It's a habit of the internet diaspora to label a person either good or bad; binary, with no wiggle room to model the complexity of psychology.
Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. He did some awful things and some great ones. That's that. It neither makes him a monster nor a saint. It makes him a... Human.
I doubt this is specific to the internet. Seems to me that people have always had a tendency to separate everyone else into "good people" and "bad people".
As I see it, people put label on things/others as a form of self-protection.
In layman's logic, someone who's already committed something bad in the past are likely to commit it again. Based on that logic, it's not completely unreasonable to use a critical point of someone's history to define that individual.
Of course it might be unfair, but the cost of error testing can be high, and your empathy might be exploited. Plus, if someone indeed did something wrong in their past, maybe they're the one who should put in the effort to redeem themselves.
That said, while I think it's not fair to judge someone based on few decisions they've made, I also don't blame labelers when they have good reasons.
I believe this is mostly true. When we - the broad-brush, general "we" - try so hard to vilify others, I find myself questioning the motives for doing so and it often appears to be self-serving. Looking carefully at the crises unfolding in our world, one can see that we - humans - are not the grand, omnipotent domain -rulers we believe we are. I think the bigger question for Mr Jobs and the rest of us is, what do we truly value and how do we honour and stay true to those values?
> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey.
Not the lightest of shades though, to many people?
I'm sure there is good in Alex Jones. It is very well buried if so, but it probably does exist. I still feel justified in never wanting to interact with him and wishing the rest of the world didn't have to either.
While we shouldn't be completely dogmatic and only consider someone's bad points¹, and I wouldn't say that Jobs was at all actively evil², the fact that someone isn't the blackest-of-black pantomime evil, or the gaudiest-of-gaudy moustache-twirling pantomime evil, doesn't mean we can't discuss their bad points. It might actually help other arseholes who don't realise that they are being a problem, if they see the discussion and think “hang on, I do that, maybe I'm upsetting people too, perhaps I should try a different tack”.
----
[1] or conversely only their good points: Churchill was undoubtably what we needed as a prime minister during and in the run up to war, a good family man by most accounts, supported some good social reforms, ete., but he also had some questionable views on race (less so by the standards of the time than now, but still), supported the use of chemical weapons, and so forth,
[2] just a bit of an arsehole by many accounts, and presided over a company that at the time³ benefited from what we now call modern slavery
[3] and to this day doesn't have a clean record on that count
Also to Churchill. Are you saying it is fine to talk about good things, but not bad things, in a person's make up & history? Do you feel that is particularly just/balanced/other? Balance comes from truth and acknowledging nuance, not cherry-picking either way.
Hating Steve Jobs fits tidily in the Anti-Apple rhetoric: which started precisely when they were pulled into the smartphone wars.
When I look at the criticisms of Steve Jobs or Apple, I look at it in context of the life of people and other businesses, and it takes a lot of double standards to make the argument land one way “he’s satan” or the other “he’s god’s gift”.
It's why when I hear Steve Jobs/Apple is evil, I hold it with the same credibility as people that say Steve Jobs/Apple are the greatest. I.E. With no credibility whatsoever.
This is really ridiculous. I am definitely someone who would fall into the category of “zealous Apple fan” but Steve Jobs was clearly an asshole of the highest order. Read the Walter Isaacson biography or his daughter’s memoir, Small Fry. Lisa Brennan Jobs has no reason to peddle “anti-Apple rhetoric”. She has a vested interest in the opposite! But her book tells her story about growing up with a massive asshole for a father.
The problem here is that I’ve brought up a scenario: people who frame Jobs as 100% one way or another (just like some people
frame Apple as one way or another.)
So what do you do? Frame him as one way - in this case in a bad light. Exactly as I stated some people do.
And what? You’re upset that I don’t value your opinion on the matter because you can’t process inconvenient shades of grey.
Sure quote Lisa, I could come back
and quote J Ive - because different people have had different experiences with him. It merely proves that shades of grey exist.
Still you seem incapable of seeing that people have different views of him. That perhaps he was good in some ways, awful in others.
Hence why I will never pay any credit to people who can’t look at, and pay appropriate credit to all of the information. Everything exists in a shade of grey.
> because different people have had different experiences with him
This is true, but also highlights an important asymmetry. Somebody who is an asshole only to some people is really an asshole all the time. They're just a smart asshole, aware of the need to secure others' cooperation or more generally manage others' opinion of them. By contrast, a nice person is no worse than neutral to (within epsilon of) everyone. They don't need to manipulate others into being allies.
> Everything exists in a shade of grey.
Both sides, eh? Even grey has different shades. Yes, we should consider all the information and reach nuanced conclusions, but there's nothing wrong with recognizing that someone's "default setting" was to treat others poorly and that others should not try to emulate them. The "brilliant asshole" archetype, of which Jobs was very much an exemplar, has done immeasurable harm to our industry, and a few stealth-PR "revelations" don't change that.
