Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Over at NRO, Mona Charen--who combines fearlessness, elegance, and beautiful, lucid prose--has posted a reflection on the life of Steve Jobs. While everyone else has been thinking about the way Steve used technology to improve our lives, Mona has been thinking about what Steve taught us about life itself.
An excerpt:
Amid the expressions of grief at the passing of one of America’s greatest innovators — Steve Jobs — one offhand comment by someone on CNN was jarring. Describing his brilliance, his inventiveness, his business genius, and his inspired leadership, one host added, “And his parents didn’t want him! They gave him up for adoption, if you can believe that!”
It is one of the enduring misconceptions of modern life that birth parents who make adoption plans for their children “don’t want them” and that this “rejection” scars the adoptee for life. The social-science data refute this....
[I]n contrast to the view so carelessly voiced by that news anchor, placing a child for adoption is one of the most loving and unselfish acts imaginable. Consider 23-year-old Joanne Schieble, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin who became pregnant in 1954. She and the baby’s father, a Syrian immigrant named Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, were not married. (They married and divorced later.) Abortion was illegal in most states at the time, though plenty of exceptions were made, and many women got abortions. But Schieble chose to proceed with the pregnancy and give her son life. Our world would be so much diminished if she had not.
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Comments:
Apr '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Thank you Peter for raising the point made by Mona Charen that even if he hadn't created or invented anything he would still, from the moment of his conception and throughout eternity, been inscribed with infinite worth and value by the very fact that God had thought of him before the foundations of the world and thought it wise to place him with two loving parents.
May '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
"Unrepeatable" was in the slogan of a Catholic charity for troubled pregnant women that Mr. McGurn (I think) posted about a while back.
Definitely applies to Steve Jobs, the fetus.
Jun '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
What of Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot? Were these men of "infinite worth"? Did God think of them "…before the foundation of the world…"?
Sep '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
There's also this variable to consider.
Aug '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
I am very grateful that my wife's birth mother gave her up for adoption. My life would be much poorer if she had decided to abort.
May '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Cas Balicki
What of Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot? Were these men of "infinite worth"? Did God think of them "…before the foundation of the world…"? · Oct 12 at 11:01am
Evil is a parasite. Any great evil begins with a great good.
Jun '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Cas Balicki
What of Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot? Were these men of "infinite worth"? Did God think of them "…before the foundation of the world…"? · Oct 12 at 11:01am
God gives us free will. Jesus picked Judas as a disciple not because Judas was guaranteed to betray--many could've filled that role--but because Judas retained the free will to rise above his nature, and be faithful. Same for all those others you mentioned. They had the free will necessary to go another way.
May '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Made me think of this. It only takes a minute to watch :)
Oct '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Cas Balicki
What of Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot? Were these men of "infinite worth"? Did God think of them "…before the foundation of the world…"? · Oct 12 at 11:01am
Yes, their lives were of infinite worth. What they did with their lives is another question.
Mar '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Cas Balicki
What of Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot? Were these men of "infinite worth"? Did God think of them "…before the foundation of the world…"? · Oct 12 at 11:01am
In general, monsters are made, not born. Lots of evidence of this on the homicidal-maniac front. Most of the time psycho's had absolutely tortured childhoods. So who is to say what Hitler would have been like if he were born in a country that valued rather than hated Jews.
However, I do think that a few kids really are born "bad". So who knows.
Feb '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
I was also adopted, but raising children has confirmed in my mind that its about 80% wiring.
Sep '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Being a twin (fraternal, not identical) makes me feel the same way.
JoeyV
I was also adopted, but raising children has confirmed in my mind that its about 80% wiring. · Oct 12 at 12:13pm
May '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
(Obligatory disclaimer: Of course death is a tradegy and I feel for Steve Jobs' loved ones.) Nevertheless, I find it amusing that as this billionaire died, the OWS crowd was protesting his very existence -- many of them with I-Pod in hand. Irony can just be so damned ironic sometimes.
May '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Oh, and by the way -- on the subject of celebrating the life of children not aborted, I am deeply saddened by the loss of the child never conceived by myself and Megan Fox during a night of passion in a bungalow on a warm Hawaiian beach. I was willing Megan, but where were you?
Mar '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Indeed. Jobs wasn't just a corporate leader, but often a ruthless corporate leader. You'd have thought Che Guevara had died again, though.
Aug '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
While we're waxing all traditional-values about Steve Jobs, let us turn a blind eye to the fact that he aggressively denied paternity of his born-out-of-wedlock first child, Lisa, who subsisted on welfare for the first several years of her life.
Although Lisa's mother is tight-lipped on the matter, one can presume that Steve would have preferred at the time that Lisa would have been aborted, so as not to inconvenience him.
The guy was a talented designer and businessman, but he was no saint. And he certainly never met a pro-choice politician he didn't like.
Jun '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
What if it is ultimately proved that the hall of western society is due to the invention of the personal computer?
Nov '10
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
" placing a child for adoption is one of the most loving and unselfish acts imaginable'
True when the adoption is due to voluntary relinquishment. But as I've had to recently explain to my adopted children, the sad truth is that some kids are taken from their parents because the birth parents just have too many problems. Drugs, prison, or abandonment also result in children being put up for adoption. It's a big thing for a kid to hear. But I think we're only telling half the story if we assume all adopted kids are the result of a loving and thoughtful birth mother making a heart-rending decision.
Mar '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Cas Balicki
What of Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot? Were these men of "infinite worth"? Did God think of them "…before the foundation of the world…"? · Oct 12 at 11:01am
With all their force of character--though ultimately, hideously corrupt--what else might they have been?
I believe God did think, of even these, "..before the foundation of the world...". They condemned themselves.
Steve Jobs's force of character went a different, creative path. He lived to see his ideas falter and flower, in turn: he prospered, and our world has benefited. But if he had been a humble man---however excellent and conscientious a man---he still would have been Steve Jobs, human being, father, husband, son. R.I.P.
Apr '11
Re: Steve Jobs, Adopted, Did Just Fine, Don't You Think?
Cas Balicki
What of Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot? Were these men of "infinite worth"? Did God think of them "…before the foundation of the world…"? · Oct 12 at 11:01am
Cas, others spoke on my behalf since I had to leave for work but yes all those God did take thought of perhaps the same way your parents took thought of you before your conception. I'm sure they imagined great and noble things, your first steps, first love, marriage, children and a life lived to the fullest when not one of your days existed. Do you not think your parents thought your worth inexhaustible? How much more then from your Father in heaven.