“Lord Sacks said that advertising only made shoppers aware of what they did not own, rather than feeling grateful for what they have,” Jonathan Wynne-Jones and Martin Beckford report for The Telegraph.
“He insisted that a culture in which people cared solely about themselves and their possessions could not last long, and that only faith and spending time with family could bring true happiness,” Wynne-Jones and Beckford report. “The Chief Rabbi’s comments are likely to raise eyebrows because he singled out for blame Jobs – the co-founder of Apple who died last month – by likening his iPad tablet computers to the tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses.”
Wynne-Jones and Beckford report, “Speaking at an interfaith reception attended by the Queen this week, Lord Sacks said, ‘The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, i, i, i. When you’re an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about ‘i,’ you don’t do terribly well.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Advertising’s function is to describe or draw attention to a product, service, or event in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance, not to spread grateful feelings of Thanksgiving among God’s wonderful children.
Now that we’ve got the semantics settled, more importantly: Neither Steve Jobs nor anyone else who creates products for sale is to blame for self-centeredness and/or materialism. The blame for that lies with parents, teachers, and, yes, rabbis and their ilk. If all your kids care about are iPads, Mercedes, flat screen HDTVs, and McMansions, then you (parents, teachers, rabbis, etc.) failed your children. Not Steve Jobs.
Let’s apply the esteemed rabbi’s “logic” to another case in order to test its validity. We’ll use one he should know: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Applying the rabbi’s “logic,” when the rabbi encounters someone who covets his neighbor’s wife, the rabbi would have to blame God for creating her.
Dear rabbi, your logic sucks.
Who’s to blame? Look directly in the mirror, buddy boy.
Finally, regardless of who deserves blame, why does a so-called man of faith feel it’s proper to publicly piss on a dead man’s grave?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
If ‘i’ was meant as first person personal pronoun, it would have been spelt with a capital ‘I’.
Lenin was right: religion is opium for the people. The good rabbi inhaled too much of the stuff it would seem.
If Apple followed all the language conventions, their late 90s slogan would have been “Think differently.”
“iMac” may have meant “internet Mac” back when first introduced, but things change. iPods clearly were not internet devices until the Touch came out six years later, they indicated a personal device.
Slam the rabbi for many reasons, including misusing the possessive nature of the “i” to suggest selfishness, but Apple clearly uses “i” to give things personal touch these days.
I seldom have reason to save a story for future reference but on this occasion I feel compelled to do so as a matter of course. MDN I am absolutely ‘Gob smacked’ at your response to the good Rabbi’s comment with such, logical and articulate brilliance. Wow!
MDN, lighten up. You been a little over-the-top lately.
MDN as (almost) always….SPOT ON!!!
Rabbi or not, that guy is an idiot.
I don’t care if you’re a rabbi or Popeye – get off my Mac site.
Great response MDN with keeping it real. Just because someone is supposedly closer to God than the rest of us, doesn’t excuse him from bothering to have some class.
Being in the House of Lords doesn’t of course mean being closer to God—UNLESS one happened to be present when the explosives Guy Fawkes was guarding (in the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605)—HAD gone off. Closer to God indeed.
Religion’s function is to make you feel guilty for consuming so you instead give your money to the religion.
Being Jewish I am actually ashamed of the Rabbi’s words, of how he blasted at somebody who has recently died. Where were you when he was alive, Rabbi?
Even if there were truth to his words, why Steve? Mark Zukenburg steals billions of precious hours from people’s lives, wouldn’t he be a better example for this?
Rabbi Sacks, more is expected from you.
MDN’s take, final question, is spot on! Good for you!
We have radical Muslims, radical Christians, and now a radical Jew! What else is left?
I can’t imagine caring about a professional mystic’s opinion on any subject at all.
-jcr
Pretty simple principle here.
love people, use things.
It’s not love things use people.
It’s not things that’s the problem but the twisted way society views things and people.
Well said mdn
This from Rabbi Sacks, purveyor of the ultimate vapourware. There is nothing moral about living a fantasy and peddling a lie.
