David Paul Dorr
writes well:
I once read somewhere a music icon’s grief over the memorial tributes at the Grammy Awards. Somewhere along the way in the reward ceremony, people who have died in the music business are projected on a screen with appropriately sad, but hopeful music. These are always nice tributes, the author states, except for the applause.
People only really clap when someone famous is on the screen. And this all struck the author as something dead serious. They were not clapping for the person who died, they were clapping for their fame.
I can’t help but think of all this at the out-pouring of grief over Steve Jobs. Our memorializing is not real grief or care for Jobs and his family. But our grief is a tribute to what we all worship: the ability to change the world. We don’t care about Jobs. (how could we, unless we knew him?). We love what he accomplished. He was deemed worthy of the secular calling to change the world and was rewarded with power, fame, and riches.
He is I-conic now. Not just because he made great products, built a great business, or had people hanging on his every product launch. He is the patron saint of those who want to change the world and be recognized for doing so. All this reveals a great vacuousness of the human spirit.
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