SEDE VACANTE

what made Steve Jobs so great?
why was he so revered?

you can see it in the way people
flocked to see the unveiling of the latest iPad or iPhone,
like the faithful waiting for a glimpse
of the Supreme Pontiff in St. Peter’s Square.
you can see it in the pontificating pose
of his statue erected at Graphisoft Park
in Budapest.
you can see it in his photographic portrait
on the cover of his authorized biography
by Walter Isaacson, looking like Rodin’s Thinker. 
they read that book like it was
their new Bible, a way to tap into the divine mind
of the visionary so they can be great, like him.

what made him a visionary?
vision is scary.
what made him legendary?
what made him a futurist?
what made him a creative genius?
what made him an inspiring mentor?
what inspires people to believe in a product,
to believe in a market? 

for a society that believes not
in the worship of ministers,
that believes in purging our psyches
of anything sacrosanct
and walking on a demystified path of holiness,
that believes in individual rights and freedoms,
they worshipped him like a spiritual leader, like priestcraft.
he was a capitalist worshipped by his consumers,
a king worshipped by his peasants.
he was a priest of the technological market,
revered as a Catholic bishop.

and when he died,
why did the world lose an amazing human being
and an inspiring mentor?
what made him a success
and not a failure?

in the end, he died
like all of us—from cancer.
we all die of one form of cancer or another—
prostate, breast, lung, or pancreatic.
or even the cancer of poverty, the cancer
of exploitation, or the cancer of debt
because we can’t live within our means,
or the cancer of a lack of spirituality.

he made great products, but
he didn’t make America great.
America is a terrible educator,
and it wasn’t his job to fix it,
but he didn’t care about making Americans
more competitive either.
Steve had the right values to get ahead
when so many of the rest of us have
the wrong ones.
and America teaches us we all can be like that—
if we have the right values, we can all be Steve Jobs.
we have an equal opportunity,
but not an equal outcome,
and few of us will ever be
that kind of genius.

but Steve died at the right time—
he didn’t live long enough to see
his empire shrink.
he died a hero, an emperor.
unlike Bill Gates, who will not die
a visionary or a creative genius.
he will just die a rich man.

(August 8, 2012)