The Silent Penguin

We are in the middle of a revival of fundamental (i.e., primitive) religion, religion that has to be promulgated by force, preferably by the police powers of the state. At the same time interesting things are happening that, in earlier times, would only be explained in religious terms.

On June 12, 2005, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered a Commencement Address at Stanford University. Among other things he said:

"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."

This may sound strange to some people who regard death as a taboo subject, but it sounded very familiar to me.

For example, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said:

"Since death (take my words literally) is the true goal of our lives, I have made myself so well acquainted with this true and best friend of man that the idea of it no longer has terrors for me, but rather much that is tranquil and comforting. And I thank God that he has granted me the good fortune to obtain the opportunity of regarding death as the key to our true happiness. I never lie down in bed without considering that, young as I am, perhaps on the morrow I may be no more. Yet not one of those who know me could say that I am morose or melancholy, and for this I thank my Creator daily and wish heartily that the same happiness may be given to my fellowmen"

In Androcles And The Lion, George Bernard Shaw has this dialog:

LAVINIA:. Captain: you have been face to face with death.

THE CAPTAIN: Not with certain death, Lavinia. Only death in battle, which spares more men than death in bed. What you are facing is certain death. You have nothing left now but your faith in this craze of yours: this Christianity. Are your Christian fairy stories any truer than our stories about Jupiter and Diana in which, I may tell you, I believe no more than the Emperor does, or any educated man in Rome?

LAVINIA: Captain: all that seems nothing to me now. I'll not say that death is a terrible thing; but I will say that it is so real that when it comes close, all the imaginary things - all the stories, as you call them - fade into mere dreams beside that inexorable reality. I know now that I am not dying for stories or dreams.

In The Apocryphon of James, found among the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, Jesus is quoted as saying:

5.3 "Become seekers of death, therefore, like the dead who are seeking life, for what they seek is manifest to them. So what can be of concern to them?

5.4 When you inquire into the subject of death, it will teach you about election.

5.5 "In truth I say to you, none will be saved who are afraid of death, for [God's] Domain belongs to those who put themselves [close] to death.

Gautama Buddha meditated until he was close to starving to death and then became enlightened. The training method of the Rinzai sect of Zen can be analyzed as requiring the chela perform an action so taboo that it would normally require suicide before the training master can acknowledge an experience of satori. While the Buddhists don't specifically say that a close approach to death is required for enlightenment it is easy to see in what they do say.

In The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett describes an episode where a man named Flitcraft comes close to death and first walks away from his life then walks back in to a copy of it. Hammett is the only one to describe a situation where an event of the kind I call "death and transfiguration" fails in the long run because it happens to someone without the discipline to take advantage of it.
Hammett did not start to write until he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and given a short time to live. Luke does describe Jesus as saying that when one does exorcise an unclean spirit it sometimes comes back to the clean house with worse friends; e.g., sometimes an episode of post traumatic stress can
produce a psychpath.

However, the "Death and Transfiguration" episode is not the only way to remove the social inhibitions that prevent "thinking differently". The close approach to death can be called an "acute" procedure, but there is a "chronic" equivalent. The way we are kept to the social norms is that the superego produces a variety of fear called "free floating anxiety" or "existential dread" whenever we do or say something out of the ordinary. This can be countered by deliberately doing things we are afraid of in order to get used to feeling that fear and making it unable to control us. That is a dangerous procedure because if carried too far it can produce an alienated sociopath; but in moderation it can significantly reduce the inhibition of creativity.

Some people, Steve Jobs among them, do those things intuitively. Jobs got himself fired from Apple. As he said:

"I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

"I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

The difference between Jobs and some of the other people he can be compared with is that he is conscious of what is happening to him. This may be the result of a recent close approach of death from cancer when he was at a point of great success. He was able to recognize the phenomenon and to articulate the process in a commencement address. The odds are that none of the students who heard him will understand the significance of what he said, because the ideas will be radically new to those students (and the faculty who listened) and "new paradigms" generally just pass by without making a mark. But at least in the era of the internet his words were recorded and published.

His speech answered one question for me. I have been using Macintosh computers since 1986 and they have always seemed very natural and comfortable to use. It would seem that Steve Jobs and I have a similar attitude to the world.

Steve Jobs' address was published at:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

The other quotes, and the analysis of the procedure can be found in: "Einstein's God and the Science of Zen" (http://homepage.mac.com/karlek/.public/START.HTM or http://eingod.karleklund.net)

I have been wondering, over the past couple of years, how we can replace the primitive practices we consider religious with something globally egalitarian, ecologically responsible and consistent with creativity. Maybe all we have to do is go on using iPods and Macs.