| Soulless Monsters
I talked to fellow philosopher* Roger Born (Critical Thinking) yesterday about Adobe and companies. ("Talked" meaning E-mailed.)
I had written him mentioning a perplexing problem with the new Illustrator 9. It regards how to crop an Illustrator drawing using masks, which have changed character from version 8 to 9, which suddenly seemed to mash all layers in the file together in one. And the solution to this problem is NOT in the manual, I have looked thoroughly. So I called the Adobe support number here in UK. And I talked to a "supporter" who knew less about Illustrator than I do (and I am a beginner). His best advice was to use the crop tool. There is no crop tool in Illustrator. He talked to his colleagues, and he looked in the manual. The manual to Illustrator 7 was all he had! It all ended with him telling me to "experiment with masks". Great, thanks.
I finally found the solution at MacIntouch.com, which compile problems and solutions from user to user.
Imagine how much Adobe makes in sales in the UK. And they cannot afford to educate their support staff, or even give them up-to-date manuals??? Is this for real?
Adobe recently tried to get a full upgrade price for the small upgrade to InDesign, for features that were originally promised for version 1.0. (They gave in somewhat to pressure and lowered the price.)
They also recently sued a small web site for several millions of dollars. The ethics of the site is debateable, but this seems like an over-reaction.
Now, Roger mentioned what I was not aware, that Adobe's founder retired not too long ago. And he said "be glad we have Apple they have more ethics than most".
To this I suggested that the ethics of Apple is the ethics of Steve Jobs.
I did not think much of this, but Roger did. He wrote me this:
"You have touched on something here.
"Any corporation, despite procedures in place and published mission statements and such, will likely not be seen as having a 'soul' by its customers or the public. Almost always, it is a single individual who embodies the heart and ethics of that company. Take him or her away and the company goes adrift. (i.e. Adobe)
"Or if that individual has flawed character and little or no ethics, the whole company is seen as evil or dysfunctional. (i.d Micro$oft)
"Interesting what you have discerned here Eolake.. Sounds like a great new article seed."
I decided to take the credit for this and write the article, and Roger kindly let me:)
It is rather clear that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates has very different ethics. Steve Jobs is a visionary, and Bill Gates is a conqueror. Steve Jobs' stated goal is to make "a dent in the universe". To change the world for the better. Bill Gates' stated goal is: "A computer on every desktop, running Microsoft software". Note that this does not state whether this software is good or bad for the user. Gil Bates wants simply to rule the world, he does not consider in any way whether this is to the advantage or the detriment of his "subjects". It is a vision blind to the spirituality behind the world, it is a purely mechanical goal.
Which of course explains why Microsoft seems devoid of a soul, why they are totally blind to the pain or joy of others, even when they are directly involved.
I will have to admit here that Roger is more of an Apple fan than I am. He sometimes seems to think that Apple and Macs are perfect. I think that the product or company has many flaws. The reason I cannot bitch about product support from Apple is because I never saw any! At least here in Europe I never heard talk about a direct Apple support line. And if I have overlooked it, why is it so well hidden?
But despite all this, there is a major difference. The ethics of Apple and Steve Jobs are clearly about the Big Picture. Steve does not flinch from terrorizing his employees, but the vision he has is one that benefits the entire world, and the people in it.
The central point here is of course what Roger said: That it would seem like the central soul or ethics of a company is solely that of its founder or leader. Which of course explains why most companies over a certain size are soulless monsters. Because companies over a certain size are either so old that they have lost their founder, or the founder does not have the personal power to rule a company of thousands of people in his own spirit. To do so requires a personal power of a magnitude that is very rare.
We saw that the Apple between when Steve left, in the late eighties, and when he came back, in the late nineties, had indeed in many ways become this soulless machine. It still made much money for a while, but then it started to lose that as well. It made boring and confusing machines that had none of the vision and simplicity of the original Macintosh.
When Steve came back, he not only restored the profitability of the company, he did so mainly by introducing a modern version (and that is what it is) of the original Macintosh: The iMac. A machine that would help "the rest of us" to use computers to empower our lives.
I worked once for five years as an operator in a sandblasting company. The owner was a powerful man. I heard from his CEO that the CEO was extremely frustrated because every time the owner left for a longer trip somewhere, they could hold the sales stats for a couple of weeks, and then they would drop.
Now this guy did not DO very much. Heck, he was not even physically IN the company more than a couple of hours per day on the average. And yet how much of the life of the company that came only from him was illustrated when he sadly became chronically ill. After a while he was no longer fit for any kind of work, or mental activity. And gradually the company died. It had more and more problems, less and less money, and it went. The company had *very* good people working as executives, I am still friends with some of them. But it was not enough, when the owner disappeared, so did the company.
What does all this say about the Universe? It says that many small souls do not one big soul make.
Any major changes in the world does NOT come from "masses" of people, it comes from individuals. Sure, Mao Tse-tung said that history is made by "the people", but I notice that China was molded into what it is today by the heavy, heavy force of... not the people, but Chairman Mao. And in this context the term "terrorize" is certainly not misfit. (You see this principle holds for evil visions as well as good ones.)
Only a strong, coherent vision can change the world. And only a single soul can hold a coherent vision with integrity.
Many small souls do not one big soul make.
- Stobblehouse
* Dave Schultz of Applelust.com wants me to limit myself as to whom and what I label "philosopher" and "philosophy". This is because there are professional philosophers to consider, and the concept should not be diluted. Dave is a professional himself, teaches at a university.
Sorry, Dave, no can do. In my mind, a philosopher is one who can philosophize, and a degree comes very much secondary after that, if indeed I consider it at all.
I don't want to dis a higher education (on second thought, yes I do. Mostly it stinks. It tends to indoctrinate, create robots spewing pre-digested and often false data, instead of living beings who can observe and think for themselves. Probably it is slowly getting better though.), but consider for example professional writers. How many of the writers on the bestseller lists do you suppose have university degrees in writing? 99%? 80%? 70%? No way. I don't have statistics, but I remember a top list professional writer telling about how he was at a get-together with many other top list writers. The average income in the room was stratospheric. At one point the talk fell on university education. Somebody asked whom amongst them had a degree. It turned out that they all had not attended, or had been thrown out, or left in disgust. One or two had degrees in something unrelated to writing. Finally they found one guy who had a degree in writing. That man made a compatively meager living as a proof reader.
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