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poisoning the well | |
December 16th, 2019 | |
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This week I learned that the RSS aggregator I use, tt-rss, is | |
developed by an individual whose personal politics are at odds | |
with my own. This morning I became aware that the creator of the | |
television show, The IT Crowd, appears to be a scumbag. If we look | |
back over the last year or two it's easy to spot Chik Fil A and | |
Harvey Weinstein and a hundred other cases where a person or | |
organization has become pariah. Their works are stained forever. | |
A number of questions came to me after considering our present | |
reality: | |
- Is it universal? Does the idea of individual moral judgement | |
apply the same way to all people? What about companies? | |
- Is this new? Is it a continuous development from some earlier | |
state? | |
- Is it "fair", not to the subject of the moral judgement, but | |
to the works? What about collective works where only a single | |
contributor is a problem? Does their position of authority | |
change the judgement? | |
There's too much to go into in a gopher phlog. I'm not going to | |
write some massive moral treatise here. There's really two bits | |
I'm focused on anyway, so pitter-patter, as they say… | |
First is the question of large collective works, like film. | |
According to some web page I read in passing, which queried data | |
from the top IMDB films, the average crew on a film is about 588 | |
members strong. If we assume that the moral distribution of | |
individuals on a given film is representative of the general | |
population (safe enough, not given a specific film) then we might | |
expect some sort of normal distribution of morality (if such | |
a thing were quantifiable). If one of these individuals were to | |
score at an extreme to one degree or another it will not shift the | |
distribution noticeably. The overall morality of those making this | |
piece of collective art is unchanged. | |
But we punish them, don't we? Many of us will boycott the movie | |
because of what that actor said, or what the director did. We will | |
spite the 587 others on a film for that one person. They have, in | |
effect, poisoned the well. | |
But maybe it's not about the math of morality. Maybe it's because | |
we must take action in the face of injustice. Something we | |
perceive as wrong cannot be allowed to occur, even if our methods | |
will cause harm to others. That sounds silly, doesn't it? It does | |
to me. | |
Maybe it matters more when justice would not be done without the | |
masses acting in protest. If the courts won't prosecute, then the | |
voice of the consumer will blacklist them. Let capitalism rear its | |
power for justice for once, right? | |
Ultimately I think it's harder to let go of something we see as | |
wrong than it is to ignore the damage we cause others. Collateral | |
damage is a shame, but at least we got THAT guy. | |
So yeah, there's some moral ambiguity here in collective works, | |
but what about individual creators? Should everyone boycott | |
tt-rss? Should we avoid using suckless code? Stop listening to | |
somebody's music? Maybe that's easier here. After all, we're not | |
hurting anyone else with this sort of mob justice. | |
There's just so many "what ifs" floating around. What if the | |
despicable person created something that helps people? What if | |
they pioneered a green energy revolution? What if they found | |
a disease cure? What if they make a really good software package | |
for the blind? | |
Yes, on the one hand it is the old debate about whether you can | |
separate art from artist. But there's the question of utility as | |
well. At what point does the good of the work outweigh the bad of | |
the individual. | |
This is where my head has been all morning and I'm not coming up | |
with any concrete answers. That's probably a sign that I shouldn't | |
expect a fixed set of rules to apply. In the case of films, I'll | |
probably keep seeing them. In the case of tt-rss, I will probably | |
jump to another project if I find one comparable. In the case of | |
the IT Crowd, I'll continue to quote and enjoy it and probably use | |
that moment to also inform others around me that Graham Linehan as | |
a shitbag. Double-win, right? |