“It’s not possible.”
“Do it anyway.”
This is how I would summarize my recent reading of Elon Musk’s biography by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2023). No matter what anyone thinks of this polarizing innovator, he obviously has accomplished many things that did not seem possible.
An investor who turned down the opportunity to back Tesla early on looked back: “It’s mission impossible. . . . I didn’t appreciate the strength of Elon’s determination”. His intention to grow Tesla into one of the most profitable auto companies was considered “laughably impossible,” but as he made quick, giant strides, he texted out to his employees, “We did it!!… Created entirely new solutions that were thought impossible.” He told his staff at Neuralink to reduce an elaborate contraption down to one single chip that could interface with the brain. “No connections, no router, no wires. ‘We thought this was impossible,’ one of the engineers said, ‘but now we’re actually pretty stoked by it’.”
Musk is on a mission. You can laugh at him if you want, but the threat of human extinction has driven him to unthinkable success. Driven to make humanity an interplanetary species, he built his own enormously successful rocket company, which will probably reach Mars soon. Concerns about renewable energy fueled his creativity at Tesla. The fear of AI harming humanity has made him a leader in its development to protect against its misuse.
In his own words, “If conventional thinking makes your mission impossible … then unconventional thinking is necessary.” He’s gone far with this unconventionality.
His extreme dedication to reaching Mars, however, reveals a deeper void. He feels burdened by his mission to save humanity through technology, forcing him to keep up a frenetic pace and to run people over out of a general concern to save humanity.
Without faith in God, we cannot have hope that all things work for the good in the end. Instead, we create with our own utopian hope: “‘I wanted to hold out hope that humans could be a space-faring civilization and be out there among the stars,’ he says. ‘And there was no chance of that unless a new company was started to create revolutionary rockets’.”
There is another way. In faith, the impossible can become possible, opening up a different path to abiding life. But Musk himself, when still young, raised a common objection of those coming from a scientific worldview: “‘What do you mean, the waters parted?’ he asked. ‘That’s not possible.’” Then, when he was presented with the story of Jesus feeding the crowd with loaves and fishes, “he countered that things cannot materialize out of nothing.”
Without faith, we hit obstacles that force us either to despair or seek an alternative to divine help. When the disciples asked Jesus why they could not cast out a demon, for instance, “He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you’” (Matt 17:20).
Do we do the impossible? Not just driving employees to feats that seem beyond human ability, but even greater works than Jesus did (Jn 14:12)? It’s not that Jesus wants his disciples to catch everyone’s attention or create worldly breakthroughs. No, Jesus came to bring abundant life. We’re called to do the impossible on an even greater scale, cooperating in the re-creation of humanity. But there’s a problem. Like the disciples who couldn’t cast out the demon, we wonder why we don’t see the impossible happening.
Jesus groaned and even wept when those at the tomb of Lazarus didn’t think a dead man could walk back out of the tomb. Likewise, there’s only one time the Evangelists tell us that Jesus was angry, and it was when obstacles were put up toward restoring life. It was impossible, the Pharisees thought, to heal on the Sabbath, trying to limit God’s ability or to shrink the Kingdom to what we can imagine and control. “And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (Mark 3:5-6).
Our lack of faith makes Jesus angry as we fall back on our own strength and limited vision, thwarting God’s plan and blocking his plan of life from unfolding among us.
We can do all things in Christ who strengthens us (Phil 4:13), but we surely exasperate him at times! It’s true; we’re in a life and death, a truly existential crisis, which we will not win if we shirk back, remaining in fear and relying on our resources for survival. The coda of Mark’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus’s disciples can do the impossible: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18). God wants us to act through faith, beyond our natural abilities, to combat evil, heal, and teach in his name.
What would the world look like if we had faith the size of a mustard seed? Possessing the one thing that matters, putting the Kingdom first, makes everything else fall into place, taking away our anxiety about saving the world through our own devices.
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? But for Mars?
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An enjoyable comparison of the perceived scientific Messiah to the real Messiah. Agreed in principle, however he doesn’t perceive himself such a Messiah as perceived here. He calls himself a cultural Christian.
