This article is from WeChat official account:The Great Filter (ID: TheGreatFilter), author: Zoe * π, title figure from: TGF team

Introduction

Tesla CEO Musk restructured the basic principles he learned in the fields of artificial intelligence, technology, physics, and engineering into different fields. Each field is like a piece of debris. For the “special shape” puzzle, Musk gave it a name, called: Let human beings become a multi-planet species.

The blogger Tim Urban of the famous American business blog Wait But Why (Tim Urban) used There is a formula to describe Musk’s company. I made a simple summary of this formula (as shown below):

Every “color block” in the formula constitutes the “spectrum” of Musk’s business empire, but what I am even more curious about is-the creator of this puzzle, what is his personality portrait? What kind of experience shapes and summons (calling) Is he taking “interstellar crossing” as his mission to create a business world?

Musk is a faithful believer of the ancient Greek “first principles” philosophy, which encourages the decomposition of problems into the most basic parts to explore the laws of the nature of things.

Today, I also want to use the first-principle methodology—to explore this puzzle called “Musk” by understanding the basic components of “personality”.

The “basic parts” are:

  • Relationship between individuals and others

  • The relationship between the individual and the world

  • Relationship between individual and self

In the process of painting Musk’s “personality”, I also deeply realized that even if the talent is as extraordinary as Musk, the human beings who can’t get rid of the bondage written in genes, at least in ” “Gravity” cannot break free.

This may be one of the reasons why he wants to lead humans to migrate to Mars.

01 None of us can escape this “City of Philharmonic”

In an interview with Musk in “Rolling Stone” magazine, Musk said something that surprised me. He said: “If I am not in love, without a long-term partner, I will not be happy.”

Maybe I’m used to Musk’s fierce competition when he was a “performance artist” on Twitter. It is inevitable that people will be curious about the reasons behind this public display of weakness.

After studying Musk’s three “marriage stories” spanning 16 years, I seem to have captured the first puzzle piece of Musk’s personality portrait.

Musk and Justine Wilson(Justine Wilson) had the first marriage story, which is also his longest relationship ; Next, he and Dalula Riley (Talulah Riley) began the second and third paragraphs of marriage story (pictured below).

Musk met his first wife Justin at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. The two married in 2000 and divorced in 2008.

After the divorce, Justin published an article in Marie Clarie magazine titled “I Was a Starter Wife” (I Was a Starter Wife)< /span>‘s article, describing her marital relationship with Musk.

This article is very long. After reading through it several times, I came up with the following two points:

I “see” you

An important reason Justin was attracted by Musk was that she thought she was “seen” in this intimate relationship.

There is a paragraph in the article that describes it like this:

Musk found a shining spot in the depths of my soul. Unlike ex-boyfriends who complained about my overpowering character and proposition, Musk felt that my ambitions and ambitions were so attractive. When he told me “I found myself in you”, I knew what he really wanted to express.

On their wedding day, Musk said a meaningful sentence to Justin: “I am the Alpha in this relationship.” JasTing thought it was just an accidental joke, but he didn’t expect this sentence to predict their future life.

A few months after their wedding, a unique family atmosphere began to emerge: Musk’s decision will always be right, and Justin’s opinion will never matter.

People who are familiar with Musk know that he is a typical workaholic. When he comes home, Justin hopes to have a long conversation with him to increase his relationship, but Musk is obsessed with work and even tells Justin : “If you were my employee, I would have fired you a long time ago.”

Musk, who said this sentence, said affectionately to Justin: “There is a flame in your soul.”

Musk projected by light and shadow| Picture source: Wired

If we dig deeper into the reasons behind the “change”, it may be because Musk grew up in South Africa where the patriarchal culture is prevalent. The mental model dominated by “competition” is not because of him. When you return home, it will automatically turn off the button magically. So the mutual support that was once evolved into a “game of power” in intimate relationships.

In the context of society, the control of valuable resources is the basis for power generation. The more people who control valuable resources, the easier it is for people to rely on them, so they have more power.

This is exactly the opposite of the power and dependence in an intimate relationship: In an intimate relationship, the person who is less dependent on the other party has more power. To put it more bluntly: In an intimate relationship, those who invest less have more power.

