Of Logos and Myth

It all started in the Garden of Eden. Well, almost. We all know the story. Soon after creation God brought Adam and Even together in Paradise. The only prohibition was not to eat of the fruit of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." But they were deceived and ate. Tradition has it that the fruit was an apple; we really cannot say. It was fruit of some kind, anyway. The result was expulsion from Paradise and all the evil we find in the world. A simple, nice theodicy.

Jean-Louis Gassee, former President of Apple Products, now CEO of Be INC, said of the colored Apple logo "You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy." We at applelust.com have taken this as our theme. The full quote is as follows (which you can find in "The Mac Bathroom Reader"):

"One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy."

This was the original vision of Apple. Note the almost militant, radical overtones here. It was perfect, not just for the machines they wished to produce, but also for the vision they had of a world with those machines. The vision was one of liberation (a prominent vision in the sixties by the way), and the Apple computer and Mac were the liberators. The founders of Apple were, or are, the "crazy ones; the misfits; the square pegs in a round hole" as the "Think Different" ad explains. Think of the Woz; think of Steve Jobs. The stories are legendary now. If one thinks about it, Steve Jobs has much in common with the Greek philosopher Socrates (now stay with me!). Note this . . .

When he tried to get capital to start Apple, venture capitalist Don Valentine is believed to have called him a "renegade [or dreg] of humanity," that is, a worthless piece of residue of humanity. When he brought John Sculley, then at Pepsi, to Apple, Jobs asked, "Do you want to make sugared water for the rest of your life or do you want a chance to change the world?" Even Sculley said it was exciting to work for people who "were part of changing history." The contrasts between these stories could not be sharper. Steve Jobs, a worthless residue and renegade of humanity with visions of changing the world. Sound familiar? It should. Imagine shopping in your local mall and a homeless, unkept and elderly man comes up to you and asks, "What is truth? What is beauty?" "Worthless dreg" we might think. Well, that is exactly how Socrates came off in the agora of Athens. He too was believed to be a dreg of humanity but he changed the Greek world. They killed him, as we all know. He was forced to drink hemlock. Sculley fired Jobs. There are many, many "dregs of humanity" who have pushed civilization forward.

The label "dreg of humanity" seems to be a peg upon which we hang those who do not fit in, those who swim against the currents of culture. We don't know what to do with them; they annoy us yet they inspire us. We praise them, we fire them and we kill them. "But they cannot be ignored." This is what Gassee was trying to get at; this is what the Apple logo represents. It is the Macintosh Way. It is what Apple lost at one time; it is what Steve Jobs has gone back to since his return. It is what we at Applelust.com want to articulate and defend.

There are four elements to the logo Gassee explains: LUST: as in paradise when lust motivated Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; KNOWLEDGE: the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and what lusted after; HOPE: the rainbow; ANARCHY: the inverted colors of the rainbow. So we could have called our new site Appleknowledge.com, or Applehope.com, or Applelanarchy.com. But we chose Applelust.com. The reason is simple. Lust is the foundation of knowledge, hope and anarchy; of the four, it is the most basic in our nature. We, humanity, that curious lot, lust after knowledge; we lust after peace, love and an afterlife (hope), and we lust after liberation (anarchy). Desire and lust drive us as a species as much as reason drives us. Besides: When I look at Wintel boxes I am not inspired. But when I look at a Mac, I am lustful.

But lust has come to acquire some rather unfortunate connotations over the centuries. St. Augustine said that all evil is grounded in lust, which he defined as "inordinate desire," that is, desire without bounds, order or rules. Desire, if it is to function as it should he thought, must be ordered and rule-governed. The paradoxical nature of the Eden story is that one of humanity's strongest traits, curiosity, the "desire to know" as Aristotle called it, caused all of humanity's woes. Where would we be if we were not curious, if we we did not seek to know? But curiosity and the desire to know must be bounded, ordered, if it is not to lead us astray. This is the truth Victor Frankenstien symbolizes. Even Apple knows this, for the lust their products produce is produced by properties grounded in rationality such as symmetry, proportion and beauty.