Musk deserves credit for holding to true Christian values whether he at this stage can commit to faith in Christ. Although, he hints at it. How? Exactly by holding to true Christian values if not the whole sheboygan. He’s apt to come to the realization that movement in space is governed by an indeterminate source, like the simultaneous causality that occur countless light years apart that frightened Einstein calling them ‘spooky’. He settled for an amorphous deity. Musk holds to a Christian ethic perhaps better disposed to a personal God.
Instead of faith in the Prosperity Gospel, now faith in the Technocracy Gospel?
Of course, yes, to imaginative inventions, but salvation from our fouled nest by escaping as an “interplanetary species” with the first stop at Mars? In July of 1969 yours truly took a direct part in the recovery in the Pacific of the first astronauts to walk on the moon, but also recognized a higher revelation penned by the Canadian-American writer, Saul Bellow, who in a magazine interview of that time (I think “Life” magazine) wrote this of the lunar landing: “the Protestant Ethic with nowhere else left to go.”
Still, of the closed mindset of Einstein, as contrasted with the reportedly open and Christian leanings of Musk, we have this from the earlier stargazer:
“The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in the concept of a personal God [….] In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God [!], that is, to give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces [!] which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself [….] After religious teachers accomplish the refining process [?] indicated they will surely recognize with joy that true religion [?] has been ennobled and made more profound by scientific knowledge” (Albert Einstein, “Science and Religion” [1939], in “Out of My Later Years,” Philosophical Library, 1950).
Technocracy investments…‘in’ vestments.
Einstein expressed his favor for Baruch Spinoza’s god, the universe itself, an impersonal, infinite and eternal substance. Whereas Musk’s Technocracy Gospel and the image of interplanetary escape from our fouled nest, as you so flagrantly, and accurately put it – has an actual practical value seen in life in a Soyuz international space station for nine months and return to Earth in his Spacex vehicle.
Einstein and many of our Jewish brothers’ views on a personal God was dampened by the icy coldness of a God who would permit the holocaust. Musk maybe not. At any rate there’ll be no place to hide among the constellations for Musketeers because the second coming will be a truly cosmic event.
And Musk is mixing deeply with a team of mostly Christians who have the mind of Christ in their thinking and are sharing it with him. Praise God for the evangelists in our government! Pray the Holy Spirit opens the eyes, ears, and heart of this brilliant creation of God that he might see, hear and finally believe! Musk’s gifts are given to him by God. I pray that he will one day give the glory of his successes to God.
Yes.
Pathetic response, Carol. And it doesn’t change the fact that Elon has not accomplished anything beyond paying others to do the work and make the achievements for him. In typical Thomas Edison fashion he does none of the work and steals all of the credit.
Sorry boutcha. ;D
I agree with this. I was married for 42 years to a very brilliant man, and I know from knowing him that it’s HARD to be highly intelligent. Your mind is constantly working and coming up with ideas, plans, inventions, etc. All that constant thinking is exhausting and makes it difficult for others to feel comfortable around them. But they have a soul that longs for “home” and “God” and rest. My husband and I converted to Catholicism in 2004 and I know that this helped him because it is intellectually more fulfilling than Protestantism–there’s so MUCH that God has given Holy Mother Church! R.I.P., my husband.
Ummm… Elon Musk has NOT “accomplished” anything. What he has done is pay others to accomplish things for him.
This is blatantly obvious.
Do better.
Says the woman whose single accomplishment is: “Do Bitter”.
Agreed.
Nicole, have you read his professional papers, upon which his company was launched? Have you read his engineering papers after his company was up and running?
He believes in procreating, which is something many Catholics are not doing, on purpose.
He even offered to convert Swift in this matter; moral issues aside.
He’s a leader versus a follower, and money is not his god.
Speaking of space, for those that don’t know, a Catholic priest, Father LeGeorges Lemaître, proposed what came to become the big bang theory.
No, but ego pretty much is his God.
