There’s a reason for this.
There were two pieces of major news last night: the growing (positive) unrest at the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the world’s reaction to the death of Steve Jobs.
Let’s start with Steve. After he died, he got the best public eulogy anybody could hope for. The magazines that covered his industry turned themselves fully to remembering the good he did. The man who became his business arch-rival in this life issued succinct but moving praise. Millions of people, many of whom were using products that he created, set up sidewalk altars and flooded social networks. People you’ve never seen display a shred of emotion were being poignant, mournful, philosophical. It didn’t become maudlin, which was a miracle in itself. Because we really did miss this guy. We started missing him after he left Apple for the second time to get a mystery organ transplant, and kept on missing him, and we told ourselves he’d be around for quite a bit longer. Newspapers and magazines wrote their obituaries in advance, but kept them hidden.
As news of Steve’s death spread through the growing ranks of protesters filling the streets of Manhattan, casual observers—we have not left you for long, cruel cynicism—noted the “irony” of these young people who say they wanted a revolution tweeting their sadness over the loss of Jobs, a man who controlled one of the most powerful corporations in the world, was a majority stakeholder in the largest media corporation in the world, and made millions and millions of dollars, partially on the back of sweatshop labor and relentless supply-chain optimization that, to be sure, alienated many.
Sure, maybe it was absurd. But what happened last night is a sign of the true world we live in. At the risk of sounding like a loon: America is controlled by corporations. America is a corporatist state. Corporations, not politics or religion or art or shamanism or altruism, run this country. And they can only do that because they have become the vocabulary for public thought, as well. When Jobs died, people thought of a little apple symbol with a bite mark taken out of it. I know I did. I also thought of iPods and iPhones and the Mac I’m typing on, but even those have become symbols of this corporate zeppelin that hovers along, a glowing Apple in the sky.
In our time, as the head of one of our corporations, Jobs attained something that politicians, revolutionaries and religious leaders no longer do. He presented a bold vision and dared people to follow. We did, the only way we coddled non-thinkers know how: by staring at screens and spending our money. Just like, at the tragedy that marked the beginning of this decade, George Bush told us to do.
We did the same thing for the president, before he was President. We memorized the Obama for America logo and studied the optimism on his face and watched him on jumbotrons and forked over campaign cash. I mean, I did. Because Obama was running on a wavelength we understand: a brand, a tagline, somebody else doing the work and ferrying us to greatness based on nothing more than our pledged support.
As president? He failed to inspire. He must serve that model, not use it himself. We’re just seeing a glimmer of the old fierce Barack reemerge, now that there are only 13 months until the next election…
People gather in the streets. People who want to sneer at them say, where are your demands. Where’s your itemized list. You are a hypocrite because of this, this, and this. You use an Apple, ha. You use the restroom? You know who built that restroom? Et cetera.
Well, as Ken Burns put it a couple nights ago, we are a nation of hypocrites. Always mostly have been. And when something is this pervasive, when corporate power and branding and personal identity forged on brand allegiance are so strong that they reshape the directions of our lives, the way we mourn, and the people in whom we can find inspiration… we can’t simply step onto the street and escape it. Of course these people are hypocrites, and will be for a long time.
But there’s something that people tend to forget. At the root of it, we’re all human beings. And Steve Jobs was an unusual human being, one of the hardest-working and best we’ve collectively known about in at least a couple generations. He also, by luck or something else, had a profound impact. He made it into Spaceship Earth as an animatronic young man in a garage before he died, for heaven’s sake. He was also, though, a product of the times. Which isn’t always a bad thing: he was born into an America that fostered innovation like no other country could. He was able to take to the marketplace and sell his ideas, then jump aboard other ideas, freely lending financial and intellectual support. That’s American. That’s the good side.
For the darker, less certain part, look to the reaction. How many of us are actually out there innovating like he did, spending hours in a garage doing anything, getting up in front of a room of people wearing an outfit we decided to make our personal trademark, introducing the things we created in such a proud, clever and smiling way that people can’t helped but be moved by the sheer production of us all? It’s easy to tweet our gratitude. Soon, we can even send a printed condolence card to 1 Infinite Loop, using our iPhones and $2.99.
Meanwhile, protesters in New York use Facebook, designed to sell them ads, to trash-talk corporate greed. They use iPhones, made by some suicidal worker in Shenzhen, to summon their friends. And yes, they mourn the leader of a corporation, who climbed the highest mountain of American success and spoke to us from up there. He said, “buy my stuff,” but there was a quieter message too. “This success doesn’t matter,” he seemed to be saying. “Get dirty. Unbrand. Innovate.” We only heard this when it was publicized by the company in a controlled manner, because he wasn’t our friend. He was a company. I’d like to think he was sincere when he publicly called out those who live by others’ ideas—but we only understood that message when it served as a corporate catchphrase.
Corporate bodies will always subvert or ignore such messages, much as the DNC or MoveOn.org are eager to lay claim to the Occupy protests. But remember: we’re all just people. You will die. We’re all people. You will die. To paraphrase once more: Think differently.
Update: let’s remember, too, that before he was a CEO titan, Jobs was a big ol’ counterculture hippie, dropping acid and getting his food from the Hare Krishna temple. Perhaps now we’re moving back in that direction. Andrew Sullivan has a good piece on that “hippie capitalist” phenomenon.