I get so tired of hearing people denounce the #OccupyWallStreet participants as spoiled hypocrites given that they are walking around using iPhones and iPads and laptops. I really shouldn’t rise up to the bait, but it just amazes me that people can be so intellectually stunted and lazy that they really think this is a valid argument that somehow gets them points.
The most recent example of this was Terence Corcoran’s well-written, yet extremely near-sighted article on Financial Post (http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/10/06/terence-corcoran-apple-under-jobs-was-quintessentially-corporate/). His attempts in a single blow to both eulogize Steve Jobs and the economic system in which he grew his company, and to use Steve Jobs as an example of why the #OWS movement is hypocritical, even childish, strike me as so unusually dense for him that I can only conclude it was either written in a stupor of Capitalist, perhaps even drunken, bloodlust, or is merely propaganda. (Lucky for him, I’m sure he got paid handsomely either way). I encourage people to read the article and form their own opinions, but his premise seems “quintessentially”, to use his word, a vacuous truth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth).
I listened to Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement speech yesterday on the radio and it was one of the most inspiring pieces of oration I think I have ever heard. Nothing Obama has said or is ever likely to say, and I remain an Obama supporter, can match Steve’s wisdom, his charisma at that moment. From hearing his account of squatting in classes at Reed after dropping out as a student I am convinced that Steve was a man who took life by the horns regardless of what came his way.
It is useless to speculate on whether Steve would have been as successful without the current free-market Capitalist system. It is, however, essential to understand that Steve Jobs was unique: he took what life threw at him and used it to his advantage. His attitude, at least as he tells it, was always one of making the best of any situation: when he realized his college career was pointless, he dropped out, lived like a homeless man, and “took classes” anyway; when he got fired from Apple, Inc he started over, built two companies, and rescued Apple from itself in the process; when he was diagnosed with liver cancer he kept going through the initial six months prognosis, through the transplant, through the immune-suppression drugs, building Apple into what it has become during that time.
Steve Jobs was unique and the proof is in the pudding: ask anyone if they can imagine anyone else leading Apple the way Steve Jobs did and you’ll at best get muted responses. The essence of Corcoran’s vacuous truth lies in his thesis, “But he could not have done it outside the corporation-dominated economic system that is American capitalism.” In it and by saying that his success could have only been achieved in that environment Corcoran negates a more provable and indeed proven truth: that Steve Jobs had the talent and the guts to succeed and perform in any environment and under any circumstance.
I wouldn’t get so worked up over this if Cordoran weren’t abusing the memory of Steve Jobs for such patently political objectives, and on such flimsy logical grounds. Give Steve Jobs due credit for what he accomplished, even if it was somehow dependent on the system Corcoran is beholden to, but don’t utilize it as a club to beat up on people with legitimate complaints about the way our system of government has been corrupted. Who cares if protesters down on Liberty Plaza use iPhones, iPods and laptops? You don’t see Tea Party critics lambasting Tea Partiers’ intellectual honesty by pointing out the obvious fact they continue to send their kids to Public School, to cash their Social Security checks, to pay for their health care using the “Evil Government’s” Medicare, and drive on roads and interstates their and everyone else’s tax dollars helped fund (though now I’m starting to wonder if perhaps someone should).
I know these so-called arguments will continue to surface by those who viscerally hate the movement and what it stands for, in other words the bankers, their apologists, and all of those sucking at their collective breast. This is part of the struggle the #OccupyWallStreet protesters face. Though perhaps from a privileged position I stand with them, the Terence Corcorans of the world be darned. I think Steve would too.
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Tags: #OccupyWallStreet, #OWS, #SteveJobs
October 28, 2011 at 1:34 am
I’m glad you’re writing again. I agree that someone with Steve Jobs’ innate talents and skills would probably have thrived under any circumstance – but it would have looked radically different. He might even have managed to create all sorts of innovative technologies but, instead of putting them out in the free market, his work would have been absorbed and utiilized by the system, if we speculate a Jobs in Soviet Russia – or it otherwise would have become part of the collective in some other way. The only thing of Corcoran’s argument that might hold water is that “Steve Jobs ouvre under anything BUT consumer capitalism would NOT have resulted in a trillion little gadgets to be used by protesters – due to their inherent usefulness – so that anti-change people like us can then use this choice against them.”