Misplaced Spheres: When Capital Rules Culture

The contrast between Jobs and Cook is more than corporate succession. It is a symptom of how society itself has become disordered. Rudolf Steiner spoke of the social organism as threefold:

• a cultural sphere of free spiritual life (creativity, education, science, art),
• a political sphere of equal rights,
• and an economic sphere of brotherhood in production and exchange.

Each sphere has its own laws and dignity. Culture must breathe freedom; politics must safeguard equality; economy must serve needs through cooperation. But in our time, the spheres are no longer in their rightful places.

1. Capital Invades Culture

Apple under Jobs embodied the cultural sphere. His work was not about money but about form, vision, expression. Under Cook, capital invaded this realm, subordinating invention to shareholder value. What should have been free creativity was captured by financial logic. This pattern extends everywhere: universities chained to corporate sponsorships, art bent toward commerce, scientific research narrowed by profit motive. Capital rules culture, and creativity suffocates.

2. Culture Degrades Politics

At the same time, politics has taken on the shadow of culture. The two main parties in the United States no longer function as instruments of law and governance; they have become cult-ures — identity stances, tribal affiliations, symbolic belonging. Politics becomes aesthetics and theater, while law and rights are neglected. Culture invades politics, but in its degraded form.

3. Economy Detached from Life

Meanwhile the economic sphere, which should be rooted in production and the meeting of needs, has become abstracted into the games of shareholder speculation and financial engineering. Profits grow not by producing value, but by manipulating scarcity, debt, and desire. Economy is no longer brotherhood but competition raised to system. Economy serves itself, not life.

4. Everything Out of Place

This is why the Jobs–Cook contrast is so revealing. It is not merely personal. It shows how visionary culture has been enslaved by capital, while politics becomes culture’s parody, and economy floats free of real needs. Everything is in the wrong place.

Where Capital Belongs

The true task is not to abolish capital, but to place it rightly. In a healthy society:

• Capital should flow into the cultural sphere, empowering visionaries, inventors, educators, and artists without enslaving them.
• Economy should be guided by associative life, producing and distributing according to human need, not speculative gain.
• Politics should hold the balance, safeguarding rights and equality without devolving into cultural cults.

Jobs’ genius shows what happens when cultural vision is given space to breathe. Cook’s tenure shows what happens when that vision is captured by shareholder logic. The lesson is larger than Apple. It is about whether we allow our future to be guided by the breath of cultural genius, or strangled by the tightness of capital’s weasel grip.