The death of Steven Jobs brought home to me how complicated our world is and how important it is to keep looking for the truth. How important it is to think ...even when I don’t want to.
Jobs was one of the most respected men in the world. He was given away at birth by a Syrian couple. That simple fact, for a moment actually “paused” a virtual civil war in order for Syria to remember their native son.
His contribution to our way of life is already being trumped as “Edisonian.” The “apple” shadows the “light.”
Jobs’ refusal to dance to anyone else’s drum even when he missed a beat is held up as the way to live. The tributes have gone world-wide…viral.
But then I read this, “The New Republic: Steve Jobs, Jobs-Creator?” from National Public Radio). “His surname to the contrary, he did not create a lot of American jobs. During the 1930’s more than 100,000 people worked at Ford’s Detroit plant. That’s more than twice as many people as Apple today employees in the entire world. Would you like to guess how many U.S. based production workers Apple actually had building iPods in 2006, the year the total number of iPods sold jumped from 42 million to 88 million? The U.S. based production workers numbered 30. None of them actually worked for Apple. (They were all chip fabricators.)” Before thinking...I thought…Jobs was no different than most other CEOs of major companies; it’s just too expensive to make products in America for Americans that are spoiled on….good and cheap!
Then I read this. “What Everyone is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs”…an article in Gawker.com. “Jobs could be terrible to people, and his impact on the world was not uniformly positive. Rude, dismissive, hostile, spiteful: Apple employees--the ones not bound by confidentiality agreements--have had a different story to tell over the years about Jobs and the bullying, manipulation and fear that followed him around Apple.” When I read this I thought; so what? Don’t most geniuses have little time or patience with those mortal souls who only slow them down?
Then I read this. “Apple’s success has been built literally on the backs of Chinese workers, many of them children and all of them enduring long shifts and the specter of brutal penalties for mistakes.” That did it for me. I’ve spent a lifetime going ballistic every time I hear or see someone with less power being bullied, humiliated or injured. TIME TO WRITE A BLOG!!! Then, as usual… I managed to think, to say calm down…think! It didn’t work. I began to Google --“good reasons for child labor.” (I know, pretty bizarre, but it’s what 6 years in the “Think Tank” has taught me to do.)
This is what I found. “Gap Admits Possible Child Labor Problem” (ABC WORLD NEWS, London, Oct. 28 2007)…10 to 13 year olds working as “virtual slaves in filthy conditions, with a single, backed-up latrine and bowls of rice covered with flies. They slept on the roof.”
This is what I found: “Bitter Harvest: Child Labor in the Cocoa Supply Chain” (Jantizi Sustainalytics, June 2010, by Lotte Griek). “Thousands of children in Western Africa are trafficked and forced to work on cocoa plantations.”
This is what I found: “Nike Shoes and Child Labor in Pakistan” (www.1american.edu/ted/nike.htm) . “If “beaten workers” and “child labor” get added to their list, then Nike’s greatest asset will be abused children.” At this point I thought I knew what I thought. But then:
This is what I found. “What Happens When at Work”, SarahAlam, (www.learn.org.au/clp/archive/write92.htm.) “Above all the child (11 years old) was beaten badly at home. When her step brothers’ behavior and attitude became unbearable, she ran away from her house, she took a train from Lahor to Karachi, she had some money, which she had managed to earn. She was admitted in Edhi Home where hundreds of children are admitted daily throughout the country due to the same reasons or reasons similar to them. When someone asked the girl, does she want to go back to her house…she says, I know they will never come for they don’t love me?”
Then, this is what I found. (TED Case Studies) “But why is it unconscionable for a poor country to allow child labor? Pakistan has a per-capita income of $1,900 per year – meaning that the typical person subsists on barely $5 per day. Is it a revelation -or a crime - that some parents willingly send their children off to work in a factory to survive?
Then, this is what I found. “The Chinese Sex Bomb” (http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Chinese-Sex-Bomb-64719-shtml) “….by 2020 there will 37 million more Chinese men than women…undesired girls were commonly abandoned...in societies that practice genocide, young women are treated even less humanely as they become scarcer.”
So that’s when I thought…I can’t hate Steven Jobs, nor the GAP stock holders, nor the Nike consumers, or the chocolate eaters. I can only force myself to hold up a very blunt mirror, mirror on the wall. The mirror says, Garland the answer is as simple as rain. Throw away the Ipod, Iphone, Nano, Apple laptop, your daughter’s GAP clothes, your wife’s NIKE shoes and all three of you stop eating any kind of chocolate…and try not to think about what happens to the corporate-abused children who are sent home to be parent-abused-children.
BUT…I don’t want to. I don’t want to THINK…about it anymore. But, at least…I don’t hate Steven Jobs anymore.