When members of the Mac team got ensnared in his reality distortion field, they were almost hypnotized. “He reminded me of Rasputin,” said Debi Coleman. “He laser-beamed in on you and didn’t blink. It didn’t matter if he was serving purple Kool-Aid. You drank it.” But like Wozniak, she believed that the reality distortion field was empowering: It enabled Jobs to inspire his team to change the course of computer history with a fraction of the resources of Xerox or IBM. “It was a self-fulfilling distortion,” she claimed. “You did the impossible, because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”

當(dāng)Mac團(tuán)隊(duì)的成員們陷入他的現(xiàn)實(shí)扭曲力場(chǎng)時(shí)，他們就好像被催眠了一樣?！八屛蚁肫鹆死蛊站?，”黛比·科爾曼（DebiColeman）說，“他會(huì)死死地盯著你，眼睛一眨都不眨。哪怕他端給你一杯毒藥，你也會(huì)乖乖地喝下去?！钡牵臀制澞醽喛艘粯?，她也認(rèn)為現(xiàn)實(shí)扭曲力場(chǎng)是充滿力量的：它讓喬布斯激勵(lì)自己的團(tuán)隊(duì)，在掌握的資源遠(yuǎn)不及施樂及IBM的情況下，改變了計(jì)算機(jī)產(chǎn)業(yè)的進(jìn)程?！澳鞘且环N自我實(shí)現(xiàn)的扭曲，”她說，“你完成了不可能完成的任務(wù)，因?yàn)槟悴]有意識(shí)到它是不可能完成的。”

At the root of the reality distortion was Jobs’s belief that the rules didn’t apply to him. He had some evidence for this; in his childhood, he had often been able to bend reality to his desires. Rebelliousness and willfulness were ingrained in his character. He had the sense that he was special, a chosen one, an enlightened one. “He thinks there are a few people who are special—people like Einstein and Gandhi and the gurus he met in India—and he’s one of them,” said Hertzfeld. “He told Chrisann this. Once he even hinted to me that he was enlightened. It’s almost like Nietzsche.” Jobs never studied Nietzsche, but the philosopher’s concept of the will to power and the special nature of the überman came naturally to him. As Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “The spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world.” If reality did not comport with his will, he would ignore it, as he had done with the birth of his daughter and would do years later, when first diagnosed with cancer. Even in small everyday rebellions, such as not putting a license plate on his car and parking it in handicapped spaces, he acted as if he were not subject to the strictures around him.

現(xiàn)實(shí)扭曲力場(chǎng)的根源在于喬布斯內(nèi)心深處不可動(dòng)搖的信念：世界上的規(guī)則都不適用于他。這在他身上是有跡可循的：小時(shí)候，他就經(jīng)?？梢宰尙F(xiàn)實(shí)屈服于自己的欲望。但他認(rèn)為自己可以無視規(guī)則的信念還有更深層次的原因，就是深深植根于他性格中的叛逆與固執(zhí)。他覺得自己很特別：他是被上天選中并受到啟示的?！八J(rèn)為有一些人是很特別的——比如他自己、愛因斯坦、甘地以及他在印度遇到的那些導(dǎo)師——而他就是其中之一，”赫茨菲爾德說，“他跟克里斯安講過這些。有一次他甚至暗示我，他是受到過上天啟示的。這些話就像是從尼采口中說出來的。”喬布斯從沒有研究過尼采，但他的天性與尼采的一些思想不謀而合：對(duì)權(quán)力的渴望，以及“超人”（Uberman）的特殊本性。尼采在《查拉圖斯特拉如是說》中寫道：“精神現(xiàn)在擁有了自己的意志；被世界所驅(qū)逐的人，終于贏得了自己的世界！”如果現(xiàn)實(shí)與喬布斯的意愿不一致的話，他就會(huì)忽略現(xiàn)實(shí)，他的女兒麗薩出生時(shí)他就是這么做的；多年以后，當(dāng)他第一次被診斷患上了癌癥時(shí)，他也是這么做的。即使平時(shí)一些小小的叛逆行為，比如汽車不裝牌照，或是將車停在殘疾人停車位上，他也表現(xiàn)得好像完全不受規(guī)則和現(xiàn)實(shí)的約束。

Another key aspect of Jobs’s worldview was his binary way of categorizing things. People were either “enlightened” or “an asshole.” Their work was either “the best” or “totally shitty.” Bill Atkinson, the Mac designer who fell on the good side of these dichotomies, described what it was like:

