h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's Moomba today (Labour Day). How ironic that because of Labour Day I loose a day's pay.
If it weren't a public holiday I'd be working the whole day. On Mondays and Fridays I've been replacing a lady who recently left, therefore the work is casual. . .
Oh well! I can do with the holiday. Between that and my usual shifts I'm pretty much working full-time. Something I'm definitely not used to!

That's not what I intended to write in my journal today. This is:
I was watching a TV show and in this show I saw graffiti scrawled onto a cave wall. My first reaction was "How can people do that!" The natural beauty of the cave had been marred.
Then, they showed the same cave centuries in the past. It had cave paintings on the wall.
I suddenly thought. "We've been drawing on walls for almost as long as humans have existed. When did it become wrong?"
I'm not advocating graffiti here. I'm sure I wouldn't want someone writing rude stuff (or even polite stuff) on my wall. Seems to me though, that it's an ancient part of human nature. I'm curious as to when it became a bad thing to do.
We treasure ancient cave paintings done 40,000 years ago. Would we treasure an obscene crude drawing done on a London wall 400 years ago by a street kid? Is it the age that matters or cultural importance? Is an ancient picture of a buffalo on a cave wall as culturally important as say "LBW Alderman" scrawled underneath "Thatcher out!" on a billboard in 1989?

Your thoughts are appreciated.

I recently we to Tasmania, and visited on of it's older towns, Richmond. Here there is a gaol from the very early convict era. On wooden window shutters, and exposed beams, convicts of the time have scrawled their names...some of significance, some not. Now, those wooden structures are artifacts of a long since lost history. Those people no longer exist to tell us what life was like in those cells, but we know they were there.

I do believe graffiti becomes culturally significant over time. I don't know if the present tagging of everything in existance counts, but who knows what social historians 200 years from now will think of those graphic designs.

Ahh, Miztre, you're right on my wavelength!