I agree with the point about how technology exposes some kinds of experiments a bit too much.
But jail time? Sorry, that's not just a "mistake", that's outright reckless stupidity (obvious exception: protesting civil issues or similar).
Just because you (the author) made a stupid decision and narrowly avoided jail time, does not mean that what you did was a good thing in general.
Following that logic, should we also argue for reckless driving if some CEO of a startup narrowly missed killing someone back in the day? Should we all drive recklessly so that we can "learn from our mistakes"?
I think the point the author is trying to make is:
- Spray painting is easy.
- Political viewpoints change with time. They mature as the individual does.(whatever that means)
- Spray painting a political viewpoint in the 80's and getting caught wouldn't get the the entire online world riled up and debating the problem. You would get the opportunity to continue thinking the same way or change your way of thinking in a somewhat private matter.
In the 80's, if you had been caught doing what the author was doing, you'd probably have to clean it up (much harder than the original act).
People - especially younger people - need the opportunity to learn and grow. Some will make some terrible mistakes and that has to be dealt with. Others will make mistakes - and they need to have the opportunity to evaluate their position and learn from it (good or bad).
When the resume processing system checks your criminal record, that's going to take your rating way down. Today, anybody who did anything stupid like that has to go through the formal process of having the record expunged to get a decent job. This is a complex process and applications can be rejected.[1]
> the author is explicitly encouraging such behavior
That wasn't what I read.
What I read was if you do something that happens to be negative in some way and get noticed, this is now a permanent scarlet letter.
This can range from his "corporate deathburgers" (which is vandalism) to a "controversial editorial" (which isn't illegal at all but can bring the wrath of the universe on you).
I bet that ALL of us have said things at various points that we would not want recorded forever.
Unfortunately, we have not yet evolved appropriately calibrated social behaviors to deal with this. The current modality of "No Tolerance--Burn The Infidel(tm)" for everything, no matter how minor, is not helpful.
We have. It’s called forgetting and leaving stuff in the past. Now we have records of everything and disqualify folks with no meaningful reasoning.
When I started my career in the late 90s, I know of a half dozen senior leaders who were actively involved in the Vietnam era anti war movement. My one director had a scar on the back of his head when some cop on a horse cracked it open with a truncheon. He was arrested for loitering and woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed.
That experience might have excluded him from service with the FBI, but otherwise would have no impact. Twenty years from now, will some bullshit arrest like that impact an 18 year old at a Trump protest? Probably.
He didn't hurt anyone. He caused some harm to a corporation possibly. This deserves some punishment. It shouldn't follow him around for his entire life though - unless he keeps causing harm.
If someone is an activist that has committed criminal acts in the name of their cause, a company should know that when hiring them. That is a very strong signal that they will be a shitty employee.
> But jail time? Sorry, that's not just a "mistake", that's outright reckless stupidity (obvious exception: protesting civil issues or similar).
"Obvious" exception?
"Hey, get your stupid protest out of my way to work, jerk."
See how that works? Not so obvious anymore, is it?
The issue we currently have is that the US justice system is set up for punishment and retribution rather than rehabilitation. We also have a problem in that we somewhere began trying to punish people even after they have "served their punishment and made retribution".
You can get a permit to protest. Also, there are venues that are more suitable than others. If you are part of a strike, things become different.
But assuming all of the above is invalid, don't you think protesting an issue like segregation is worth getting people upset about their delayed commute?
Personally, I wouldn't mind sacrificing some of my convenience to support people protesting an issue that is important. In a way, it's the price I pay for not joining in on the protest!
> Personally, I wouldn't mind sacrificing some of my convenience to support people protesting an issue that is important.
Even at the height of the civil rights movement, the vast majority of the country was apathetic to hostile. That is simply the nature of fighting for these things.
As someone who has lived in dictatorships for most of my life, I strongly disagree with this statement. I guess it's the kind of thing that only someone who lives and breathes democracy would say.
