What Elon Musk Represents
Five Reasons Behind his Greatness
Elon Musk is my favorite human being of this century. Imagining being a contemporary of great men, and moreover, suddenly running into them and striking up a conversation on the spot has always been a favorite thought experiment of mine. So I am literally proud to even be a contemporary of him even though I’ll, with almost complete certainty, never meet him.
100 billion human beings have been estimated to have roamed this earth. Imagine the chances that you dear reader happen to be a contemporary of one of our species’ finest.
He stands among other favorite giants of mine like Einstein of the previous century and Nietzsche of the 19th. His contributions are perhaps on par with them when it comes to their importance for the further enhancement of our species as a whole.
If one might for once rank human beings according to their greatness (a problem which I do hope future research will tackle as part of the tremendous task of cultivating elites in a society), perhaps their target audience, the scope of their influence, is a good starting point. Like Nietzsche and Einstein, Musk’s work targets the entirety of the human race. He does not belong to a nation or even to a generation alone, he belongs to humanity as a whole. We are here talking about human beings that occupy the first rank, the best that our species has to offer, something truly awe-inspiring. Human beings whose work is life-preserving, life-promoting, species-preserving, and, finally, species-cultivating.
So without further ado, here is what I think are the five main reasons behind his greatness, ranked in order of their importance.
Impact of his Work
The first and most important criterion is of course the impact of his work on humanity as a whole. Ranked according to their importance, the most notable three would be:
Neuralink, which, although is currently occupying but a fraction of his energies, has the potential and ultimate credo to transcend our species as a whole. Therefore something truly beyond homo sapiens.
SpaceX, for making mankind a multi-planetary species, which is absolutely focal to our species’ future. And this is not meant from a life insurance standpoint. That is only secondary in importance. The main point is that we must expand into our solar system, galaxy, and beyond, and this expansion should happen merely for expansion’s sake.
Finally, Tesla, the robot company whose near-future fundamental value is to act as an accelerator for the transition to sustainable energy. But in reality, its real fundamental value is much more than that. Tesla, to be sure has already made and will continue to make history on so many other points.
This work, which is work of the highest quality, intellectually (but not ultimately since the real throne is reserved for drives) stems from Musk’s guiding philosophy — a gold of the rarest quality I must add — which is:
Expand the scale and scope of consciousness in order to better ask questions to the answer, which is the universe.
Scope of Responsibility
Another important principle for determining value and rank according to Nietzsche is “how much and how many things one can bear and take upon oneself, how far one can extend one’s responsibility”.
Seen with these lenses Musk excels once again: Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, and on top of this — perhaps even equally importantly — Twitter. The burden is extremely heavy, and the capacity for long-range decisions is simply awe-inspiring.
An Agent of Chaos
The third reason behind his greatness is that Musk is, simply put, an agent of chaos: the antidote of the last man.
Civilization ends either with a whimper or a bang. In reality, though, the cause of the bang is all too frequently but the culmination of a long-drawn whimper. Such whimpers, which seem to be the default that our species falls to time and time again, have to be fiercely fought against. Musk is the agent of chaos par excellence. All of his work fundamentally has the spirit of chaos imprinted on them.
Romping from planet to planet, being there among the stars, what is this but the single greatest adventure that mankind has aspired to so far?
An Androgynous Being
Great human beings are always androgynous. They interact with the world in terms of a much richer and more varied spectrum of opportunities.
Psychologically speaking they are extremely driven, which requires inner focus, seriousness, and a most powerful competitive spirit. At the same time, they are infinitely curious, which requires openness to outside stimuli, playfulness, and dealing with objects and deeds for their own sake.
But apart from all this Musk is a most curious being in that he is both a leader of the highest quality and a very technical person, always striving for the fundamentals and building things from first principles. I like to view him as a hybrid between Einstein and Napoleon made for the 21st century, without necessarily going too far in either direction.
