Some thoughts on the passing of Steve Jobs

Since Steve Jobs died on October 5 we have all heard a great many opinions about him and what he meant.  Clearly he was an economic and cultural force for the last several decades.  Virtually all the obituaries and commentaries I have seen have been flat out hagiography.  They look to his immense creativity and his business skills and generally stop there.
There is another side, however.  An essential part of Jobs' marketing genius was his exploiting one of the spiritually damaging aspects of a consumer society: the tendency of people to define themselves to themselves and others through their possessions.  I use a Mac (which I do) so I am cool.  I have an iPod, cool.  An iPhone, cool.  An iPad, very hip and cool.  You get the idea.
In my opinion this is one of the most spiritually damaging forms of materialism.  To put it in terms of the 7 deadly sins, the quest for pleasure and fulfillment through the aquisition of wealth is gluttony; the quest for self definition through material goods is avarice. Few people would admit to being small minded enough to define themselves through their iPods, but in point of fact many do to a greater or lesser degree.
Our recovery is based on humility and love.  Neither of those is compatible with avarice.  To be clear, I am not trying to take anything away from the immense positive side of Jobs legacy.  His advocacy of good design and ease of use helped change technology for the better.  Let's not lose sight, however, of the fact that he did expose (and exploit) one of the dark aspects of our time, our culture, ourselves.