Back in 2018, his own solution for to rescue the soccer team trapped by floodwaters in a cave was ridiculous. It basically amounted to sealing each boy in a watertight coffin with an air tank and maneuvering that out of the cave. The coffins would not fit through some of the tight spaces and sharp bends, so the suggestion was ignored. This seems to have outraged Musk, who baselessly called Vernon Unsworth, one of the actual heroes of the story, a “pedo guy”. If I did that, or if you did that, it would be slander, but in our system it’s not slander for a billionaire to do that.
“That [Musk] shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that [Musk] shall worship [Musk]. Let [Musk] worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let [Musk] worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“No, but ego pretty much is his God.”
In reference to ego, maybe people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones 🤔.
Seriously?? Don’t think so.
No one is irredeemable. No one.
CWR has become embarrassingly naive and shallow.
Since when? How so? Based on what? This essay? Care to substantiate your remark?
There is no way to substantiate the remark; there are those who just want to be oppositional and nothing will cure their attitude, except repentance. It is always extremely to criticize; it takes courage and faith to encourage and support the good.
I meant to write, of course, “it is always extremely EASY to criticize”.
Look down on Miguel Cervantes comment, Carl.
That pretty much sums up my “condescending”/critical attitude.
A unified, consolidated chip to interface with the brain is not a scientific advance. The possibilities this offers to control of humans should be obvious. Musk, like Vance and Thiel and the “techno-optimists” is connected to Jarvin’s (and Nick Land’s) “dark Enlightenment”. This militant secularism, eugenic discarding of “non-useful” people, is just a sped-up continuation of what conservatives have been moaning about for generations. The joke’s on them, however, for electing you-know-who, who will bulldoze all these “reforms” through, with executive decrees.
No need to take my word for all this. See where Vance’s worldview comes from, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/18/jd-vance-world-view-sources-00168984
Then look up the techno-optimist manifesto, Dark Enlightenment, Jarvin, Nick Land, etc.
All very sinister.
“Orange man is bad, Vance is bad, Musk is bad.” What a typical but tiresome progressive response. Name calling and conspiracy theories do not constitute an intellectual argument.
The liberals don’t like Trump/Musk/Miller. Miguel Cervantes doesn’t like Trump/Musk/Miller. Therefore, Miguel Cervantes is a liberal.
This is a basic fault of logic.
Only a progressive would think and write like you do, so yes.
Wikipedia info on these ideas and its representatives is fine. No need for conspiracies. Their ideas are out there in the open. The problem is that Conservatism itself has few defences against such ideologies as the “Dark Enlightenment” because of its own Enlightenment origins.
Just because something is bad doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy.
The fact that you see Wikipedia as a valid source means you have no idea what you’re talking about. Dark enlightenment. How ridiculous. Next you’ll be telling us the earth is flat.
More from the TDS lunatic fringe
Musk was very forward thinking to go with electric vehicles, and clever enough to benefit from various government subsidies to boost sales. He really is quite “forward thinking.”
That said, he does not know everything and allowing him to wreck the Federal Government is unwise.
If he wants to go to Mars, fine and dandy. Hopefully, it will be with his own money and not the taxpayers’ money.
Don’t think Musk is wrecking the Federal Gov. Essentially his DOGE group is finding and pointing out, with Pres. Trump support, the massive waste, fraud and stupidity of a lot of Gov. spending. In the past, there was a lot of talk but no action. Now the talk is being walked, certainly unusually and has created a firestorm. This work is needed, otherwise the US will drown under the massive deficits.
Yes, we need to eliminate deficits. Now, how are those tax cuts for the rich going to do that? Going back to Reagan, we were told that tax cuts for the rich help us all. Well, they do help the rich, but the rest of us? Not so much.
Yes, there is fraud and waste in the Federal Government. But Musk’s goal of $2 trillion in cuts is nonsense.
By the way, I’ve lost about $50,000 in the stock market, since Trump announced his tariffs. How long will this “short term pain” continue? Is there any grand strategy here or just more nonsense from Peter Navarro?