Applelust

Lust really just means a strong desire for something. One must be careful here, careful not to confuse lust with envy, appetite and raw emotion. Lust is much more refined. Since it is merely a strong desire for something. We can say we lust after food, after water and, well, you know. The experience of being overtaken by lust is common to all. Intentional action becomes impulse, drive without thought almost. We fight it but cannot live without it (literally). Our mouths water; our hearts race, our mouths become dry, and our hands shake. Reason is suspended, at least for a little while. This is not anxiety but drive, a push toward some desired object. It is a universal human trait. Of course we must be careful that we lust after the right kinds of things and in the right proportions, and this is what Augustine was getting at. Universal too are the kinds of things which provoke lust, such as beauty, parsimony, form and symmetry. So lust can be inspired on several levels: it is inspired by colors, names and mental associations, tastes, textures, and form. This is a truth which Steve Jobs, it seems, is aware of. Think about it . . .

For years Mac humanity has toiled East of Eden, in a beige and plastic unimaginative wilderness. No lust, just apathy among the Mac faithful. There is little worse than loosing lust or having unsatisfied desires. But we kept going. The clarion call then went out from Jobs and Apple designers. Jobs asked us to bite into a new fruit, or at least take a drink of Bondi Blue, enticing us to go West, back to Paradise. In very subtle ways Steve Jobs and Apple designers are regaining the lost Mac vision, and it includes lust. I give you some examples.

At Macworld Expo, when Jobs introduced the fruity iMacs, he said, "they are luscious; you almost want to take a bite out of them . . you want to lick them" Get it? This is lust. And think of their names: Blueberry. Tangerine. Strawberry. Lime. Grape (Steve's favorite, by the way). He wants people to base a buying decision on their favorite color even. He is appealing to those universal properties which invoke lust. It is found in the colors, but also in shapes, textures, names and so on, of Apple products.

The same can be said for the wonderful iBook. The other day at my local CompUSA I was browsing when a couple saw an iBook on display. After a few comments one said, "That looks really nice." The other responded, "Well, they did a good job of marketing." "What," I thought, "marketing? Those colors, textures, shapes and sounds are not just marketing, but hooks into universal aspects of human nature designed to inspire lust." "Commercial society," I said to myself, "what a pox on humanity." Yes indeed, PC users just don't get it. (I'll have more to say on this in a moment and in later columns.)

But what of Graphite? Few normal people want to bite into a stone! But from comments I have read lust can be expressed and inspired in many ways. Read the posts or listen to people who have just received a G4. "I just wanted to touch it," is a standard example, as is, "I can't take my eyes off it." "I have been by its side ever since it arrived." These are actual comments I have noticed in forums! Go to the G4 Forum on MacNN and read some of the posts and notice how people talk about the G4 (philosophers are disposed to pick up on things like how language is used). Expressions of lust pure and simple. One person even spoke of "technolust" in a post. Indeed, the G4s have a high lust factor.

The moral here is simple: The fruity Mac, the new machines, the colors and textures which have found their way into so much of culture, are not merely marketing. They take us back to the original Apple vision. They produce the kind of lust in us which Jobs and the Woz must have felt when they first starting thinking of the concept of a "personal computer," when they and only they realized the potential of Alan Turing's simple machine. In a sense, we are experiencing those intoxicating first few years of the computer industry when we experience applelust.

Speaking the Unspeakable

When I took a Blueberry iBook to the philosophy department I teach at, the first comments were not, "How fast is it?," or "It looks like a toy," let alone "It's a girlie machine." No, they were all expressions of lust: "it's beautiful," was standard, but lust, a certain kind of ineffable lust, something these academics could not put into words, was also expressed. "Ooohh," "Aaah," "Wow," and other primitive responses were also common. There was also an almost reflexive kind of touching, as though it was satin. All expressions of lust. When we bought an original iMac for my parents, my father's first comment was revealing; "It's the best looking computer I've seen." Lust. Now go to any CompUSA or Apple reseller and watch people as they first come upon a Mac (besides PC-herd-following-lemmings). I saw this over and over when I did Apple Demo Days. The first utterances are not linguistic, but primitive ones like those just mentioned. Not really grunts, but more signs of satisfaction. There is something primitive about our response to these things, these machines. Only then do we get around to asking "technical questions." People first say "Oh . . wow," and reach out to touch them, and only then ask, "How much RAM does it comes with?" When true lust is inspired, when form, beauty, texture and color attaches itself to our nature, our first response is nonlinguistic. That is what we at Applelust.com are about. It is what Apple is about and Steve Jobs knows it.

