In what must rival the deaths of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell or the Wright brothers, Steve Jobs, the iconic founder and chief executive of Apple Computer, died this week. For good or for bad, there is little of modern Western culture that Jobs did not touch.
Like many, I felt a personal connection to Jobs as his company’s products had become so integral in my life. When I was seven or eights years old in Rochester, New York, I recall vividly walking into my elementary school’s library and sidling up to what was an Apple II computer. We collectively held our mouths agape looking at a real-life computer in our presence. For thirty or so seconds each, we were allowed to do this or that with the computer. In a very real way, the computer age “for the rest of us” had begun.
Unlike so of my other boys my age, I did not become a computer geek. If I had done so, I would have been the right age to become very wealthy but alas it was not to be. The pre-internet age computer industry was quite varied -- much like the first days of the automobile industry with makers starting up and closing down regularly. For regular people, computers were little more than a very expensive word processor. If we consider what $2,000 would have bought in 1985, it is little wonder why my financially modest parents did not have one until I was long out of the house.
Fast forward several years, 1998 to be exact, my wife and I bought an iMac -- one of the very early ones. At that point, as a first year law student, I had grown accustomed to a “PC” computing environment and bought the Mac for the combination of curiosity and my Mac-snob wife’s sake. We used at it was largely intended -- as an early internet computer.
While I resisted further forays into the Apple world, I relented full stop in early 2002 when my wife began doing freelance design work from home. I researched the various Macs and purchased a high-end Macbook Pro. I also bought what was then a first generation iPod. This time coincided with the onset of Mac OS X, which was an operating system that was far easier for Windows users to adjust.
I became, in very short order, totally hooked.
From that point forward, I have in one variety or another, a plethora of Mac machines. You could say that we were very early “switchers” to what would later become a stampede away from PCs to Macs.
It is hard to explain exactly why using a Mac is so much more satisfying than using a PC. Yes, they have a better-looking design, Yes, they have a feel of quality compared with cheaply made PCs. But it is more than design and quality: as computers have become an extension of our lives, Apple, which makes both the hardware and software, represents a well-oiled closed universe. It is the safe confines of a wholly Apple world where everything works, everything looks nice, and everything is well-made -- and everything is made to work together. Compared to the clumsy world of a Microsoft OS engrafted on any number of machines made by a host of other companies -- with all of the associated licenses and limitations -- Apple is like stepping into another world altogether: a world that is beautiful, integrated and useful.
The appeal of that Apple closed universe -- why it is preferred to the rough and tumble world of variety in the PC world -- says a lot about us. We prefer order even if it is imposed on us. And it works if we have a philosopher king in charge: someone who deeply cares about the brand and quality; someone who wants that closed universe to be as perfect as humanly possible. That philosopher king was Steve Jobs.
In the wake of his death, two recurring thoughts have come to me. First, the liberal media’s love for him -- after all, he was one of them in many ways -- is misplaced for two important reasons. Initially, Jobs proves that the every life can make a difference -- even when that life is conceived in the unmarried womb of a college student. Had Steve Jobs been conceived in 1976 versus 1956, he very likely would never have seen the light of life. Abortion was of course illegal in 1956, and his mother had little choice but to give him life. Steve Jobs, in one small way, proves that adoption is no impediment to great success and that the greatest pioneer of industry in the last one-hundred years likely would have been snuffed out in the womb had he been conceived today. How many other genii are we killing by favoring abortion over adoption? How many Steve Jobs will never get to share the gifts that God gave him because we have a culture that tolerates killing babies in utero? That Jobs never saw that -- that he never became an opponent of an abortion -- is a testament to how blinding the culture of death really is. The other aspect of Job’s life that the fawning liberal media has ignored is that Job’s life is a testimony in fact against the relentless egalitarianism that is peddled by the Left ad nauseum. Jobs was a ruthless genius -- the very epitome of “my way or the high way.” His personality lorded over Apple: he was not for dialogue, for collaboration, for many voices. No, in many ways, Steve Jobs was Ayn Rand’s Howard Rourke -- fanatically committed to his vision with no patience for any contrary view. The genius we celebrate in Steve Jobs is something that was possible only in a vibrantly capitalistic society. So forget the veneer of hippie San Francisco and flower power, Steve Jobs was an SOB capitalist and innovator that would rival any robber barren from the gilded age. Jobs made stuff and he made his way.
Thinking about Jobs, thinking about his type, has lent me to wondering whether his type of single-mindedness, his obsession if you will, is possible in a committed Catholic. Certainly, the great saints were single-minded in their pursuit of the Lord, in their love of the cross; but can someone be both committed to Holy Mother Church also be so single-minded in a secular pursuit? I ask this question with no pretense: I genuinely do not know the answer. We are of course called to be good at what we do; to serve our masters honestly and capably. We are called to be good stewards. But does one lose their soul to pursue a secular goal with such intensity? Is it inevitable?
We could look at the great artists of the world for a similar case study. The analogy falls apart when we consider that the otherworldly demands they put on their output was done in service of the Church. We are glad that Michelangelo was so demanding in creating the Sistene Chapel and we do not reflexively believe that his superhuman demands, in and of themselves, jeopardized his soul. But had he funneled his drive to the creation of the automobile or the telegraph, would we feel the same way? Were not these created things -- albeit indirectly -- a testament to God’s genius? Was the light bulb any less remarkable and important than many works of fine arts? Are fine arts simply elevated because they do not have any utility?
I do not have the answers to the questions I ask. And perhaps I am insulting to great Catholic genii by suggesting that the doggedness of their genius is incompatible with genuine faith. Is a genius like Jobs closer to God than someone like me who is a model of “moderation” (or perhaps mediocrity)? I am not so sure. Perhaps Steve Jobs should have not been so dogged -- but perhaps I should have worked a little harder to stake a claim in the world. One of the key differences between me and Steve Jobs -- at least as I understand the story -- is that I believe in the King of the Universe. I believe in the one who saves. So while I am admittedly not a world-beater, this concept was never a requirement demanded by a merciful God.
St. Thomas, pray for us and pray for Steve Jobs.
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