Elon Musk is now one of the world's most compelling and controversial innovators, pushing the boundaries of what he does, leading the way in electric cars, private space exploration, artificial intelligence, and Twitter. Some people think he is an innovator who changed the world, others think he is a "madman" and "devil", a bossy, paranoid, difficult person to get along with. Musk also said bluntly: "To all those who have been offended by me, I just want to say to you, I have reinvented electric cars, and I will use rocket ships to send people to Mars." But if I were an easy-going, relaxed ordinary person, do you think I could still do this? ”
So what kind of person is Elon Musk? What kind of upbringing is hidden behind the courage to take risks and the high tolerance for risk? Recently, "Elon Musk Biography", which was introduced and published by CITIC Publishing Group and listed globally simultaneously, may give us some answers. The author of "Elon Musk Biography" is the famous biographer Walter Isaacson, and the author of "Steve Jobs", who visited Musk in depth for two years and unveiled the mystery of Musk's contradictory character from a close-up perspective.
"Elon Musk Biography"
By Walter Isaacson
Translated by Sun Siyuan and Liu Jiaqi
CITIC Publishing Group
Walter IsaacsonElon Musk spent his childhood in South Africa, where he experienced pain and learned how to survive it.
At the age of 12, he took a bus to a wilderness survival camp called the "Field School." In his memory, "it was like a realistic version of the story of the Lord of the Flies". Each child is given only a little food and water, and they are allowed to fight for survival materials, and even encouraged to do so. His younger brother Kimball said: "Bullying is seen as a virtue here. "The older kids soon started punching the little ones in the face and taking away their things. Elon was short and dull, and as a result, he was beaten twice. He ended up losing 10 pounds.
Elon's second trip to field school was about to turn 16. He exploded to 6 feet 3 inches in height, was much stronger, was like a bear, and learned a little judo. This time, field school was no longer his nightmare. Elon said: "That's when I started to realize that if someone bullied me, I could punch them in the nose so they wouldn't dare to bully me again," Elon said. ”
Elon's most painful experience happened at school. For a long time, he was the youngest and shortest student in his class, and it was difficult to figure out the way of human beings. For him, the ability to empathize is not something innate, he has no desire to please others, nor does he have this instinct. As a result, the punks often targeted him and shook their fists in his face. "If you haven't been punched in the nose, you don't know how this bullying will affect your life," he said. ”
Early one morning, at a campus rally, a boy was playing with a group of friends and bumped into Elon. Elon pushed him back, and an altercation ensued. The boy and his friends found Elon during the break and found him eating a sandwich. They approached from behind, kicked him in the head and pushed him down the concrete steps. Kimball, who was sitting with Elon at the time, recalled: "They rode on him, beat him and kicked him in the head. After the fight, I couldn't even recognize his face. It was a swollen ball of flesh, barely visible to his eyes. Elon was then taken to the hospital and unable to attend school for a week. Decades later, he is undergoing corrective surgery to repair tissue inside his nose.
But these are insignificant compared to the emotional trauma inflicted on him by his father, Errol Musk. Errol Musk is an engineer, a scoundrel, a charismatic visionary, and these qualities still haunt Elon today. After the school bullying incident, Errol sided with the abuser, saying: "The father of that child just committed suicide, Elon also said that people are stupid, Elon always likes to call other people stupid. How can I blame that child? ”
When Elon came home from the hospital, his father scolded him severely, and Elon recalled: "I stood for an hour and he yelled at me, calling me an idiot and saying I was worthless. Kimball had to sit on the sidelines and said it was the worst memory of his life. Kimball said: "My father was out of control, he could say he was furious, and we have seen similar scenes too much. He had no sympathy for our brothers. ”
Elon and Kimball never spoke to their father again. They all said that the father's claim that Elon had provoked the whole incident was complete nonsense, and that the perpetrator was eventually sent to a juvenile correctional facility for the incident. They said that his father's lies were capricious and that he often made up stories interspersed with fictional plots, sometimes deliberately choreographed and sometimes purely delusional. They all said he had a dual personality, one minute he was amiable, and the next minute he would begin merciless abuse that lasted for more than an hour. At the end of each tirade, the father would tell Elon how pathetic he was. Elon could only stand there, not leave. "It's mental torture." Elon finished speaking, paused for a long time, and choked slightly, "He can always make the situation worse." ”
Despite Elon Musk's countless attempts to get out of his father's shadow physically and psychologically, his father's mental influence on him will continue. His emotions will cycle between clear skies and dark days, between passion and numbness, between cold alienation and true feelings, and occasionally fall into that dual personality "demon mode" that scares those around him.
Elon's first wife, Justin, said: "I feel that a person who spends his childhood in South Africa like he did has to close the door to others in some way. "Of his 10 children, Justine is the mother of 5 of them." If your father always calls you a fool and an idiot, maybe your only way to respond is to close your heart. Because even if you open an emotional dimension, you don't have the tools to harness it. Doing so may make him ruthless, but it also makes him an innovator who dares to take risks. Justin said: "He learned to eliminate fear. If you block out fear, then you also have to block other emotions, such as happiness or empathy. ”
The bits and pieces of his childhood nightmares made him disgusted and satisfied with the present. "I just don't think he knows how to enjoy success and appreciate the birds." Artist Claire Boucher (stage name "Grimes"), the mother of his other three children, put it this way: "I think the most profound constraint that childhood brought him was that life is pain. Elon agrees, saying: "Adversity shaped me and my pain threshold became very high. ”
If you jump out of the crucible of your native home, you'll find that Elon has developed an aura that makes him look like an alien at times — his mission to Mars seems to be a desire to return home, and his desire to build humanoid robots seems to express a psychological appeal for intimacy.
He will preach the need to shape human consciousness, explore the universe, and save the planet. At first, I thought it was mostly about shaping the character, like a big boy who often reads The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy motivates the team with big dreams in talks and podcasts. But as I dealt with him more and more, I became more and more convinced that a sense of purpose was one of the driving forces that drove him forward. While other entrepreneurs are still trying to form a worldview, he has formed a cosmology.
His genetics, upbringing, and mentality made him sometimes cold and impulsive, which gave him the ability to tolerate extreme risks. He can calculate risk calmly or embrace it feverishly. "Elon takes risks for the sake of taking risks," says Peter Thiel, who became Elon's partner in the early days of PayPal, "and he seems to be enjoying and sometimes addicted." ”
The turbulent environment and violent conflicts were extremely attractive to Elon, and sometimes he even longed for these things, both at work and in relationships that he struggled to maintain but failed to last. Faced with major crises, deadlines and career turns, he forged ahead. Whenever faced with a difficult challenge, the tension often keeps him awake at night and even vomits. But these are the nutrients he depends on for a living. "Drama is the best companion in his life," Kimball said, "without which he can't live, he can live and die for it." ”
At the beginning of 2022, a year after SpaceX successfully launched 31 satellites, Tesla sold nearly 1 million electric cars, and Elon became the richest man on the planet, he spoke with a little sentimentality about the motives behind his repeated dramatic conflicts. "I need to change my mindset and not be in a crisis readiness all the time," he told me, "and I've been in this state for about 14 years, or most of my life." ”
Over the years, whenever he was in a desperate situation or felt threatened, he recalled the horrific experience of being bullied on the playground. Now he has the opportunity to sit on the entire playground.
(This article is excerpted from "Elon Musk Biography", the title is added by the editor)