But the saddest part of this “power struggle” is: I don’t want to lose you, but I don’t want to lose to you.

Musk’s aloof devotion to work is in stark contrast to his devotion to intimate relationships. No matter what context he isIt is the party with more power.

The “Philharmonic City” where self-fulfillers cannot escape

In this marriage story, the most embarrassing and emotional segment is Justin’s “awakening” moment.

In the spring of 2008, Justin suffered a car accident. She mentioned in a TED talk: This car accident is like “a vigilant alarm clock.”

When she was in that car accident, the first reaction in her mind was not “Thank God we are all alive”, but “I crashed the car, and my husband will kill me.” She began to complain. I feel strange and scared in this way.

My understanding of this “Awakening Moment” is: The common belief of both parties in an intimate relationship is no longer a beacon that illuminates each other. One of the lighthouses begins to shine, and the other lighthouse becomes Overshadowed. When a person looks down and cannot see his own shadow, he begins to question his own “existence” itself.

The “Lighthouse Cafe” frequented by Mia and Sab in “The City of Philharmonic” | Picture source: movie screenshot

Shortly after divorcing Justin, Musk began dating the actress Tarulah Riley (Talulah Riley). Ashlee Vance, the author of “Silicon Valley Iron Man” (Ashlee Vance) described the details of their first meeting in the book, Vance said: Musk and Riley fell in love at first sight.

But Musk’s second paragraphbig-title”>02 Only paranoia can survive

On December 30, 2019, the first batch of 15 domestic Tesla Model 3s was officially delivered to customers at the Shanghai Super Factory. Model 3 is an electric car designed by Tesla for ordinary consumers. From construction to delivery, Tesla’s Shanghai plant only took less than a year.

In sharp contrast to the smooth mass production of Model 3 in China, Musk once stated in 2017 that the first six months of Model 3 production was a “hell-like” experience. At that time, Musk had to sleep on the floor of the car factory every day, no more than 6 hours of sleep per night.

If you go to foreign mainstream media to search for news related to Musk around 2018, the frequently appearing words are: workaholic, mental breakdown, insomnia, and extreme anxiety.

So much so that Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, (Arianna Huffington) as Thrive Global Founder & CEO On August 18, 2018, he wrote an open letter An Open Letter to Elon Musk to Musk. The subtitle of this open letter is: “Musk, you are showing an outdated, anti-scientific, and extremely inefficient way of working that consumes human energy.”

The Musk in the picture attached to the article is very haggard, and his face is exhausted. In the morning after Huffington finished posting the article, (August 19), Musk responded to this open letter on Twitter. He Said: “Ford and Tesla are the only two U.S. auto companies that have avoided bankruptcy. I just returned home from the factory. You think the way of working is a multiple choice question for me. But it is not.”

The “narrative self*” of an idealist is actually more down-to-earth than the “experienced self*” of most realists. This really shocked me.

Note: Yuval Harali introduced the difference between “narrative self” and “experience self” in Chapter 8 of “A Brief History of the Future”. According to Harari’s hypothesis, experiencing self does not have the ability to remember and cannot tell stories. Instead, it is another very different entity in our minds that tells stories and makes big decisions in our minds—the narrative self—that weaves the threads of the past into a story while making plans for the future.

Later, in Urban’s interview with Musk, I also began to understand why Musk had a unique and keen insight into the innovation and development of human society, and how he “narrated” based on this insight. Turned into “reality”.

The rocket is carrying a Tesla Roadster on a spacewalk | Image source: YouTube

Musk saw that the development of human society since the Industrial Revolution has completely changed the trajectory of innovation. None of the innovative applications after the industrial revolution can be completed independently by individuals, and they are all based on human “collective wisdom”.

At this stage, the development of human collective wisdom has reached a new level. The popularization of smartphones and mobile Internet allows the brains of the world to connect in real time. Musk calls this collective wisdom of today’s humans “human giant spirit”. He believes that the best way to promote change is to be able to move the “human giants” towards a certain direction.

There is only one way to achieve this goal: master the voice of “capital”. To put it more directly: let the people at the tableaster-plan-just-between-you-and-me

“Don Nietzsche is crying”, Owen Yaron

This article is from WeChat official account:The Great Filter (ID: TheGreatFilter) author: Zoe * π