If you lost $50 K, that’s in the rich category. BTW it’s only lost if you sell. Also two more points: (1) why is it okay for other countries to impose tariffs on the US and we do nothing and allow our industrial base to be destroyed. The looking the other way while other countries ripped us off had to stop, it went on way to long. (2) How much DOGE will save will be interesting, from my point of view, a few billion here another hundred million there and soon and before you know it pretty soon you are talking real money.
$50K is hardly in the rich category, simply middle class. So far as our industrial base being destroyed, that was not done by foreign countries, but by US CEO’s trying to cut costs. Blame the greed of our corporate management for this.
By the way, according to the Constitution, Congress, specifically the House, has the power of the purse, and should do the budget. The problem however,is that Congress is incapable of doing a budget, their main function. Rather, clowns like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and others are more into performance art than doing their job. Actual governing is boring and hard work, they would rather engage in various stunts to get their 10 minutes on Fox News. Trump is only filling a vacuum. The GOP has majorities in both House and Senate, but is comprised of cowardly, obsequious sycophants, thus can do nothing.
gains on paper on an overpriced stock market – you might want to consider pulling some off the table when it’s overpriced and putting in fixed or a guaranteed annuity if you’re near that point in life (and can avoid taxes)
We have to start someplace on this cost savings or the future generations, if we reproduce enough to have them, can flourish vs pay off our bills.
Thank you!!
To those who oppose Pres. Trump, VP Vance, and Elon Musk–would you rather have Pres. Kamala Harris (giggle giggle) and VP Tim Walz?
Election Night 2024 was one of the few nights that I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. watching with joy the beginning of common sense and the beginning of the fall of thoughtless liberalism in this country. (Note–I do recognize that there is some liberal thinking that is pretty good.) I hope that people who just can’t get past Trump’s, Vance’s and Musk’s “personalities” will not succeed in derailing what promises to be a better time in the U.S. for Christians and conservatism.
He is not “wrecking” the government, and it is inappropriate for you to frame the discussion in that way. He is actually exposing the fraud and waste that progressives have been profiting from for decades. It is a necessary and valuable exercise. It’s time that progressives be exposed and seen for exactly what they are.
Yet, another one with TDS
Oh, unless you worship Trump, you sre “deranged?” He is wrecking the economy and bringing ona recession. His cabinet is comprised of third rate hacks like Hegseth and Noem. And you still revere him? Keep drinking the Kool Aid.
As I have pointed out before, no one worships Trump. That’s a ridiculous assertion, one you’ve made before.
And you would prefer to have Harris/Walz taxing working people to the point where they have to work several jobs to pay basic expenses? You would prefer abortion with few restrictions, taxpayer-supported “transition surgeries” on children, and believing that the various world dictators are “good”?
We dodged a bullet, or more accurately, a cannonball, in this last election, thank God!
I think he’s a brilliant businessman who knows exactly where to cut costs. I’d rather have two successful businessmen in charge than a two bit politician-thief.
Has the author ever actually spoken to Elon Musk? I get the distinct impression that the answer is ‘no’, and this in turn leads me to discount pretty much everything that he says about Musk.
The author of the essay references the 2023 bio of Musk by Walter Isaacson—a biography that was authorized by Musk, who allowed Isaacson to “shadow” Musk for two years, “visiting his SpaceX and Tesla factories and attending board meetings. The book is the result of hours of interviews with Musk and his family, friends, colleagues and adversaries…” The essay gives some direct quotes from Musk. So, why “discount pretty much everything that he says about Musk”?
Good point but I would still ‘prefer'(?) that he actually speak to Musk himself.
I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of Oedipal rage, projection, and envy expressed about this topic in the comments section. Let’s not forget that hating people is a sin and is never justified for any reason.
…and hating people based on known lies that have been perpetuated by lunatics is an even more egregious sin.
