Pardon me, but I want to request a bit of equanimity for Elon Musk.
He’s getting dumped on a lot lately, and for mostly good reasons: anti-semitic comments and not policing the fat, rotten side of Twitter (now X). But earlier he had been lauded as an entrepreneurial visionary, or something of the sort.
What gets me is that, in both instances, he has not been treated as a full human being. I mean, yes, he regularly comes across as larger than life because of his money, the multiple companies he controls, and his unrestrained ability to make a damned fool of himself. But shrink him down to normal size and he’s a human being, with the standard range of good, bad and indifferent points that we all share, to one extent or another.
I’ve never joined Twitter/X (and never will), so can’t comment on his extended range of views posted there. But from the numerous examples that do escape its confines, he seems complex, comical, confused and confounding: someone for everyone to hate and enjoy hating.
What I like best in these off-hand, off-mind memos is his sense of humor. He can’t seem to take himself or anything he’s doing fully seriously (remember The Boring Company!?), That’s something that definitely can’t be said of his righteous detractors. Yeah, his humor is juvenile often enough, but what a relief from the mock seriousness of the corporate heads, social mahoffs, and commentators who shake their knowing fingers but don’t give a royal fuck about any of us.
Some of his ideas, ballooned into companies, are brilliant, at least as starter-concepts – Tesla, Space X, Starlink, Neuralink – yet he’s an amazing wacko who doesn’t seem to care much what anyone thinks of him. Loathing him for his Scrooge McDuckian piles of money (which, based largely on investments, doesn’t really exist) is beside the point – though I wish he’d just give it away, especially if he did so with the same unpredictable shrug.
Speaking of money, how could he ask his directors, straight-faced, for an obscene payout of $56 billion? Ummm, I haven’t heard anyone say this directly, but maybe it’s to pay him back for buying Twitter – which I recall cost him about $45 billion. (I’m convinced he bought Twitter to deliberately destroy it – the only explanation for his first year’s behavior as owner; if so, bless him).
Each of his companies (except The Boring Company, which, really, had to be a joke – it’s never produced anything) has a solid, well-developed idea behind it. And each has major downsides.
Tesla has captured the electric-car market, but it’s based on lithium batteries, which are far from being an end-product in battery design – heavy, expensive, short-lived and environmentally brutal. To make the world electric, it needs a real battery which doesn’t yet exist.
Space X will likely become a viable alternative to total government control of space exploration through NASA, but so far it’s shown wild failures during launching (though early failure has been true of every technological advance throughout history), and Musk’s idea of polluting the rest of the solar system with humanity gags me.
Starlink is a major advance in non-terrestrial communication, but it is fouling the outer atmosphere with crap and astronomy with light pollution.
Neuralink looks like it will allow paralyzed humans to form links with computers. Good stuff, that, but likely just as much or more bad by promoting even greater destruction of privacy.
Here’s the thing I’m getting at: More than at any other time in recent history, we as a society demand that everyone be firmly this or that, that they fully confirm (or deny) what we each believe in. So I’m just trying to present Musk as either god’s right hand or the devil’s bosom buddy.
And please remember: Leonardo was gay and wrote backwards, but he still did some pretty neat art (though not Salvador Mundi for Christ sake – I mean, look at the Lord’s dead eyes and silly, twisted fingers – Leonardo, who was a master of hands).
* * * *
Two ghosts were walking down the road. On had substance, the other did not. The one who had substance asked the one who did not: “Why do you not have substance?” The other replied: “The Saints’ Commission on Ghostly Well-Being has stated that the purer the thoughts, the more ephemeral the state of attenuation, culminating in gradual absorption of all mundane matter into the All-Encompassing Spirit of Nirvana, much as sugar is slowly dissolved into a bowl of oatmeal. This argument has subsidiary ramifications, which may best be summed up in the phrase, ‘Somebody up there likes me.'”
The ghost who had substance found this to be a snide and absurd explanation and attempted to kick the other ghost in his keister. But since the other had no substance, the first ghost merely stubbed his toe on a solemnity. The second ghost went contentedly on his way until he chanced to step in a bowl of oatmeal and was slowly absorbed into an aged Scotsman’s breakfast.
* * * *
Dream #17
Around 6 am. I have a spotted wild cat [we’d been to the zoo that day], about the size of a small puma to start with, that tries to swallow one of our house cats, I pull that one out of its throat, let the wildcat loose, it swallows my favorite cat, Cali. I know I can cut the wildcat open, which means several minutes of trying to knock the thing out by swinging it by its tail and slamming its head on the floor. But every time I grab it and try to operate with a little Xacto knife, it wakes up and wiggles. Lots of people around, don’t seem too interested, hand me the knife if it falls but won’t help. Finally hold the wildcat down with one hand on its throat and cut it open, no blood, pull Cali out, but the gastric juices have dissolved her hair and she looks like a lumpy football. I’m in a vet’s office and he takes her and hangs her to dry, now orange and green and dried out, a cross between a wicker hot-pad and a potholder. I wake up without finding out if Cali will make it.
* * * *
Two updated spirituals:
Ezekiel copped a feel,
Way down in the middle of the hair…
If I could, I surely would
Crap on the rock where Moses stood…
Oh Harry don’t you weep, don’t you moan,
Oh Harry don’t you weep, don’t you moan,
Pharaoh’s air force got grounded,
Oh Harry don’t you weep.
lickhaven 