David McElroy

Apple announced this evening that Steve Jobs is dead. He was perhaps the greatest business leader of our age, and he was a visionary who lived long enough to see much of his vision come to life. He was a hero for me and for many others. He died at the age of 56.

I think this is a good time to listen again to the commencement speech that Jobs made six years ago at Stanford University. In it, he talks about his life and the ways in which he saw things differently after his health problems started. It’s just 15 minutes. It’s worth watching. A quote from that speech that’s even more poignant than it was at the time. We all need to remember this:

‎”Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

I’ve already written extensively about Jobs when he recently retired as CEO. I’m going to miss having someone around who I greatly admired.

Have you seen the maudlin photos that the Wall Street protesters are encouraging people to make? That’s an example on the right. I know they’re supposed to make me feel sorry for these people, but many of them make me feel just the opposite instead.

As a society, we’ve become fixated on the idea that someone “provides a job” for us. It’s as though a job is a good or service that someone produces and delivers to our doorstep. I’d like to suggest that it’s time for people to quit acting like consumers and start acting like people who are eager to figure out what value they can provide to others — that those others are willing to pay for.

Let’s take the woman in this random example here. (You can see the various tear-jerking stories here.) This woman is fairly deeply in debt because she has college degrees that are close to worthless. She has a bachelor’s of fine arts and a master’s degree (presumably in art or art history). I’m sure she got the degrees because she loved the subject. But there’s not much of a market for art historians or for teachers of art history. When economic times are good, schools spend more money on such things, because they can afford extras. Right now, they can barely afford to do essentials. Guess what isn’t in demand?

This woman is apparently angry because she is in debt and isn’t employed by a college, but she seems to be overlooking the fact that she’s the one who make the choices that led to her situation. Nobody forced her to choose to study a subject with almost no market value. Nobody forced her to run up $41,000 in student loans to pay for those worthless degrees. She made those choices on her own.

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With every new generation, there’s some outrage that compels mature adults to get up out of their recliners and shout the current equivalent of, “You kids get off my lawn,” at the teen-aged weirdos. The current outrage to public decency is saggy pants.

When I was a teen-ager, the issue had been longer hair for a couple of decades already. Older people didn’t seem to want to trust kids with hair over their ears, but they slowly adjusted. Eventually, it went out of style. Then came back. Again and again. Fashions are stupid and unpredictable, but they always change.

For some unknown reason, the current craze among a certain segment of youth is wearing pants in such a way that they hang way down. When I see kids dressed like that, I laugh. I laugh even harder when I notice the pretentious looks on their faces that tell me just how hard they’re trying to be cool by trying not to look as though they’re trying to be cool. (Follow that?) But some adults aren’t just laughing. These bozos are in positions of power, so they’re passing laws to do something about the irritation at having to see such idiocy. Sadly, I’m not sure which generation is ultimately acting the silliest about the matter.

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