Two followon comments: 1) Lies are now the standard operating procedure on the left, it is not that they don’t exist on the right, but the left just does it almost all the time and with extremes that is getting scary. One simple example example is how Biden’s mental acuity was praised by the left ie sharp as a tact, which is now coming out as a lie in recent books. 2) Way too many people believe the lies.
definitely
and the one sided reporting for most of the networks
If anyone things that Elon only “pays others” to accomplish anything, I recommend you read “Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX” by Eric Berger. Elon works his people really hard, but no more than how he pushes himself. Have you ever watched all the screaming brilliant twentysomethings at SpaceX during a launch? His people love him. He is inspiring an entire generation of young people to be interested in STEM rather than useless degrees.
Why DOGE is necessary. We hear a lot about the rich paying their fair share. Let me explain what “fair share” looks like.
US Deficit: $37T
US Population: 340 million. A child born today is already $110,000 in debt
US households: 132 million. Each household’s share is $280,000
US taxpayers: 154 million. Each taxpayer’s share is $240,000
Last year the Gov spent $6.75T or $20,000 for every man, woman, and child. So, it you paid less than 20,000 in taxes, you didn’t pay your fair share.
For all of you who are against cutting gov spending, and don’t think your taxes are high enough, you are free to send a check to the Treasury. Last year that total was $1.3 million donated. It is always easy to give away other peoples money.
And how are tax cuts for the billionaires going to help? Please enlighten us, O wise one.
All I did was present data to show how deep in debt we are, mostly because of overspending, and why spending needs to be cut. But since you used the red herring with a “Whataboutism”, I’m sure you know the top 1% pay 40% of all taxes. But looking at it another way – the total wealth of ALL the billionaires in the US is less than $7T. Confiscating all their wealth that would paydown less than 20% of the debt, fund the government for 1 year, or cover about three years of the annual $2T deficit. However, an outcome of overtaxing the wealthy is called “wealth flight.” On a small scale it is happing in CA. On a larger scale, France tried a wealth tax in 2012 resulting in the wealthy fleeing the country. As an aside, I would really like to see CA impose an actual wealth tax. I have my popcorn ready.
So, the billionaires should pay less in income tax and capital gains tax? The Uber rich already pay a much lower rate than they did in the 1950’s. They have enjoyed massive tax cuts over the past 40 years. The top 3 billionaires have a combined net worth more than the bottom half of the entire US population. That’s 160 million people. Do you think that this is a good thing?
“Ornage man bad, tax cuts for the rich, blah blah.” Do you have anything other than NPR talking points to add to tge discussion?
The box canyon today is that the US Dollar, as the international go-to currency, will lose its position and influence if the national debt keeps rising by an uninterrupted patters of annual deficit spending. So, the federal government (us!) must live within our means, just as state and local governments are required (under state constitutions) to live with balanced budgets.
As part of a more complex chess game, the stare-down game on tariffs is a gamble. Even more so, the nearly religious belief in the Laffer Curve which asserts that all tax cuts yield such a flourishing economy as to always yield in increase in overall tax revenues.
The entertainment value, if there is one, is that the talking heads on the 24-hour news cycle just don’t seem to get it, that the old game of Blue and Red paper-money politics has been kicked outa Dodge. Recalling, however, that on the heels of the President Johnson’s Great Society of the late 60s and thereafter, it was the Republican President Nixon who took the country off the discipline of the gold standard (1972).
Regarding your first paragraph. When Ross Perot ran for president in 1992 he was shouting the warning about US debt. It was a quaint $4T at the time and now nearly 10X higher. He also had the famous line about that “that giant sucking sound” of jobs leaving the US. But Perot was portrayed as a funny little man with big ears and those silly charts. Perot died in 2019 so I’ll say it for him – “Told ya.” I’ll end with another Perot quote: “The debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors know she’s there, but nobody wants to talk about her.”
One man together with EM cannot be allowed to thrash the world. Even the US congress and Republicans are stunt. There’s a place to change dramatically. But you can’t steer a mega aircraft carrier with one stroke based on flawed mathematics. US has to accept changing world order. So all can co exist peacefully.
Our Republic is actually an experiment.
Lincoln mentioned that in the Gettysburg address.