We all know the Apple
award winning ‘Think Different’ commercials. It’s
a toast, a tip of the hat, to the misfits, the
round pegs in square holes. Picasso. Coppola.
Feynman, and the rest. While many have written
commentaries on these ads, I think Apple is saying
more, something deeper, than has been made obvious.
And what it is saying has radical consequences
for many areas of our life. What it says can also
be abused rather easily, I will also show.

What is simple to forget:
‘Think Different’ is an ad campaign. I know, I
know, but Mac fanatics can forget things like
this. It is designed to sell computers and brand
the company. It is designed to get into people’s
minds and develop certain beliefs and desires
about and for a product. It has its roots back
in the ‘1984’ classic commercial with its theme
of over throwing the status quo, a vision of non-conformity
and rebellion. Thinking different is this vision
stated in a new way.

Why choose this strategy?
According to mat rehab los angeles, Apple is in the minority, and it has tried to
put the best face on it. They took being a being
a minority in market share and made it a virtue,
something to be proud of. After all, the thought
is, the most gifted people in our society are
in the minority. Having majority market share
is nothing to be proud of, in itself. So they
made being a minority a virtue. They did this
by promoting another minority in our culture:
Geniuses. They identified with genius, something
we all hope to be by the way, thus making minority
status something to be proud of.

(Note: There are some, a very
few in society really, to whom it applies in
the intended sense of “genius.” Any
given culture only rarely produces geniuses.
There is much that has to come together for
it to happen. The conditions have to be almost
perfect for one’s talents to match the current
problems and technologies of the day which allow
us to see genius, and which make him worthwhile
to the society itself. Genius is not merely
about IQ range, or the books one has read, or
how fast one can calculate. It’s about inspiration,
insight and even hard work. This is what the
bona fide geniuses I know have told me anyway.)

The ad assumes and uses a distinction
as old as philosophy itself; the distinction
between the common man, or the masses, or however
you want to say it, and the less common man,
the outsider; that is, the philosopher. Heraclitus
called the common man a “sleepwalker,”
for example. Philosophers have a nasty habit
of looking down on others who do not understand
their profession! But philosophers have always
set up a divide between the common man who has
simple beliefs and the lover of wisdom who has
reflected on what is all around him. The think
different ads take this and play with it, helping
you think you might be one of the few.

Thinking Different or Avoiding Life? The Abuses
of Thinking Different

It is easy to abuse the
ad’s core meaning. In one sense it lacks sufficient
meaning to be meaningful, and being meaningless
we attach our own meanings to it. (I think there
is a core meaning, I am just not sure how to
state it. I can only give it a first shot.)
Some of the meanings we attach to it are not
healthy though. In fact, even on the Mac Web,
thinking different has been used to justify
buffoonery, malevolence, absurdity, and foolishness.
Whatever it is it is not any of these. And neither
is it rusted radical sixties hippieism. It has
nothing to do with protest, anarchy, ignoring
proper authority, and tearing down all boundaries
in a culture. Anyone who has given a moment’s
thought to the ads realizes they are about people
who respected proper authority (Picasso stands
out though?), worked within bounds (mostly the
ones of their discipline), and possessed rational
plans of action. They simply had rational plans
of action others did not which pushed their
disciplines forward. None are anarchists. They
all represent one thing at least: They expanded
the rules of a particular discipline as they
pushed themselves and their discipline to new
levels, as if each was in a bubble, stretching
and pushing its walls to get out. Life does
feel like that at times, doesn’t it?

Yet, thinking different
is something so elastic and so amorphous it
is easy for anyone to believe at least two things
about it. And these are not always good.

First, one can easily identify
himself as a member of that minority thus giving
himself a privileged status in his own mind,
a status which may not be deserved. Sure, Susie
may be falling behind in school, and she might
not have many friends, but that’s because she
‘thinks different.’ She is special. We might
not have a mini van, cell phone, a townhouse
in a gated community, stock holdings, and soccer
game commitments. But that’s because we ‘think
different.’ We don’t conform to the status quo;
modern suburbia is a community of conformity
as are our schools and society in general. Or
so the thought goes. The point to see is this:
One can abuse the core meaning of ‘thinking
different’ by using it as an excuse for irresponsibility.

