Steve Jobs Hated Pornography—but Couldn't Explain Why
Steve Jobs’ wish to give Apple users “freedom from porn” caused a stir, but it also highlighted our incoherent moral framework.
In 2010 Steve Jobs created a bit of a sensation when he decided to ban from Apple devices any app that was deemed pornographic in nature.
“Folks who want porn can buy an android,” Jobs famously wrote to one customer.
So what did Jobs have against porn?
Walter Isaacson, in his impressive 2011 biography of Jobs, detailed a correspondence the Apple co-founder had with tech blogger Ryan Tate, who thought Jobs’ wish to give Apple users “freedom from porn” was hypocritical to Apple’s spirit of revolutionary freedom.
“You might care more about porn when you have kids,” Jobs replied. “It’s not about freedom, it’s about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users.”
The comment is striking for its sheer banality. Jobs is employing a variation of the ad hominem logical fallacy here, suggesting that Tate can’t understand why pornography is bad because he doesn’t have kids.
It’s clear from the statement that Jobs, a pretty smart fellow, believed deeply that pornography is wrong, but he was unable to articulate how or why. Why is that?
An answer can perhaps be found in the writings of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.
In his book After Virtue, MacIntyre (who recently died) describes how Enlightenment thinkers—among them Kant, Hume, and later Kierkegaard—attempted to fashion a new philosophical foundation, one that essentially preserved traditional morals but untethered them from the Aristotelian framework and religious ideas on which they were based.
The problem? It didn’t work.
If MacIntyre is correct that many of our morals today are “incoherent fragments of a once coherent scheme of thought and action,” it would help explain why Jobs felt that pornography is fundamentally wrong, but could not articulate why. Like us, he lived in a world that holds fragments of traditional morals, only now they’re devoid of a foundation.
Cut Flower Culture.
The phrase "cut flower culture" was popularized by Will Herberg, who used it to describe modern Western societies that have embraced certain cultural aspects (like morality or ethical behavior) while discarding the religious or philosophical underpinnings that originally supported them.
Appearance vs. Reality:
Cut flowers, like those in a bouquet, appear beautiful and vibrant for a time, but their connection to the source of life (the roots) has been severed. This is similar to a culture that might celebrate certain values or ideas without understanding the historical, philosophical, or spiritual context from which they arose.
- Google AI
Loved the article, thought it ended too short! I remember reading jobs admired Aristotle.