In a sense this article is very paradoxical, but philosophers love paradox! I am trying to talk about what cannot be put into words; I am using language to describe what transcends language; I am speaking about the unspeakable: Lust. But we have no choice, even if it means we retreat to analogy and images because mere words fail us. This is a very deep and profound thing, and perhaps why Gassee said the Apple logo was a mystery: Our response outruns our language capacities, even if it only lasts the first few seconds in the encounter. This is why music has such meaning for us, for it expresses the linguistically inexpressible. And is it any wonder that Macs are the choice of creative professionals? After all, creativity is a kind of primitive impulse as well. These things touch our souls in ways other plastic boxes cannot. So when you see someone unable to put into words his response to the iMac, take note--that is just what Apple wants.

Lust: What Many PC Users Lack

The iBook story above illustrates something else: many PC users lack lust. For meanwhile, as I demoed Macs, I overheard those in the PC section. "What software does it comes with?" "Does the monitor come with it?" "Does it have a PIII inside?" And this gem: "Can this one run Windows?" Pure functionality. Indeed, no enthusiasm; no excitement; no product loyalty; no life; no love. No ineffable utterances of lust. Lifelessness. I feel sorry for them. In fact, slavishness is the rule. I have noticed that many buy PCs not because they want to because they feel they have to: "It's what we use at work so I have to get one." Or, "Everything requires Windows, so I have no choice." But this goes against human nature, against the lust for freedom expressed in anarchy. This is what separates Apple from other companies: Those other guys want to force something on you, to create an artificial kind of lust in us; indeed, they want dependents not consumers. But Apple looks to human nature and aims for what is already there without trying to produce it artificially. And it does it by producing products that enmatter those universal attractors in us, such as form, beauty, color and texture. When these new iMacs came out, and the iBook and the G4s, I felt as though I had just received the perfect present from a loved one; I almost wanted to say, "I love it! How did you know!" Apple does not just produce products that give us what we want, or force things on us, but they give us what we are. This is the basis of the Apple mystique. If there was excitement in the PC section it was not lust, but envy, simple emotion, or appetite. But no lust.

Let me make an analogy. There is a debate about whether a true philosopher is born or made. That is, philosophizing requires a certain kind of temperament which it seems one must be born with. I see philosophy majors who cannot be made into philosophers, try as we might to make them one. No, the impulse to philosophizing is something one is born with. Likewise, I do not think Mac users are made but born, just like the creative professionals which inhabit their ranks. This is why some say, myself among them, that "PC users just don't get it." (In a future article I will talk about what the "it" is and more on why they don't.) But this is not really accurate; it is not "don't get it," but rather "can not get it." Try teaching a non-artist to produce art, or a non-mathematician to love of proofs. It is hard if not impossible. Think of the amazement you feel when someone says "I don't see what's so great about a Van Gogh painting." It is a question of human nature and the forces that shape it. Now try teaching a born non-Mac person to love Macs. Same thing. Much of our Mac evangelism will therefore fall on deaf ears.

Yet many students do not realize they are mathematicians, artists or philosophers by birth until they have been exposed to these disciplines. They try a class here and try a class there until they find their "fit." This is not to say that stories of Mac conversion cannot be true. This only tells us that before their conversion, before being exposed to Macs, they were not truly happy (though many say they are). But after conversion, in Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's words, they are "in the truth." But since we don't know who the true believers are, we try to convert all. Let me put this another way: It will never be talk of megahertz or color or texture which will convert our friends to the Mac, it is the Mac which will do that. Our job is to get them in a position where they will see it for themselves. The best way to convert someone to the Mac is NOT to talk about the Mac but to talk to him or her as a real person, to befriend him and show him in the flesh the Macintosh Way. (In the wonderful movie "The Matrix" Morpheus says to Neo, "One cannot be told what the Matrix is. He has to see it for himself." The same with the Mac.) It is not the Mac PC users fight against, but themselves and the chains Bill Gates and Michael Dell have locked on them.