On a related note, I'm always amused by people who are strongly against weapons research and manufacturing, especially in the US. It's easy to say "we don't need weapons research" when you are living in a country that possesses the most advanced weapons tech in the world, or even in a country that is a member of the EU or NATO.
When your country can't even manufacture an assault rifle and has to rely on potential future enemies to supply it with arms, that's when weapons research becomes necessary.
Weapons research and weapons manufacturing are different. If a country is just manufacturing weapons to defend themselves then fine (aside from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the spread of those weapons should be held back, they're too dangerous) but weapons research is unnecessarily extending the misery of war. Don't we have enough ways to kill each other? Why do we need any more?
No, I disagree: weapons research and weapons manufacturing are very closely coupled.
How do you choose when to "stop" researching better weapons? And how do you define "enough"? Did we have "enough" in the 1600s? How about the 1800s? Or the early 1900s?
Another point you are somehow overlooking is that we don't live in an ideal world, so if you decide to stop weapons research, someone else (likely an enemy) will ramp it up and eventually have better weapons than you do. The arms race is, by definition, a never ending one, and weapons research is a key part of that process.
If you argue that everyone should agree to stop research, then who gets to decide when to stop? The country with the most advanced weapons?
Finally, with better technology come more precise weapons. Now, we've seen that drones aren't really as "precise" as expected in practice, but they are leaps and bounds less destructive than older tech. We can only improve if we continue researching.
> "How do you choose when to "stop" researching better weapons? And how do you define "enough"? Did we have "enough" in the 1600s? How about the 1800s? Or the early 1900s?"
I would say around the 1970s. At that stage, with the maturity of ICBMs, it seems that we would have the weapons to wipe out the human race in less than a day. How much quicker at killing each other do you want us to be?
> "If you argue that everyone should agree to stop research, then who gets to decide when to stop? The country with the most advanced weapons?"
Yes, the country with the most advanced weaponry needs to be the country that leads the process to slow down the rate of weapon research. The USA leads the world in military spending by quite a way, they could easily slow down without risking their geopolitical position, and if they did so with enough conviction they could cause a economic downturn in military equipment companies, slowing down progress further.
> "Finally, with better technology come more precise weapons. Now, we've seen that drones aren't really as "precise" as expected in practice, but they are leaps and bounds less destructive than older tech. We can only improve if we continue researching."
What we're almost certainly going to see is war that can be conducted remotely. You see the start of it with piloted drones, but this is just the start. When war can be conducted with minimal human involvement in the military, do you think this is going make it easier or harder for a government to decide to go to war?
> I would say around the 1970s. At that stage, with the maturity of ICBMs, it seems that we would have the weapons to wipe out the human race in less than a day.
Nuclear bombs were developed in the 40s. Why not stop there?
> The USA leads the world in military spending by quite a way, they could easily slow down without risking their geopolitical position
Slowing down is not the same as stopping, my friend. My argument is against those who claim that weapons research is categorically wrong and must stop. Trust me, I have seen many people who hold this view in the US.
But let's assume that the US eases the world into stopping completely. From a game theoretic standpoint, can you ever truly ensure that all countries have ceased weapons research? The answer is simply no. Heck, we couldn't even manage to do that with nuclear disarmament: Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Libya, and NK have all illegally (and covertly) developed nuclear weapons at one point or another.
> When war can be conducted with minimal human involvement in the military, do you think this is going make it easier or harder for a government to decide to go to war?
I'm sure that the rules of engagement and warfare will develop as technology improves. Wars could reach the point where both sides operate unmanned vehicles that are only allowed to target each other. The primary goal would then be to cripple your enemy financially and strategically by destroying and/or disabling their unmanned weapons. In other words, targeting human soldiers/operators could become a war crime.
Don't get me wrong: I am against warfare in general. But I am also a realist, and from what I have read and seen, both history and human nature tell us that war will never stop.
What you mean is that the status quo doesn't need protests in support of it. When the status quo is unpopular, protests are certainly important, especially in support of popular positions.
