The U.K.’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, has slammed Apple and its co-founder Steve Jobs for creating an egocentric and selfish consumer society that has only led to unhappiness. He claims the company’s advertising methods only make shoppers aware of what they don’t own, and he singled out Apple for creating a culture in which people only care about themselves. What hypocritical nonsense.
It’s unclear why Lord Sacks has taken a stab at Apple in particular, but speaking at an interfaith reception attended by the Queen this week, he said:
The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, i, i, i. When you’re an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about ‘i’, you don’t do terribly well.
He went on to criticize Apple’s “subtly seductive” approaches to advertising:
If in a consumer society, through all the advertising and subtly seductive approaches to it, you’ve got an iPhone but you haven’t got a fourth generation one, the consumer society is in fact the most efficient mechanism ever devised for the creation and distribution of unhappiness.
Of course, Apple isn’t the only company who uses this approach to lure consumers into purchasing its latest products. In fact, it’s hard to think of a company that doesn’t do this. But why this creates unhappiness is a bit of a mystery to me.
A spokesman for Lord Sacks later attempted to clarify his comments:
The Chief Rabbi meant no criticism of either Steve Jobs personally or the contribution Apple has made to the development of technology in the 21st century.
He admires both and indeed uses an iPhone and an iPad on a daily basis. The Chief Rabbi was simply pointing out the potential dangers of consumerism when taken too far.
So despite his criticism, Lord Sacks uses an iPhone and an iPad on a “daily basis.” Maybe he chose to slam Apple, then, because he’s still gutted we haven’t seen the iPhone 5 yet.