The perceptive reader will have noticed a tension in what I have said. I said that Macs appeal to universal aspects of humanity. Yet at the same time I say that not everyone responds. Is this a contradiction? Not at all. We must keep the distinction between being and knowing before us. The simple, but dismal, fact of human nature is that not all are true to its higher aspects. It is what the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called "bad faith": Ignoring certain psychological and ontological states by seeking diversions and distractions of all kinds. If we keep busy enough we do not have to face our true situation in the universe (and this why boredom is so terrible). The same goes for some (though not all) PC users. The Mac attraction would lay claim if they paused to notice it and forget the crowd. And as I said, many perhaps in fact notice it, but feel they can do nothing about it since it is after all a Wintel world. What I am saying is that the Mac form factor appeals to universal traits in human nature in a perfect world, but we are not living in such a world. If the Mac ever fails (and it won't I hope), it will not be because of Apple (as long as Apple remains true to it original vision of lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy) but because of a society which prizes mini vans, conformity and staying busy. It is a powerful force we swim against. We did kill Socrates after all. And if Socrates was alive today, he'd own a Mac. The implication to this is clear: In a perfect world, a world in which all were true to their higher nature, where bad faith was put to rest, everyone would own a Mac. I am not saying Mac users are perfect or that all PC users are living in sin. Many PC users don't want to be PC users; some buy Macs for all the wrong reasons. What I mean is . . . keep reading.

I can hear the PC users out there now: "Oh c'mon! It is just a machine! Aren't you taking this a little too seriously? This is absurd." To which I answer: "I am very serious, you just didn't hear what I said." I am just as serious as saying that in a perfect world everyone would freely seek the good, the true and the beautiful (the three things philosophers study). And yet while not perfect, we still appreciate them, some more than others, no matter where they are found, e.g., in a Mahler symphony, a beautiful sunset, a Dante poem, or an Impressionist painting, in a word, where ever we see truly beautiful design and symmetry, be it in nature or in a human artifact like a computer. This is what PC users don't get, and why "it's just a machine" is myopic.

Lusting is an art-form practiced by those who have mastered their natures, those who know themselves. It is primitive and primordial, yet at the same time makes no sense without proportion, beauty and rationality. The perfect human (and there are none), lusts after the right things, at the right time in the right proportions. (The famous Doctrine of the Mean.) Macs make us sometimes forget they are machines (and thus many Mac users give their Macs human names). Steve Jobs knows this. He knows that computers should appeal to our emotive side as well as our cognitive side. He says Apple is here to "make the best computers in the world." He knows that this involves lust. We won't buy because we have to, or because we are swept along in a consumer society. We will buy because the Mac embodies who we are. All the functionality, ease of use and power turn inordinate desire to ordinate desire, ensuring that our lust is not misplaced, that in fact we are lusting after something worthwhile. Jobs knows that form without function is empty, and function without form is dead. Both are what attracts us, and when both are in the right proportions in one thing (like the MacOS in an iMac), we respond with lust because that is who we are. This is the original vision of the Mac. For the Mac is not just a machine: The Mac is an idea, a way of life. That is why we have started Applelust.com. We want to articulate that idea and way of life. We want to be the Mac philosophers and apologists, if you will. No one else is doing this. We are not here to compete with other sites but to complement them by articulating the Mac community's philosophical foundations (among other things). We will in the weeks and years ahead document, comment and analyze certain exemplifications of applelust. We will observe and comment on "Maccing" (a verb mind you), the Mac community and all it stands for, and all that stands against it (like Microsoft and Michael Dell). If we at Applelust.com can articulate the vision thing clearly to enrich the Mac community, then we will be happy. So say hello to Applelust.com . . .

David Schultz