> "Personally, I wouldn't mind sacrificing some of my convenience to support people protesting an issue that is important."
Okay, but what if what is being protested is important to the protestors but not important to you? What if that protest interferes with your day-to-day life? Would you still be supportive of their right to protest?
I agree. You can get a permit to protest. I don't think the politicians listen anymore. They might if you are a corporation funding their campaigns. Protests appear to be losing power over time. Politicians seem to be less and less reachable. We do have a problem here.
Indeed... I'm beginning to think that many protests now are meant to distract the most engaged people from the fact that they have no control. Different circus, same bread.
Spray painting on property that is not yours is vandalism. Vandalism is illegal.
When I said "protest", I meant getting wrongfully arrested for peaceful protesting, e.g., during the civil rights movement. The kind of arrest that involves standing up for what's right. That is something we can all learn from.
Getting arrested for spray painting? That's plain stupid. Maybe Banksy could write a similar op-ed, but I would still think that his argument was stupid.
An arrest can be perfectly legal, despite being unethical. Saying that vandalism is illegal and is therefore an illegitimate form of protest is like saying that the Civil Rights Movement sit-ins were illegal, and were therefore an illegitimate form of protest. It simply doesn't follow.
Do I think that it is an effective form of protest? Not in the slightest. Do I think that it can be categorically ruled out on the basis of legality? Absolutely not.
I agree with you completely: legality definitely is not absolute. But if your protest is illegal for no valid or higher moral reason, then I don't think it's worth the risk.
Going back to the "mistakes are good in college" argument, college students should be smart and mature enough to know which mistakes are actually worth the jail time.
College students should be sufficiently smart and mature, yes. I didn't read the article as saying that college students should deliberately make mistakes for the sake of having made them. Rather, the article was focusing more on the response when inadvisable behavior occurs. Should it be seen as a moral fault on the individual, to be punished, or should it be seen as a societal failure, to be used as a teaching moment?
The problem is that it is very hard to have situational rules as a population size gets very large. For a population of 100, everybody knows everybody else, and so any failing can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Since you see everybody every day, you can tell which failings are habitual, and which are rare. For a population with limited communication, exile is a useful tool, including self-inflicted exile after social shaming.
This is a useful conversation to have, because we are seeing the first generation with fast communication and indefinite storage. Effectively all college students now have everything about them recorded. 40 years down the line, all politicians will have a searchable history. We, as a society, will need to figure out how to deal with this glut of details, as no previous strategy suits the new situation. There are too many people to keep track of, so one can't get a feel for everybody's habitual behavior. There are also too many details available, so the previous strategy of excluding everybody who has a memorable negative detail available is no longer valid.
This turned into more of a ramble than I had expected, but I think it is a complicated issue, which deserves thought.
Yeah. But UC Davis had a bridge outside of town, kind of hidden by vegetation. While there was very little graffiti in the city, that bridge was an open space for graffiti and spray-paint art. I like having public places like that where vandalism is implicitly allowed, so that the rest of us can have nice property.
Banksy can paint on my property because he has something to say. Someone just writing their name needs somewhere else to work on their artistic voice.
Yes, I also like the idea of dedicated public space. It brings out really cool graffiti. For example, I remember seeing a huge mural on the side of an apartment building in Warsaw.
It's not "because he has something to say", but rather "because it's worth a shit ton". I'm sure there are many graffiti artists who have more interesting ideas than Banksy does. Would you be alright having an insightful tag on your wall that's worth nothing more than the insight?
But jail time? Sorry, that's not just a "mistake", that's outright reckless stupidity (obvious exception: protesting civil issues or similar).
Just because you (the author) made a stupid decision and narrowly avoided jail time, does not mean that what you did was a good thing in general.
Following that logic, should we also argue for reckless driving if some CEO of a startup narrowly missed killing someone back in the day? Should we all drive recklessly so that we can "learn from our mistakes"?