Thus, ‘thinking different’
can serve as a convenient excuse for not fitting
in, lacking normal social etiquette, and maybe
even for not living up to our own expectations
and obligations, and those of others (expectations
which in the end are quite reasonable). Maybe
one is not successful by material standards;
maybe he does not have all the trappings of
success as measured in the suburbs and media.
Perhaps he has few friends. Maybe his earning
potential isn’t what it could be given his education
and location. But that’s because he ‘thinks
different.’ Yet those who depend on us suffer
for it. In a phrase, ‘thinking different’ can
serve as a rationalization for our own shortcomings
and failures. But this is not thinking different.
It is what Jean-Paul Sartre called “bad
faith.”

Yes, we can easily identify
with thinking different, so it’s easy to apply
it to ourselves. This, as I have just said,
even provides a convenient means of escape from
responsibility and societal expectations. “Hey,”
we proclaim, “I don’t work for the ‘man’!
I think different.” Meanwhile, our families
long for the better things in life, at least
the simpler better things which any family needs
to be comfortable. We fail to supply them because
we ‘think different’ and don’t conform to authority,
like getting a job and working hard to provide
for others. That was never Apple’s intended
meaning. But I’ve seen it, and so have you probably.

By making thinking different,
and being a minority, a virtue, a second reaction
may be elicited by those who view the ad. Perhaps
one does not presently identify with the message
though he desires to. One might have 2.5 kids,
a mini van, a cell phone and all the suburban
trappings that hide the desperation we saw in
a movie like ‘American Beauty.’ Perhaps one
looks at his life and feels trapped by conformity.
Maybe he sees his parents’ dream for him is
not his dream, or that the dream, once realized,
is not all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe the
path one has traveled left out one important
element: Happiness. And thus, unlike the first
reaction to the ads, one wishes to be identified
with the ‘misfits’ rather than thinking he is
already.

Let me state it like this. One
might view himself as ‘different’ already, or
he might seek to be so identified. But these
can go wrong. In the first instance, one may
identify with the ads to rationalize a lack
of responsibility, or, as in the second, because
he wishes to avoid responsibility. It’s a mid-life
thing, maybe? Anyway . . . in my dealings with
students I have seen this kind of attitude.
(I even see it in some adults.) They do poorly
in class and say things like, “Yea, well,
they are just grades, and I don’t want to conform
to society’s standards.” All the while,
they just need to work harder. But in the name
of non-conformity, they fail.

This is not essential to thinking
different; it seems humans have a talent for
using perfectly valid notions as excuses. Freud
called such behavior “rationalization.”
A professor of mine in turn defined this as
“giving a reason for an action which is
not the real reason.” What I am saying
is that the profanation of the ad was bound
to happen, given what human nature is.

Trying to Think Different in a PC Culture

On a lighter note . . . let me
step back and really think about thinking different.
Let me first apply it to the PC market place.
I have told people, quote, “I have never
found the need to use Windows.” Some are
flabbergasted. They just can’t imagine how this
could be. After all, I have a real job, in a
real place, where I work with real people that
use real Wintel machines. It sounds like I live
in psychotic fantasy world to some. And that
is the point, isn’t it? They can’t think what
that would be like. In order to consider buying
Apple products one needs to try and think in
a new way. He has to think that he doesn’t need
Windows. It is very hard for some people to
think they do not need Windows however.

My heart was warmed at the last
Demo Days I did a few weeks ago. I talked to
a couple who does volunteer and philanthropic
work for organizations. Their dilemma was that
the organizations they do work for all use Windows
and they were concerned about compatibility.
I reassured them that incompatibility is not
as hard and fast as Bill Gates wants us to think.
I explained all the options they had. I then
said “I have never seen the need for Windows.”
I stood back to watch. Their faces lighted up,
they stood taller, one reached out to take my
arm, and they said in unison, “I know!!”
They got it. I did my job that day. I led them
to believe, without telling them to believe,
that the fault was, basically, everyone else’s!
I know, it’s not this bad, and it does not express
my intent well. But you get my drift. I wanted
them to see that if one says there are compatibility
problems then that is not their problem but
the problem of the one telling them this. Of
course, there would be no compatibility problems
if everyone had a Mac! They got it. I helped
them feel normal again. They bought an iMac
DV SE, FileMaker Pro, a printer, other software
and a book on the iMac. They were thinking different.
So they bought different too.