I'll say it once more: I don't hold value to opinions which need to place people/things into these absurd good/bad columns. It's naive, especially when one can trivially find opposing examples.
So do what works for you though, I really don't care - that's my point. I care about people who can hold a nuanced view, they're the ones who are going to inform me without some adopted bias coming into play. Deliberately filtering the available information to create a convenient strawman is cherrypicking.
Being able to have a backbone and say a person did good and bad things and articulate clearly what those things are takes courage. Especially when the bandwagon has decided on one way or another.
In this case we're talking about Steve Jobs, so I'll also restate it: People who act like this man was god's gift are similarly holding a view I don't value. I actually said that in my original comment, so you can clearly see my view here. Whether you're choosing to make him out to be all good, or all bad is creating a false image, a lie.
Now perhaps you might be asking? What's so bad about a little lie, why shouldn't a person just round off these people into good or bad boxes and call it a day, isn't that easier.
No, because such behaviours are a slippery slope. Perhaps your own personal life is what someone else would classify as deeply and morally wrong. Then perhaps you'd be the one to hope that others don't throw you into the trash based on the one-line assessment of a stranger.
> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. He did some awful things and some great ones. That's that. It neither makes him a monster nor a saint. It makes him a... Human.
This statement is a truism; it's valid for every person, and it doesn't contain any information.
Based on the information publicly available, my assessment is that he had a narcissistic personality disorder. People with such illness are certainly not in the ballpark of mass murders, but they're definitely very damaging to other people, and they are generally labelled as "bad people". What saves Steve Jobs in the eyes of the public is that he had, without any doubt, exceptional talents.
Since he's dead (and he hasn't been diagnosed by a specialist), there will never be certainty, however.
In NO way anyone is making a comparison of Steve Jobs to a dictator. The original post was claiming:
> It's a habit of the internet diaspora to label a person either good or bad
> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey.
i.e. the completely correct but also completely useless claim that there is no person who is absolutely evil or absolutely good . What the analogy is trying to do here is to say "OK, so you don't think Hitler is absolutely evil?", not "OK, so you don't think Steve Jobs is Hitler?".
Since they’re long dead, little is lost by labeling them evil. But the closer they are to our present time, the more we must sacrifice by declaring someone an anathema. Worst of all is living people, of course.
Those are extreme exceptions. Steve Jobs and the others you mentioned are not even in close leagues. That was my point, we try to judge everyone with the same yardstick and divide them in strict binary buckets. By that logic, Steve Jobs would either belong to same category as either Hitler or Gandhi.
Are they exceptions? I'm sure they had normal families and lives prior to their murderous transitions.
My point is be careful how much you choose to let people get away with a "they're just human" pass. Some people deserve the labels. For anyone that worked with Steve I'm willing to bet they think he deserves the arsehole label they give him.
There's something to be said about the system that allowed that to happen, and the people who made that system possible. I can't expect a person who is fearing for their life to make the most rational and compassionate decisions.
Slander? It's factual that he used his money to get to the front of the line for an organ donation. It's possible someone in Tennessee died because a foreigner took the liver he deserved.
> Jobs couldn't pay for an organ. Nor could he pay to cut the queue. But what someone with Jobs' resources could do, according to liver transplant surgeons and ethicists, is to use money and mobility to improve the odds either by going to an area of the country where there are more organ donors, or by signing up at multiple transplant centers.
> "It's not for anybody but the rich. It's called multiple-listing, a practice some would say is unethical," said Arthur Caplan, co-chair of the United Nations Task Force on organ trafficking and chair of the department of medical ethics at University of Pennsylvania.
And do you think if you every other human being and put them in his position at that time, do you think they would behave better or worse? Be honest with your answer.
you mean he was selfish? I'm pretty sure this is widespread trait among humans. Let's say if people were in the same situation as him with FU money and the ability to do that, I'm pretty sure most would do exactly what he did.
If you had the money and desperately needed a liver transplant, you’d do the same. Or try to.
Disclaimer: I don’t know if the statement you made is factual or otherwise, but if the system let him do it, then I don’t see the point in expecting him to be altruistic.
The American healthcare system, and capitalism in general, tells us that richer people have more right to healthcare than poorer people. Even when supply is fixed (say land), we distribute it based on the ability and willingness of someone to pay, not on need.
the organ collection does not follow any capitalist principle. You can't sell your own organs even if you wanted to. So thats a pretty bad point to make.
> Jobs couldn't pay for an organ. Nor could he pay to cut the queue. But what someone with Jobs' resources could do, according to liver transplant surgeons and ethicists, is to use money and mobility to improve the odds either by going to an area of the country where there are more organ donors, or by signing up at multiple transplant centers.
> "It's not for anybody but the rich. It's called multiple-listing, a practice some would say is unethical," said Arthur Caplan, co-chair of the United Nations Task Force on organ trafficking and chair of the department of medical ethics at University of Pennsylvania.
Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. He did some awful things and some great ones. That's that. It neither makes him a monster nor a saint. It makes him a... Human.