what are we fighting for? There's too many people making too many problems and not much love to go 'round, nobody's right if everybody's wrong, all we are saying is give peace a chance. Our written history is a catalogue of crime, the trench is dug within our hearts, and history bears the scars of our civil war. In violent times you shouldn't have to sell your soul. Bury my heart at wounded knee, look at the blood we're spilling. We've got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand on Sunday, bloody Sunday, nations dropping bombs, chemical gases fill the lungs of little ones, the thin line between entertainment and war, it feeds the rich while it buries the poor. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Could I be so wrong to think that we could get along? I can't understand what makes a man hate another man [or woman]. Where's the love, y'all? What does the color of the skin [or religion, or sexual orientation, or social class, et cetera] have to do with the person within? You've got to be taught to hate all the people your relatives hate, and a small town don't like it when somebody falls between sexes. (Rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon and we've moved on to the electric chair.) They passed a law in '64 to give those who ain't got a little more, but it only goes so far. If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew. It takes every kind of people to make the world go 'round, we are a skin kaleidoscope. Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited... everywhere is war. In the end, only kindness matters.
So much jibber jabber's clogging up our souls, we are living in a material world, leave your conscience at the tone. People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening. This morning's paper says our neighbor's in a cocaine bust, I've seen the needle and the damage done, put away the crack before the crack puts you away. You know that bastard’s one big lie, hypocrites get worse and worse, it's society's mask, it's society's way. Thanks to the condo kings there's cable now in zombie town, we've got to move these color TV's, fifty seven channels and nothing on. People in every direction, no words exchanged, no time to exchange them, and isn't it a kind of madness to be living by a code of silence when you've really got a lot to say? I see these children with their boredom and their vacant stares, we don't need no education, we don't need no thought control. Look at the leaders we've followed, look at the lies we've swallowed, beatniks and politics, nothing is new. Shooting in the park, raping in the dark, crime is increasing, trigger happy policing, and those with no homes to go to, please dig yourselves holes. Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical, conform or be cast out. All the radios agree with all the TVs, and all the magazines agree with all the radios, it's the terror of knowing what this world is about, real life's getting more like fiction each day, I guess we enrolled in 1984. Welcome to the machine!
Where have you gone, John Muir, Mother Nature cries her weary eyes to you, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. All we do is eliminate our future with the things we do today, money is our incentive now so that makes it okay, it's evolution, baby! We got these energy companies who want to take the land and we got churches by the dozens trying to guide our hands and turn our mother Earth over to pollution, war, and greed. We've strangled all her trees and starved her creatures, there's poison in the sea and in the air. But worst of all we've learned to live without her, we've lost the very meaning of our lives. Oil wasted on the ocean and upon the sea, and we've got syrofoam boxes for the ozone layer. Farmer, put away your DDT; animals and birds who live nearby are dying. The natural resources are dwindling and no one grows old, they dig for silver and for gold and leave the empty holes. Rain forests are getting thin, roads and houses built within; scientists say take some action, politicians no reaction. Life must be somewhere to be found instead of congrete jungle. It's not that we don't know, it's just that we don't want to care. Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow, where have all the flowers gone? Clear blue skies, not too much to ask for; let's leave some blue up above us, let's leave some green on the ground.
Have we left the answers far behind? Are we running from the light? Even though it's hard to see the glass is full and not half-empty, I will not be made useless, I won't be idled with despair. We didn't start the fire, though we didn't light it, we will try to fight it, my generation will put it right. There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. "That's just the way it is," but don't you believe them, 'cause the times, they are a-changin'. Know your human rights, be what you came here for. Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, free your mind and the rest will follow, you gotta go for what you know, make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be. My hands are small I know, but this is the world we live in, and these are the hands we're given, use them and let's start trying to make it a place worth living in.
Keep on rockin' in the free world.
(Lyrical credit is due to: Aerosmith, Alabama, John Anderson, Arrested Development, Black-Eyed Peas, Blessid Union of Souls, David Bowie, Buffalo Springfield, Tracy Chapman, Crosby Stills and Nash, Dave Matthews Band, DC Talk, Ani DiFranco, Dire Straits, Bob Dylan, En Vogue, Marvin Gaye, Genesis, Guns N' Roses, Bruce Hornsby, Impellitteri, the Indigo Girls, Jewel, Billy Joel, Kansas, Lenny Kravitz, John Lennon, Annie Lennox, Madonna, Bob Marley, John Cougar Mellencamp, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull, Willie Nelson, Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd, Queen, Rush, Smashmouth, Bruce Springsteen, Edwin Starr, Sting and the Police, Strawberry Alarm Clock. Supernova, Supertramp, Tears For Fears, U2, Up With People, Kyle Vincent, Neil Young, Disney's Pocahontas, and the musicals Jekyll & Hyde, RENT, and South Pacific.)
