Slogan question
Hi y’all. I was discussing politics with someone earlier and I came up with a slogan to explain my rather extreme position. Thing is, I’m not sure whether it’s original or whether I absorbed it from a song or a film or even a TV show. It’s obviously a variation on “demand the moon, to get the earth”, but if anyone knows whether there’s a more specific equivalent doing the rounds in popular culture could you let me know?
Here it is…
“Demand revolution and you might get reform. Demand reform and you just get ignored.”
Anyone heard it before? Or the same sentiment in similar language? Maybe I dreamt it?
“Demand revolution and you might get reform. Demand reform and you just get ignored.”
– Jim Bliss, 2008
“Only what the workers take is helpful. What they are given is useless”
– Alan Silitoe, circa 1965. He said the above in his introduction to a novel called The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which was written much earlier, at the turn of the 20th century.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WM5uNlLeqL4C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22alan+sillitoe%22+introduction+ragged+useless+given&source=web&ots=cI0_Ts3ioG&sig=O2CX3vaPye9iOYuqw3dXYB5cw7g&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA17,M1
October 4th, 2008 | 8:32am
by PMM
Millions of people that neither know nor care about the issues facing the US and the world will shortly be voting in a presidential election. At some point in the not too far distant future, we in the UK will be giving the other Tories a chance to fuck us over for a while.
If you think that Democracy is not the be all and end all we like to proclaim it, certainly in it’s current incarnation, then you’ll find that your ideas are nothing new.
Hmmm. Come to think of it, the RTP has other relevent passages. Let me bore you with another…
http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext03/rggdp10.txt
October 4th, 2008 | 3:10pm
by PMM
I’ve not read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists but it’s been recommended a few times. That slogan you quoted is a good one. It’s in the same ballpark as my one but sufficiently different for me to still claim ownership of mine. I just have this nagging feeling I heard it somewhere. And it’s because I can “hear” it being said (or something like it) that makes me think I didn’t read it.
I’m hoping it was a dream, then the only person I’m stealing from is Unconscious Jim. And he’s unlikely to complain.
My favourite slogan of all time, though, is still the classic Situationist International graffiti… “Be realistic. Demand the Impossible!”
I love that.
October 4th, 2008 | 3:29pm
by Jim Bliss
By the way, how do you pronounce ‘Silitoe’?
I suspect it’s along the lines of ‘Sil-ih-tow’, or even ‘Sil-eh-tow’.
But I’d really like it to be ‘Silly toe’.
October 4th, 2008 | 3:32pm
by Jim Bliss
My posts don’t show right now Jim. Maybe this one won’t either.
I think it’s pronounced like Cillit Bang, except you replace the Bang with an O.
October 4th, 2008 | 3:35pm
by PMM
Seem to be showing up OK from where I’m sitting, PMM. What OS / browser are you using, and what’s the problem with them?
(the long URL you posted above doesn’t seem to ‘wrap’ properly in IE, but aside from that, all seems well)
EDIT: Those two comments of yours (above — now condensed into one) were in my spam bin for some reason. No idea why, as you’re on my safe list. Have any others gone missing?
October 4th, 2008 | 3:40pm
by Jim Bliss
If you think that Democracy is not the be all and end all we like to proclaim it, certainly in it’s current incarnation, then you’ll find that your ideas are nothing new.
Oh don’t worry PMM. I’m well aware that it’s not a new idea. It’s a very very old one in fact. It’s just a new one for me to be espousing. Up until relatively recently I was of the opinion that democracy was the least bad system available to us. I no longer believe that.
And it’s a combination of environmental and psychoanalytic theory that has led me to that position.
October 4th, 2008 | 4:00pm
by Jim Bliss
It’s there now. Just the two. (The first one didn’t show, so I tried again then assumed it had been held in a moderation queue)
The totalitarian/democratic thing is a valid quote in the context of the current HH debate I think.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is very much a polemic. It paints characters with a big black brush. Presumably the evil ones have big thick bushy eyebrows that they waggle mellowdramatically. But behind the dogma, it’s a tract on utopian socialism, and one that had a profound influence upon me when I was a teeneager.
I’m no longer an uncritical socialist by any means, but Tressell points out that the vast majority of work done is pointless. Shifting sand from one beach to another in order to generate wealth. He didn’t know about scarcity in its’ modern context. He just wanted everyone to have a better standard of living, instead of having to slog their bollocks off all the time just to keep body and soul together.
Really got to go!
October 4th, 2008 | 4:05pm
by PMM
It’s one I use a lot and so I’d be extremely surprised if I hadn’t said it to you, and probably a few times.
I got it in the mid-late 90s from a guy called Jeff from Brighton, a very intelligent eco-anarchist, one of the original 90s road protesters and probably the person with the best grasp of radical political history that I’ve ever met.
Whilst an avowed revolutionary, he made clear that, in the phrasing I remember and parrot, ‘demanding revolution is the only way to get proper reform; demand reform and you get nothing’.
October 8th, 2008 | 11:15am
by merrick
Your misanthropic philosophy is more of an indictment of our pseudo-democracy than a profound world-view. Surely you could be more specific? “Demand lots to get a little” doesn’t have much weight to it.
As for The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, I haven’t read the book but I do have a couple of quotes from it in my collection and one of those is quite the most motivating incitements to make something of this life I live that I have ever read:
“Every man who is not helping to bring about a better state of affairs for the future is helping to perpetuate the present misery and is therefore the enemy of his own children.”
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l-kwdpspOx8C&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=Every+man+who+is+not+helping+to+bring+about+a+better+state+of+affairs+for+the+future+is+helping+to+perpetuate+the+present+misery+and+is+therefore+the&source=web&ots=RExDVuM9m3&sig=YYoNWzL-t_f5OHrTHMsy7IlRIDI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
October 8th, 2008 | 9:33pm
by punkscience
I should add that, if we are sticking to our own philosophical compositions, then mine would be that “ignorance is a crime”.
Word.
October 8th, 2008 | 9:35pm
by punkscience