Steve Jobs: A Legacy of Creativity and Fatherlessness
Like the rest of the world, I’ve been fascinated with the life and death of Steve Jobs. Jobs – founder of Apple and iEverything, will go down as one of history’s greatest inventors and creative geniuses.
Personally, as writer and leader of a newer non-profit, I admired him from afar. I love the way that Jobs could bring a concept from idea to production. Anyone can have great concepts / great ideas. Just go to Detroit and see the concept car from every major car company. Fascinating. But something always seems to happen between concept and production. The sharp edges of concept are dulled, blunted, and vanilla-ized. Risk gives way to safety. To familiarity. To fear. And in the end, the Taurus still looks, well… just like a Taurus.
But not with Jobs.
He could ruthlessly bring his concepts, like the iPhone, from idea to production. Only true creatives can do that. This is the reason for Apple’s legendary success. Jobs genius ideas turned into genius creations. Over and over again. Jobs vision forged the way for a new generation of creatives, people inspired to bring ideas to life.
Jobs touted technology as a way to lessen the Fall, the curse of work that was laid upon Adam (and all of us) in the Garden. Apple’s logo was the bitten apple – the symbol of fallen humanity. Jobs believed technology could make work more simple. And more beautiful. In some ways, his creations did lesson the curse. In this way, Jobs was both cultural architect and redeemer.
Jobs was more than a creative genius and merciless leader. Much more. His personal story is complicated and somewhat tragic. Shortly after his birth, he was given up for adoption. His father, John Jandali found out that Steve was his son in 2005 and periodically sent emails to him, but never heard back. They never met. (See today’s article in the WSJ – “For Job’s Biological Father, the Reunion Never Came.” http://bit.ly/osefur)
Steve Jobs official biography by Walter Isaacson is coming out in a couple of weeks. Since his death, it has been #1 on Amazon. I’m looking forward to reading it. Apparently, Jobs gave unprecedented access to Isaacson, access to his otherwise private and secret personal life. When Jobs was asked why he did this, he simply replied,
“Because I want my kids to know who I was.”
7 Responses to “Steve Jobs: A Legacy of Creativity and Fatherlessness”
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Good thoughts. Perhaps a legacy of the power of adoption!
I admire Jobs’ creativity as well. What do you think the impact of Jobs’ fatherlessness was on his life? Do you think his work would’ve been different if he had a meaningful relationship with his dad?
Just curious.
Yeah its hard to know Matthew. Especially not knowing him. Sometimes fatherlessness can make us drivers – or workaholics – living in light of his ghost. Hell bent on trying to please him. It will be interesting to see what his bio says.
Steve Jobs never established a relationship with his biological father, but he sure as hell had a father: Mr. Jobs. The above writing and comments seem to assume that Jobs suffered from some kind of fatherless state but that is not at all the case. He was close to and loved his parents, especially his dad. Mr. Jandali played no role in Jobs’ life post-conception, and is not the cause of any sense of fatherlessness. Jobs didn’t have any contact with his biological family until he was in his late 20s. He did not suffer from fatherlessness! A more relevant comment/article topic would have been to examine how Jobs himself denied paternity and in effect abandoned his first child for many years. Only in that sense does Jobs fit the model discussed on this blog.
Just because he had a good “father figure” come into his life doesn’t mean he wasn’t impacted by the absence of his biological father. It’s even possible that this had an impact on his choosing to abandon his own son. I think Sower’s doesn’t make any assumptions…instead he says he’s interested in hearing what Jobs’ biography says on these topics.
Yeah – I was focusing less on Jobs father-situation and his quote about why he allowed this book to be written. Because ‘he wanted his kids to know him.’ To me, that was a tragic statement – from an absent father. That is why I said his legacy was creativity and fatherlessness.
Children who are adopted are not fatherless. A fatherless child has no father or “father figure” at all. There are men out here in the world stepping up and fathering the fatherless.