喬布斯的世界觀的另一個(gè)重要方面，就是他對(duì)人或物進(jìn)行分類時(shí)，非黑即白的思維方式。人要么就是“受到過啟示的”，要么就是“飯桶”；人們的工作成果要么是“最棒的”，要么就是“完全的垃圾”。Mac的設(shè)計(jì)師比爾·阿特金森在這樣的二分法中獲得的總是積極的評(píng)價(jià)，他有如下描述：

It was difficult working under Steve, because there was a great polarity between gods and shitheads. If you were a god, you were up on a pedestal and could do no wrong. Those of us who were considered to be gods, as I was, knew that we were actually mortal and made bad engineering decisions and farted like any person, so we were always afraid that we would get knocked off our pedestal. The ones who were shitheads, who were brilliant engineers working very hard, felt there was no way they could get appreciated and rise above their status.

在史蒂夫手下工作太難了，因?yàn)椤吧瘛迸c“白癡”之間的兩極分化太嚴(yán)重了。如果你是神，你就是高高在上，存在于神壇上的，絕不能犯錯(cuò)誤。我們當(dāng)中被認(rèn)為是神的那些人，比如說我，都知道自己實(shí)際上也是凡人，我們也會(huì)作出糟糕的工程決定，也會(huì)像任何人一樣吃飯放屁，所以我們總是害怕會(huì)被趕下神壇。而那些被認(rèn)為是白癡的，他們其實(shí)也是辛勤工作的杰出工程師，但他們就會(huì)覺得·自己永遠(yuǎn)都得不到賞識(shí)，永遠(yuǎn)無法擺脫白癡的身份。

But these categories were not immutable, for Jobs could rapidly reverse himself. When briefing Hertzfeld about the reality distortion field, Tribble specifically warned him about Jobs’s tendency to resemble high-voltage alternating current. “Just because he tells you that something is awful or great, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll feel that way tomorrow,” Tribble explained. “If you tell him a new idea, he’ll usually tell you that he thinks it’s stupid. But then, if he actually likes it, exactly one week later, he’ll come back to you and propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it.”

但這樣的分類并不是永恒不變的。尤其是當(dāng)喬布斯的看法是關(guān)于想法而不是關(guān)于人的時(shí)候，他有時(shí)會(huì)很快推翻自己先前的結(jié)論。特里布爾在向赫茨菲爾德介紹現(xiàn)實(shí)扭曲力場(chǎng)時(shí)，特別叮囑他：?jiǎn)滩妓咕拖窀邏航涣麟娨粯由谱??！八嬖V你某樣?xùn)|西是糟糕的或者絕妙的，并不代表他明天還會(huì)這么想，”特里布爾解釋說，“如果你告訴他一個(gè)新想法，他通常會(huì)告訴你他認(rèn)為這個(gè)想法很愚蠢。但之后，如果他真的喜歡上了這個(gè)想法，一個(gè)星期之后，他會(huì)找到你，然后把你的想法再提出來，就好像是他自己想出來的一樣?！?/span>

The audacity of this pirouette technique would have dazzled Diaghilev. “If one line of argument failed to persuade, he would deftly switch to another,” Hertzfeld said. “Sometimes, he would throw you off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own, without acknowledging that he ever thought differently.” That happened repeatedly to Bruce Horn, the programmer who, with Tesler, had been lured from Xerox PARC. “One week I’d tell him about an idea that I had, and he would say it was crazy,” recalled Horn. “The next week, he’d come and say, ‘Hey I have this great idea’—and it would be my idea! You’d call him on it and say, ‘Steve, I told you that a week ago,’ and he’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ and just move right along.”

這種腳尖旋轉(zhuǎn)技巧的大膽程度，即便是迪亞吉列夫②看了，也會(huì)眼花繚亂。布魯斯·霍恩是和#斯勒一起從施樂PARC跳槽到蘋果的程序貫，他就親歷了多次這樣的事情?！澳骋惶?，我會(huì)跟他提一個(gè)自己的想法，他會(huì)說那太瘋狂了，”霍恩說，“到下一周，他會(huì)跑過來跟我說：‘嘿！我有個(gè)很棒的主意’——而那正是我的主意！我跟他說：‘史蒂夫，一個(gè)星期之前我就跟你說過這個(gè)了。’他就會(huì)說：‘知道了知道了?！缓罄^續(xù)講下去?！?/span>