{"id":345,"date":"2012-04-15T08:40:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T12:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.neotraditionalism.com\/blog\/?p=345"},"modified":"2012-04-15T08:40:05","modified_gmt":"2012-04-15T12:40:05","slug":"corporate-idolatry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/15\/corporate-idolatry\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Idolatry"},"content":{"rendered":"

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2012.04.13 \u00a0Corporate idolatry<\/p>\n

The corporate image, aura and branding that magically confer significance, meaning and coolness onto blind and faithful consumers has been identified as another form of religion, in this case, corporate idolatry.<\/p>\n

Take Starbucks. I like their coffee\u2014just their coffee. It\u2019s called coffee. They embellish the name slightly to \u201ccoffee of the day\u201d as in prayer: give us Lord our daily coffee. \u00a0It\u2019s that important. So important I must have it every day, all the time, no matter the price. In fact we need two Starbucks everywhere just like at the mall where I can get Starbuck\u2019s near Macy\u2019s and one near the food court where I can pay tribute and light votive candles between pilgrimages.<\/p>\n

This commercial God-complex is made evident as soon as you challenge its marketplace authority. Against my will, I was imprisoned at the J.W. Marriott in Orlando, Florida where Starbucks had a shop in the lobby. Nice, except that the usual astronomical pricing enjoyed by Starbucks was catapulted to the stratosphere of \u201cresort pricing\u201d. Since in-room brand X coffee tastes like warm water clouded with cream and sugar we were coerced to \u201cworship\u201d at the green goddess.\u00a0 It was my turn to fetch our staff of life and bring it back to the room, possibly chanting and shuffling in hooded robe.<\/p>\n

At the shop, I waited quietly to fused music while the usual AM throng was baptized and blessed by their barista. When it was my turn I was given the option of leaving room for cream. I usually say \u201cNo\u201d because they usually leave enough room anyway for the amount of cream I use, and since the coffee is precious as the blood of Jesus I want as much of it as possible. But I said \u201cYes\u201d because my wife likes her cream nice and coffee-y. The barista left such a huge margin\u2014the largest I had ever seen in all coffeedom, it was downright blasphemous. My venti was a dieci by any measure and I was apostate on the spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you want to fill this up with coffee?\u201d I said with extreme sarcasm. Obviously they had confused me with one of their ordinary votaries who usually wear a Kool-Aid drinking grin when their barista leave enough room for further flagellation. Robotically, the barista returned the coffees and filled them up, not with coffee, but toffee — syrup.\u00a0 Now I went heretic. \u201cWhat are you doing? I want coffee, twenty ounces of coffee, not toffee–fill it up with coffee! And this time DON\u2019T leave room for anything!\u201d<\/p>\n

I was eventually appeased with a new set of paper chalices and went back to my room with the relics. At least Starbucks understands that the customer is still clergy when pressed, even at the J.W. Marriott Chateau D\u2019If. But Starbucks hubris is alive and well, especially at my daughter\u2019s community college where they neither honor their own gift cards nor the fifty cent refill rule\u2014for students no less!<\/p>\n

I see the same culture with Apple, only a hundred times worse. The spell cast by Apple is so potent, the queue-waiting disciples think that by purchasing and using their latest consumer electronics and surrounding themselves with the technologically cool makes them tech savvy by sacrament. In the parlance of the real tech savvy, these people would be called \u201cend-users\u201d which doesn\u2019t sound all that flattering now does it? \u00a0You\u2019re an \u201cend-user\u201d.<\/p>\n

What is it about Apple\u2014not their products\u2014but their corporate image, that keeps people rabidly devoted all the while being happily deceived? Apple enjoys a image of being open (they are the most closed and proprietary of any platform), not corporate greedy (they\u2019re valuation has topped 600 billion and they are scrutinized by the justice department for anti-trust violations), environmental (Apple promotes a perpetual consumerism that is decidedly not good for the environment),\u00a0 labor-friendly (Foxconn), and infallible (Newton, 4G iPhone, iPad 2.0, Macbook Pro, Lisa) and high quality (for design\u2014I agree, for production quality \u2013 made in China)<\/p>\n

I am not an Apple person because I cherish the technical freedom to do, configure and fix things they way I want them or they way they should be. Almost every turn I\u2019ve had with the few Apple products I\u2019ve encountered came with an all encompassing requirement for unwavering fealty:<\/p>\n