It is easy to take for granted just how difficult (perhaps the most difficult thing of all) is to lead people and to lead them incredibly well. History shows us innumerable nations that rose and fell with the most important factor being their leadership. Indeed it is terrifyingly amusing to see just how incredibly much, things have depended on a single wise ruler for all of our civilization as we’ve seen it up to the end of the 20th century.
Now add on top of that the fact that Musk is the chief rocket engineer at SpaceX, in other words, all the rockets that it has produced bear his hallmark, and the greatest of all, Starship, is to a large extent his magnum opus….
Then again, perhaps the feat of achieving such unprecedented manufacturing perfection at Tesla, and actually even so much as making Tesla as a company work at all when faced with an almost insurmountable, ungodly resistance is on the same par as SpaceX’s achievements. Let alone then the major breakthroughs that Tesla is adding to over the years…
These are simply unparalleled feats in these domains.
Humor
Last but not least is humor. Humor simply put is a major — if not say a dominating — strategy that our species has evolved to cope with the feelings of failure and fatality in the face of major resistance.
Or perhaps put somewhat poetically: it is the golden sunshine that imbues our daily life, perhaps the best of the many little things that matter in life.
It's superior to any set of guiding and recurring thoughts (i.e. a philosophy) — or any religion for that matter — that one might use to derive consolation in the face of calamity.
And I do think that Musk’s humor is pure gold. On account of this point alone — without even going into the other points —, I would put him one or two ladders above even the best entrepreneurs out there, such as Steve Jobs.
Aristotle
Aristotle’s discussion of megalopsychia (greatness of soul) is worth looking at in this context. More than 2000 years later his principles are still quite accurate and relevant — if not to say more relevant than ever —:
- The great-souled man claims much and deserves much (as Socrates did in the Apology when he said he deserved the greatest honor Athens could bestow). He who claims less than he deserves is small-souled.
- He is justified in despising other people — his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride.
- He is fond of conferring benefits, but ashamed to receive them because the former is a mask of superiority and the latter of inferiority.
- It is also characteristic of the great-souled men never to ask help from others, or only with reluctance, but to render aid willingly; and to be haughty towards men of position and fortune, but courteous towards those of moderate station.
- The great-souled man must be open both in love and in hate since concealment shows timidity; and care more for the truth than for what people will think. (Now you understand why what people dismiss as his “adolescent outbursts” is a rather superficial way of looking at things. It’s just that Twitter amplifies everything, causing the rest to be closed and delusive. In the final analysis, this puts Elon one ladder higher; only on account of this openness.)
- He is outspoken and frank, except when speaking with ironical self-deprecation, as he does to common people.
- He does not bear a grudge, for it is not a mark of the greatness of soul to recall things against people, especially the wrongs they have done you, but rather to overlook them.
- He is not given to speaking evil himself, even of his enemies, except when he deliberately intends to give offense.
Finally, I would also like to mention, in passing only, that the abounding contempt towards him in the innumerable blockheads out there is really nothing new if one for once ponders on it.
This is essentially how great human beings have almost universally been treated throughout history for the majority — if not say all — of their lives. There seems to be a built-in program in us that is hostile towards that which is rarer and soars much higher than we could ever fly ourselves, that which deviates from the normal, that which breaks convention, that which creates new laws and values.
Ultimately though the pettiness never lasts long, it dries up before the generation has run its course and what remains is the pure unadulterated love for all mankind that shines brightly throughout the ages in one’s work.
In short, my dear psychologists study the philosophy of the “norm” in its fight against the “exception”: there you have a spectacle that is good enough for gods and godlike malice!
With a great goal, one is superior even to justice, not only to one’s deeds and one’s judges.
Those who have greatness are cruel to their virtues and to secondary considerations.
— Nietzsche
Thanks for reading.
As always, constructive criticism and discussion of any kind are highly appreciated.
Remember what physics teaches us: One’s goal is to be less wrong about everything.