Lord Sack sounds like a nut, but I hope not, because then he’d just be a nut Sack.
MDN’s take is excellent. But to take the rabbi’s comment and extrapolate left vs right ideology is ridiculous. There are some people on the forum who can turn to Ten Commandments into a left vs right debate
Listen up, folks. When I think of the letter i, I think of the tab character – the old ASCII char(9). The phrase “Number 9” is repeated 15 times in “Revolution Number 9” on the Beatles’ White Album. We are taught, as the Rabbi should be aware, in Kabbalah that there fifteen energy centers/contact points and that the 9th is “Pleasant”. Steve Jobs was Really Into the Beatles; the chances are 9 in 15 that in naming Apple devices beginning with the letter i, he was actually sending a coded message to consumers that “these devices are Pleasant”. Right Here was the mechanism of his reality distortion field, which clearly operates so very effectively, and also explains the constant use of the word “magical” by Apple presenters and advertisers. OK, he wasn’t Jewish, he was Buddhist: all the more reason to practice Jewish mysticism, since Buddhism doesn’t do advertising.
Mumbo Jumbo? After reviewing these comments…
I think not.
Chief Rabbi? There’s no such thing in the mainstream Jewish sects, only the super-orthodox groups have a chief Rabbi. So obviously this Rabbi is a super-orthodox type, which is as much a fundamentalist as any other fundamentalist, out of touch with mainstream society.
I’m sure, the fact that Steve’s father is a Syrian Muslim had no impact in the rabbi’s thoughts.
I doubt that it was based on prejudice. You don’t need to involve yourself in such convoluted thinking to arrive at a more likely conclusion. Steve was an iconic figure who really trancended politics and religion. You may think of him having a Syrian heritage but, that is not of any particular significancev to the vast majority of people.
I think it was based on being out of touch and pickiing the most high pofile person ever associated with products treasured worldwide.
If he has any kids they will have ipods, ipads iphones if not now, then shortly after they leave home.
I think you are just too generous to this rabbinical zealot. All he wanted was his 15 minutes of fame. For sure, he got that. But then he would just be consigned to the heaps of ignominy that his elk deserve.
Translated into plain English: “People aren’t donating money like they used to, and we need to get our income back up!”
I think it’s high praise to liken iPad 1 and 2 to the biblical tablets.
Are we a consumerist society yes. Was Steve to blame no.
The fact that we may be a world of consumers doesn’t preclude the possibility of extending a hand to others.
It is not an either or proposition, or at least it doesn’t have to be.
I think it would be better for the Rabbi to stick to his area of expertise.
That said, I think all religion is unnecessary and often not helpful.
People that don’t think Advertising is a powerful tool of control, need to wake up. Yes, we have free will, but on the other hand the science of psychology and buying behaviour is well studied and documented. We can be and are subtly coerced into making poor choices. Not as individuals, but as groups.
There can be no other explanation for “Axe Body Spray” or breakfast cereals! 🙂
I’ve seen countless Axe Body Spray commercials and never felt compelled to buy the product. I do eat breakfast cereal but not the unhealthy sugary kind that get advertised. I usually eat the more healthy kind that I’ve never seen an advertisement for.
Lord Sacks… HAHA… what a stupid arrogant name… and he complains about Steve Jobs calling his contribution to the Tech world selfish!?!
So being the chosen one is not?
I am not surprised when this comes from a religious person.
Lord Sacks is the spiritual head of the United Synagogue, the largest synagogue body in the UK. His tittle is not self appointed or even a religious tittle. He was knighted in 2005 for services to the community. When you are knighted in the UK you acquire the tittle of Lord.
also, the title
LOL yeah I suppose I was typing too fast.
So Apple has sold about 250 million iOS devices and has an install base of 50 million Macs.
And Judaism has enlisted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups) about 18 million followers. Think he’s jealous?
Now, now, let’s not get our marketshares mixed up here.
😉
teasing