Steve Jobs and the Apple

           Vs.          

Steve Jobs passed away on Oct. 5 at age 56. “He was on another plane. He reached a level of consciousness that’s beyond that of anyone in modern times”, says Mr. Robert Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford University. The flood of messages that cropped up on facebook, quoting Steve Job's words, certainly attests this fact, as do the self-confessed tears of people. He “transcended the business world to become a pop culture icon”, notes Associated Press of New York.

And this brings me to the question that has tormented me for years, “Whom do we make our icons?” This blog is not about Steve Jobs. Nor is it about his death. This blog is about breaking my silence, on an issue that many would consider too sacrosanct to speak about, in the grave fear of committing blasphemy. By shattering my silence, I am giving voice to a minority that keeps mute for fear of being ostracized by their peers. I am aware that I am courting this danger, or perhaps even greater, risking the ire of a big community of my friends who have been reared by a system to worship the god of technology.

Inside one of the same newspaper (Economic Times) that carries the news of Steve Job’s death there is an editorial with the title, “Diabetes Amidst Undernourishment”, by Neeraj Kaushal from Columbia University. It reads, “ Diabetes and undernourishment – one is an ailment historically linked with prosperity, the other normally afflicts the poor. One is usually a result of high calorie food intake and overfeeding with little exercise; the other is simply a lack of food..........India has an abundance of both the undernourished children and adults with type 2 diabetes. About a third of the world’s underweight and stunted children under the age of 5 live in India. A child less than 5 is almost twice as likely to be chronically underweight in India as in sub-Saharan Africa. We also have the highest number of adults with type 2 Diabetes and their number is growing rapidly – having doubled over the past 10 years. India has a higher rate of diabetes than many European countries with much higher levels of economic prosperity.”

I bet this would not bring many of us to tears, because chronically underweight and stunted children don’t somehow qualify as “pop culture icons.” “No one has come close to Steve in his ability to control and manipulate the media and get what he wants,”  writes Mr. Deutschmann about Steve Jobs, in what appears to me, a tribute dripping with irony.  Yes, Steve got what he wanted. He piped his dreams through a media sedating us to ignore poverty, gross inequality, environmental destruction and well.......stunted and underweight children. For these live beyond the glare of media and therefore beyond the glare of our consciousness. Steve Jobs, an icon, a phenomena..........................is a construct of our consciousness, of a society held in thrall of technology which worships it like a God !! How much I wish, Steve would have grown apples for underweight and stunted children to eat. Of course, that wouldn’t have made him into a “pop culture icon”. I doubt, if he would even qualify as an entrepreneur in that case.

No, I am not indulging in the mere rhetoric of “technology  bashing” or maligning Steve. I am questioning something profound. In putting together these thoughts, I am trying to wake myself up from a mass hysteria. And I have assistance from people like Jerry Mander and Thomas Berry. In The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry describes the entire industrial age as a “period of technological entrancement, an altered state of consciousness, a mental fixation that alone can explain how we came to ruin our air and water and soil and so severely damage our basic life systems.” Berry goes on: “During this period the human mind has been placed within the narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase. Even the most primitive tribes have a larger vision of the universe, of our place and functioning within it, a vision that extends to celestial regions of space and to interior depths of the human in a manner far exceeding the parameters of our world of technological confinement”

Because our vision became so confined, says Berry, we got caught in what he calls “species isolation” that led to “a savage assault upon the Earth such as inconceivable in prior times. The experience of a sacred communion with the Earth disappeared................Such intimacy [with the planet] was considered a poetic conceit by a people who prided themselves on their realism, their aversion to all forms of myth, magic, mysticism, and superstition. Little did these people know that their very realism was as pure a superstition as was ever professed by humans, their devotion to science, a new mysticism, their technology a magical way to Paradise.”

My apologies for spoiling the party for all the savants of technology. Nonetheless, if I manage to do just this, I shall only give myself credit points. Along with Berry I  believe that “our society does not grasp the nature of our fixation.” And that is what needs to be explained. He echoes my thoughts with amazing synchronism when he writes, “Until we have explained this situation to ourselves, we will never break the spell that has seized us. We will continue to be subject to this fatal attraction”

I am absolutely aware that I am typing these words on a computer to an audience on the world wide web. But for me it’s about using a thorn to take out a thorn.

We are enveloped in “artificial environments”, created by a media, perpetually shielding us from an alternate reality.  Our consciousness is held prisoner to the markets where even emotions are a commodity. Our self esteem, our purpose of life is advertised on billboards provoking us to “live life large”. But I guess no one ever proposes to uncover the meaning of these words.

No wonder, today we have created a culture where we disproportionately revere people who make apples we cannot eat !!  And as if this were not enough, make it the world’s most valuable company !!