The Apple iPhone goes on sale Friday and there are already nerds camping out to grab the first new models. It’s a coup of cool for Steve Jobs. The iconic leader of Apple has seen his face plastered onto the Da Vinci’s Last Supper, transposed into Moses carrying down iPhones from the mountain and on the cover of New York magazine as an “iGod.”

Then there’s the crusifix iPod, the people praying to their iPod idols, and the stained glass window pane pictured above.

Jobs also has his own impersonator. The Fake Steve Jobs, who writes today:

“Already, around the United States, thousands of Apple faithful are lining up outside our retail shrines, waiting for iPhone. Some will approach on their bare knees, like pilgrims approaching the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Peru.”

Is America so hungry for a spiritual icon that turns to the executive of a computer company? It reminds me of John Lennon claiming to be more popular than Jesus in this interview from 1966:

Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him [Lennon]: not that his mind is closed, but it’s closed round whatever he believes at the time. ‘Christianity will go,’ he said. ‘It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first-rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.’ He is reading extensively about religion.

Whether it is Jobs, or Lennon before him, the cult that connects them both is consumerism. The idea that having the next Beatles album, or the newest piece of consumer electronics will make you happy. It will fill that void that’s always been there.

One of the wonderful things about the 1999 movie Fight Club, was how it broke down the idea that possesions make you happy. In one of the first scenes of the movie, the Narrator’s apartment explodes, destroying everything he owns. “Look, nobody takes this more seriously than me,” he says. “That condo was my life, okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was ME!”

Later, his alter ego discusses it with him:

Tyler Durden: We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Narrator: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: F**k Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So f**k off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.

Of course this wisdom isn’t new. It’s been around for hundreds of years. Hakuin Ekaku, a 17th century zen monk, wrote a poem about our desire for things and the need for stuff. To him, possessions, as much else in the world, was merely an illusion, a distraction the mind desires.

The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He’ll never give up.
If he’d let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.

When I passed the people camped out in line for an iPhone this morning, I found myself wanting the slick new device. I could even explain all the features and what exactly made it superior to a Blackberry or a Treo. But sitting here, in front of my computer and next to my girlfriend, I can’t imagine Apple’s new device making me any happier than I am right now…

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