Steve Jobs: The Perfect Deity for a Culture of Desperately Insecure and Superficial Consumers

Steve Jobs revolutionized the repackaging and delivery of more and crappier media to people with hundreds of dollars to spend on the emperor's new information skins. What a pioneer! He helped so many desperately middle class folks watch yet another James Cameron abortion on four-inch screens. He saved so many technologically indigent hipsters from the tragic indignity of not having wireless devices that doubled as  pretend beer mugs or cigarette lighters. Most importantly, he gave millions the opportunity to feel smug about their choice of meaningless tech. Steve Jobs understood the soul of America, and he exploited it as well as (if not better than) any soda company, fast food joint, auto company or clothing manufacturer.

The soul of America is as follows: The false expression of self and superiority through the mass purchase of whatever is best marketed as new, better and different.

That's it, peeps. That's all. That's what we're about in this culture. Jobs knew it just like Pepsi, Nike and BMW know it. We're all bleating little sheep whose sense of self worth is overwhelmingly determined by how much and what kind of crap we own. This is nowhere more apparent than in the tech industry, where companies fiercely compete for your attention(DD), while there are very few actual qualitative differences between products, the religious arguments of their respective cults notwithstanding. Lost in this fight for your superficial souls is the ugly fact that what skin you put on superficial inane crap doesn't change the fact that it's superficial inane crap. You're still an idiot for watching Avatar or Fast and Furious, regardless of the device on which you watch it, and you're still a rude asshole talking on the phone while your cashier serves you, regardless of whether you're talking on an iPhone or a Droid. You're still a smelly nerd for playing World of Warcraft, no matter what souped-up 21st century version of a muscle car you use to propel your nerd-dom.

Again, that's just who we are: chimps impressed and possessed by shiny new toys. Jobs was a smart chimp who did an effective job packaging new toys to play the same old stupid games. I'm sorry for anyone who dies of cancer, or of any other painful and incapacitating condition, but I'm not going to pretend Jobs was anything but the latest snake oil salesman with his finger on the pulse of our collective and vapid greed. Our desperation has become unquiet, but it's not much different that what Thoreau recognized. Good thing we have piles of morebetterdifferent crap to distract us.

much peace