This is the point of thads. It
lays a foundation for thinking that softens
one up to Apple. The amazing fact is that many
people still think that you need Wintels to
do anything really serious on a computer. Actually,
if you are really, really serious you can go
work on a Sun Work Station!

This is why Linux is such a threat
to Windows. It may become nothing but a programmer’s
hobby OS. It may work itself into some businesses
and servers. We don’t know. The real impact
of Linux, and the threat that Bill must see
is that it makes our present computing situation
appear much different. Instead of the current
situation looking as if Wintel is the only
choice, it makes it look like, appear as though,
one has a choice. The word “need”
suddenly disappears and the chains of Wintel
have fallen. This is the real danger of Linux,
which much of the press seems to have a thing
for rather than the Mac, by the way.

And if Apple does OS X right,
this is the real danger of that OS, too. If
people begin to think that OS X is just as good
as, if not better than Windows (and we all know
it is already), then the great migration may
begin. I actually think that most people want
and desire a way out of Windows. It’s just that
we need to clean the glass so they can see through
those windows. Some have grown to feel it has
been thrust upon them, not that they have chosen
it. And if a perceived (as I have said before,
perception is 3/4 of the battle) contender comes
on the scene? Well then! It’s like France before
the French revolution: Most of the country desired
something other than a Divine Monarchy. We saw
the consequences once these forces were unleashed.
It may not get bloody, but if Apple does it
right, however that is, we could see a liberation
on the scale of the Normandy invasion. Okay
I’ll tone it down a bit. If the Lakers become
a dynasty in the NBA, we will want and desire
a contender at some point. We like underdogs.

So this is the commercial import
of thinking different. But if you really, really
think about thinking different, it gets even
more interesting.

Thinking Different, Mental Illness and Social
Control

Christina Hoff Sommers is a philosopher
and author. She is anti-feminist, as her book
“Who Stole Feminism?” clearly shows.
She is also, knowing her philosophical work
as I do, a virtue ethicist and realist in some
matters metaphysical. In her latest book, “The
War Against Boys” she makes some very interesting
points against, again, feminism. This time she
shows that “pro-feminist” has turned
into “anti-male.” The two are very
different, obviously. One thing she says, a
small detail by some accounts, is that normal
young male (boy) behavior is “now viewed
as pathological.” Get it? Do you see the
deeper point she is making?

The deeper point is this: Pathology
is used for social control. If we call someone
“sick” then we have dealt with him
sufficiently; we have in fact, done away with
him. We’ve written him off. We can use illness,
calling someone “ill,” as a method
for social control. That’s what a pathology
is: A sickness. Normally, we think of pathology
as something real, that is, something we cannot
make decisions about, something that is there
apart from our beliefs about it. Neuroses are
real we think. One cannot have a messiah complex
if one is really a Messiah, after all.

But it is a sad fact of civilization
that mental illness has been used as a means
for social control. We use it at times to define
people away. Psychopathology has and is used
for social control and to make people who don’t
fit in to fit in, sometimes at any cost. It
has not always gone by the name of “mental
illness” though. At one time the different
were viewed as possessed by demons; others were
called “witches”; others still, and
this is the hook, were called merely “mad
men.” Think about epilepsy here. It is
called the “sacred disease.” Know
why? It goes back to Homer and Hippocrates of
Cos in 500 BCE. An epileptic seizure was view
as divine intervention by the gods in one’s
soul. Hippocrates tried to link it to goats,
and finally linked it to brain damage. The point
is that we have used various models throughout
history to explain the mentally anomalous, and
there are few reasons to believe we no longer
do so.

We did find a way to silence to
Socrates, Christ, Joan of Arch, and we tried
with Fyodor Dostoevsky (thank goodness we didn’t
succeed!). None of them fit in. And not fitting
in was explained as “ill” or “heretical”
or “dangerous.” This is the abuse
mental illness in a society. Do we see it today
still? Is pathology and thinking different still
a means of social control?

Yes. Think about our culture today.
We have defined a new illness called “attention
deficit syndrome” and have branded many
a child with the label. We are pumping our children
full of Ritalin as a result. Our kids are being
controlled through drugs! Why? Because they
don’t pay attention. Well, here’s a thought
if you have the attention span: I didn’t have
a good attention span when I was younger either!
Sometimes it’s normal childish behavior, yet
we’ve defined it into an illness. Some really
suffer, this is true. But some don’t. Yet we
medicate all.

