{"id":7647,"date":"2011-10-07T07:00:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/deaconsbench\/?p=7647"},"modified":"2016-09-30T17:36:55","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T21:36:55","slug":"being-great-but-not-good-the-spirituality-of-steve-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2011\/10\/being-great-but-not-good-the-spirituality-of-steve-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Great, but not Good: the spirituality of Steve Jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

His personal philosophy helped shape the company he founded \u2014 and not in ways that were entirely positive.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI think Jobs was incontestably Great, but I doubt you could call him Good,\u201d is how Rod Dreher<\/a> <\/strong>described Steve Jobs, admiring his achievement but noting that a fair assessment of his life and legacy has to include his dark side.\u00a0 CNN<\/a><\/strong> has more:<\/p>\n

The name of Jobs\u2019 company is said to be inspired by the Beatles\u2019 Apple Corps, which repeatedly sued the electronics maker for trademark infringement until signing an exclusive digital distribution deal with iTunes. Like the Beatles, Jobs took a spiritual retreat to India and regularly walked around his neighborhood and the office barefoot.<\/p>\n

Traversing India sparked Jobs\u2019 conversion to Buddhism<\/a>. Kobun Chino, a monk, presided over his wedding to Laurene Powell, a Stanford University MBA.<\/p>\n

Rebirth is a precept of Buddhism, and Apple experienced rebirth of sorts when Jobs returned, after he was fired, to remake a company that had fallen the verge of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe life is an intelligent thing, that things aren\u2019t random,\u201d Jobs said in a 1997 interview with Time, providing a glimpse into his complicated belief system that extends well beyond the Buddhist<\/a> teachings.<\/p>\n

Karma is another principle of the religion, but it didn\u2019t appear to be a system Jobs lived by. If he feared karma coming back to bite him, the sentiment wasn\u2019t evident in his public statements about competitors and former colleagues, calling them \u201cbozos\u201d lacking taste. Those who worked for Jobs described him as a tyrant they feared meeting in an elevator.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d be surprised how hard people work around here,\u201d Jobs said in a 2004 interview with Businessweek. \u201cThey work nights and weekends, sometimes not seeing their families for a while. Sometimes people work through Christmas to make sure the tooling is just right at some factory in some corner of the world so our product comes out the best it can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some engineers who worked tirelessly on the original Mac emerged from the project estranged from their spouses and children. Jobs\u2019 relentless work ethic may have been shaped by some of his dysfunctional family affairs as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s another interesting perspective \u2014 finding similarities between Steve Jobs and St. Ignatius \u2014 right here. <\/strong><\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His personal philosophy helped shape the company he founded \u2014 and not in ways that were entirely positive.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI think Jobs was incontestably Great, but I doubt you could call him Good,\u201d is how Rod Dreher described Steve Jobs, admiring his achievement but noting that a fair assessment of his life and legacy has to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,45],"tags":[823],"class_list":["post-7647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-ripped-from-the-headlines","tag-steve-jobs"],"yoast_head":"\nBeing Great, but not Good: the spirituality of Steve Jobs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"His personal philosophy helped shape the company he founded -- and not in ways that were entirely positive.\u00a0\u00a0 "I think Jobs was incontestably Great, 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