"Think Different" was an advertising slogan - and was actually a complete advertising campaign - propagated by Apple Computer. That's a young Steve Jobs pictured above with the apple.
Click right here if you'd like to watch the "original" television ad for the "Think Different" campaign. The video begins with a salute to "the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels...." Charlie Chaplin is pictured first, followed by Bob Dylan, and then on to "lesser rebels." Whenever I think of that "Think Different" advertising campaign, and remember the video's listing of the "crazy ones," I am tempted to move from the list of the rebels provided by Apple and to insert my own, personal addition, with a salute ".... to the people who decide that they don't need to use proper grammar."
Anyway, the "Think Different" slogan popped into my brain as I read Malcolm Harris' book, What's Left: Three Paths Through The Planetary Crisis. Harris, you may remember from one of my earlier blog postings, is the author of Palo Alto: A History Of California, Capitalism, And The World. I have mentioned that book before, and more than once, and I can now report that I have finally finished reading it - it's over 700 pages long! When I was done with Palo Alto, I started in on Harris' next book, which is a proposal for how we might survive the massive planetary disruptions to which our inattention to Global Warming is quickly delivering us.
Among other things, Harris gives us the bad news that "thinking differently" will really be necessary if we are going to avoid planetary disaster, and that it's not going to be all that easy to do what we need to do. For instance, what about getting rid of gasoline-driven automobiles, and substituting in all-electric vehicles? That sounds like a plan that will help, right? Probably not, says Harris! Currently, the United States has a ratio of almost one automobile per person, and the environmental and global warming impacts of replacing all those gasoline-powered vehicles with vehicles that are "all-electric" will be a net negative in terms of planetary protection - at least that's true the way Harris does the calculation. I think he has a pretty good argument.
So, if we are going to survive, Harris warns us, we need to go way beyond "thinking different." What we really need to do is to start "living different" - and in a pretty big way. No more one car per person! We need to get rid of most of our cars, period - and that really does mean that we need to "live differently." Sorry about using proper grammar, there. That's just the way I'm wired!
Image Credit:
https://youtu.be/5sMBhDv4sik?si=KFLMr1slepx7s4bI
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