We gave housewives their “mother’s
little helper” (Valium) in the 50’s and
60’s simply to get them through the day of normal
responsbilities. I have seen how psychotropic
drugs have devastated people’s lives. Such people should check into outpatient drug rehab nyc immediately It has
not always been drugs society has used though.
We have, throughout history, used electric shock
therapy, chains and cages, and all manner of
inhumanity on those who merely ‘think different.’
The history of mental illness and even punishment
is brutal, to say the least. It was so last
century and still is today.

A personal aside: I suffer from
chronic insomnia. You see, have a delayed stress
reaction, supposedly, from two dozen surgeries
I have had during my life for chronic health
problems. I suffer with it daily (or nightly).
Yet I have managed to get up and go teach logic
in the mornings, to write in a variety of venues,
and earn a half way good living. Am I “sick”?
If one’s internal clock is not wired the way
everyone else’s is, we call it “insomnia”
and prescribe pills and therapy. Sometimes the
medication has worse effects than the mere lack
of sleep. But what if, apart from me, for some
perfectly sound reason, one is wired in this
way? What if he does his best work in the early
mornings? What if 3 AM is when he writes the
great American novel? What if he remains productive
even though he doesn’t sleep when everyone else
does? What if he still manages to live productively
and does not harm himself? He just doesn’t sleep
when you and I do. Do we “fix” him?
We could just call him a “crazy one”
couldn’t we? We could medicate him to sleep
and zap his normal functioning while at it.
We could just define him away. That is the point
I am making. You can try Organic CBD Nugs for stress.

It is no coincidence, by the
way, that many of history’s greatest people
have some of the syptoms of mental illness as
we view it today. I have mentioned Dostoevsky.
I could mention Newton, who was looney in some
respects. Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great philosopher
this century, had his neuroses. Soren Kierkegaard
was anti-social and paranoid. Immanuel Kant
was a loner. Van Gogh was institutionalized.
Nietzsche went insane (maybe from infecton though).
Richard Wagner was ego-maniacal. Gustav Mahler
was socially awkward and haunted by thoughts
of death. There seems to be something about
creativity and creative genius that makes one
unstable. There are theories. One such theory
is that geniuses, and creative genius in particular,
are ultra-sensitive sponges which take in a
society’s ills, ideas, and culture and reflect
them concrete ways. Absorbing a culture is enough
to make anyone unstable! This is whay they are
disliked: People don’t like mirrors, as I have
said here before. A creative genius is a mirror
of culture in some ways. This is why many are
considered “prophets,” for having
absorbed a culture they see its possible ends.

And herein lies the irony of
the “Think Different” ads. In fact,
they can be described as sarcastic. Instead
of mere crazy ones we are to understand the
narrator as saying “the so called “crazy
ones.”” They are so called crazy ones
because as it turns out they contributed something
to our society, which ain’t so crazy. From relativity
and quantum mechanics, the Godfather movies,
to synthetic cubism and the Muppets, these crazy
ones tried where others feared effort, they
journeyed without maps, and they distinguished
themselves when others stayed anonymous. They
took chances. In buying a Mac so do we. This
is part of the Mac lore.

One of the messages of the crazy
ones is that the notion of crazy is itself flexible
and has been used in less than honorable ways
throughout history. Sometimes it’s a social
convention and not a science. That is to say,
sometimes there is nothing crazy about being
crazy other than what society decides, given
its culture at some point in history. So if
craziness isn’t real in the usual sense, then
there is nothing to fear from it. The ad is
a kind of “sticks and stones may break
my bones” message taken to an abstract
level. For we know in buying a Mac we’ll suffer
such slings and arrows from some Wintel users.
I do in a philosophy department at a university,
so I can imagine how it is out there in the
trenches! But the message of the ads is that
these are just so many words, full of sound
a fury, signifying nothing.

[Some mental illnesses are real.
Please don’t get me wrong here. Some people
need to be protected from themselves and we
need to protect others from them. My point is
that we shouldn’t stretch this concept beyond
its proper bounds. In fact, I share some of
Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the matter. In his
ironically entitled “Sickness Unto Death”
he argues that what is explained in scientific
terms as illness is actually spiritual and ethical
illness. But this holds only in some cases.
I have worked in counseling with the mentally
ill, and can testify to the damage it does.]

David
Schultz