Elon wants risk for risk’s sake
Photo: NOTICIAS DEL ESTE
No one has any doubts that the talented and ambitious Elon Musk has long been willing to migrate from the world of big business to the world of big politics. And the publication of his biography, which instantly became a bestseller, just now, during the presidential election campaign in the United States, only confirms these suspicions. In addition, Musk attracted to his biography the experienced journalist Walter Isaacson, from whose pen biographies of Henry Kissinger, Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein have already been published.
However, a senatorial or gubernatorial position for a billionaire, space explorer and owner of the social network X (formerly Twitter) will clearly be too limited. But Musk cannot be president of the United States: according to the Constitution, only someone born in his territory can be elected head of the American state. Consequently, Musk, who was born in South Africa, is not destined to work in the Oval Office. But he may want to found his own state. Sound crazy? No more so than many of Elon’s other ideas that he has already implemented or is implementing.
Elon Musk Biography
Komsomolskaya Pravda was one of the first to read a book about an American businessman and quotes the most interesting fragments from a book about Elon Musk.
Childhood scars
South Africa in the 1980s was a violent country. Attacks with automatic and knife weapons were common. One day, young Elon and his younger brother Kimbal went to a concert and on the way they came across a pool of blood in which a dead man lay with a knife stuck in his head. For the rest of the afternoon, the blood on the soles of his sneakers stuck to the asphalt. His entire childhood was spent in that environment.
Elon Musk’s biography also reveals that his family kept German shepherds trained to attack any stranger who entered the area around their house. Elon was six years old when his beloved pastor suddenly lunged at him and grabbed him from behind. At the hospital, bleeding, he refused to get stitches until his parents swore not to kill the dog. Now, many years later, when telling this story, Musk looks at his interlocutor with a hard look, pauses and adds: “They still shot him with great precision.”
All the school years of the future businessman, as follows from the book about Elon Musk, were spent in South Africa. According to him, they became “the most ardent experiences” for him. Elon was the smallest in the class. I found no sympathy, but I gained no one’s favor. His classmates often beat him. “If you’ve never been punched in the nose, you have no idea how it can affect the rest of your life,” he says.
Elon calls his father, Errol, “an engineer, a hustler, and a charismatic visionary.”
Photo: NOTICIAS DEL ESTE
Difficult relationship with father.
Elon calls his father, Errol, “an engineer, a hustler, and a charismatic visionary” and says the scars on his face and body left by his classmates are much less significant than the ones his dad left on his soul. . “He called me an idiot, he yelled at me for hours, he said I was a useless person. He had no compassion,” recalls Elon, who has not communicated with his father for a long time. However, this is so that Errol Musk periodically meets with journalists and tells them “nonsense” about his son (at least, that is how Elon himself characterizes these stories).
Elon Musk with his mother
Photo: NOTICIAS DEL ESTE
Isaacson also met with Errol Musk, who proudly admitted that he “exhibited extremely harsh parenting practices, akin to autocracy.” At the same time, Musk Sr. is confident that “Elon is also very, very autocratic with himself and with others.”
“As a child, they taught him that life is pain,” said singer Grimes, mother of Elon Musk’s three children. “And this instilled in him an aversion to positive emotions.” I am sure that he does not know how to enjoy success or the aroma of flowers.” Musk himself agrees: “Adversity has shaped me. “My pain threshold has become very high.”
Singer Grimes, mother of Elon Musk’s three children
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
If you feel offended in the litter box, then you need to buy a litter box
Isaacson characterizes his hero this way: “He has a zeal that hides his stupidity and a stupidity that hides his ardor. With the conviction of a prophet, he speaks of the need to develop human consciousness, understand the Universe and save our planet. While others try to expand their vision of the world in the coordinates of our planet, he does so by directing his gaze into space.”
“Elon wants risk for risk’s sake,” says one of Musk’s early business partners, Peter Thiel. “His background and his upbringing made him callous and impulsive at the same time. He can calculate several options for a long time and coldly, but he impulsively agrees to another one that he had not even thought about before. He craves storms and drama, both at work and in romantic relationships. When he became the richest man on Earth, he began to complain that now he couldn’t stop thinking about the crisis model that he had used throughout his previous life, notes the book about Elon Musk.
Musk’s purchase of the social network Twitter, which he later renamed X, was no coincidence. Musk and his projects were criticized with particular vehemence on Twitter. This coincided with childhood grievances: Musk began to associate the social network with a playground, where he always took offense. Considering Twitter a threat to himself, he dealt with it by simply becoming a playground owner.
From Elon Musk’s biography it became known that his relatives suspect that he has Asperger’s syndrome (a mental disorder characterized by communication difficulties, considered a mild form of autism – Ed.). Although the mother always insisted that doctors never diagnosed her son with that diagnosis, she told Isaacson that “Elon himself says he has this syndrome and I’m sure he’s right.”
As you know, Musk is obsessed with the idea of colonizing Mars
Photo: NOTICIAS DEL ESTE
“I didn’t impress the Russians”
As you know, Musk is obsessed with the idea of colonizing Mars. Long before he had his own SpaceX rockets, he traveled to Russia, where he intended to buy a couple of spacecraft. This was in 2002. On the way to Moscow, Musk stopped in Paris, where he got very drunk and suffered a hangover at Headquarters. But, following Russian tradition, he did not refuse vodka at a dinner in his honor. As a result, after drinking a couple of drinks, Musk completely passed out and hit his head on the table. And now the businessman admits: “I think I didn’t impress the Russians then.”
Moscow was unimpressed by Musk’s rantings about Mars colonization. And they were even outraged. He himself remembers that one of the leaders of Russian space-related organizations, upon learning that the businessman also calls himself the chief engineer of his company, allegedly spat at him. Puzzled, he realized that he would have to develop rockets on his own, as Elon Musk’s biography says.
What else is said in the book about Elon Musk? The principles of him.
Live like you’re playing
The billionaire claims that he owes a lot to the game The Battle of Polytopia (“Battle for Polytopia” is a strategy in which you must develop your civilization and destroy all the others). Musk spent hours in the virtual world of this game, there are cases in which he did not start business meetings until he finished playing, and even quarreled with his loved ones, to whom he became addicted and with whom he lost. Based on this game, Musk came up with several rules that he shares with everyone, stating that they are equally good for both business and life: “Live as if you are playing”, “Don’t be afraid to lose”, “Always be active”, Don’t get involved in every battle. He stopped playing The Battle of Polytopia only after he started seeing it in his dreams.
One day, to resolve a dispute that arose between business partners, Musk proposed solving it… through arm wrestling. The case concerned an operating system that had to be installed on the payment system’s servers. Musk was behind the product of his idol Bill Gates’ company; Musk’s then ally, originally from the USSR, Max Levchin, insisted on one of the company’s versions of Unix. Musk lost then. But he still had the passion to clear up important business issues in a fair fight. It is no coincidence that he called his friend Mark Zuckerberg into the ring after he announced the creation of a social network that would compete with Musk’s X.
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