I am happy to have found these simple and clear words to describe one reason(there are others) for my cricism, discontent and disassociation with Apple and its products. My arrows are aimed at Apple because it is a prominent company that is perceived to be a thought leader. Yet there are many companies that deserve this criticism. As in many of my recent posts and thoughts, these words come from Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics:
“So my trip today is only happening because people are doing jobs they don’t want to do, for the sake of their survival. That’s what “making a living” means. A threat to survival is, essentially, a gun to the head. If I force you to labor for me under threat of death, then you are my slave. To the extent we live in a world that runs on the labor of many people doing jobs that are beneath human dignity, not just in airports of course, but in factories, sweatshops, plantations, and nearly everywhere else, we live in a slave world. Anything we obtain from the labor of slaves comes at an insupportable spiritual cost: a painful void or disintegrity deep within that makes us ashamed to look people in the eye.
Can we bear to shrug this away and resign ourselves to living in a slave world? I want to be able to look every man and woman in the eye, knowing that I do not benefit from their indignity.
… The vast majority of our “goods and services” are made by people who only do so for the money, who only do their work because they “have to.” I want to live in a world of beautiful things created by people who love what they do.“
It is difficult to argue Apple’s technological beauty. One may also claim that Apple’s products enable other beautiful social and moral expressions – and that too may be true … but all those expressions, and Apple’s products are inexorable tainted by a social and moral ugliness embodied in their production. Also, by focusing on and creating a fashion trend based on technological beauty Apple has also distorted our shared understanding and ability to perceive beauty.