Results

 I was talking to a friend who lives in the Bay Area the other day. I pressed him for answers as to why so many people in the tech industry (even the few seemingly normal ones) still admire Elon Musk. I mean, every day reveals new abysses in his character of stupidity, ignorance, malice, incompetence, and creeping affinity for fascism. What could people possibly like about him at this point? 

I used as my exhibit a recent-ish piece by Noah Smith. The article argued that Musk has too much power (too true!). But I thought it was revealing of Smith's intended audience that—even in the course of making this point—he nonetheless has to genuflect briefly before the possibility that the true Musk may of course be a "stand-up guy." Apparently, that is still the default view in the Bay Area. 

"How can people still think that?" I demanded to know. "What exactly about Elon interfering in European elections and endorsing white nationalists and boosting Holocaust denialism and running the U.S. government into the dirt suggests he is a 'stand-up guy' at heart?" 

My friend agreed with me on the merits. But he tried to explain the mentality of the typical Silicon Valley tech worker who is still inclined to defend Musk—even after all of this. "I think the culture of the Bay Area predisposes people to admire 'results' above all else," he said. "No matter how badly Musk behaves—people can't deny that he seems to get things done." 

I wasn't even willing to grant this much. Sure, he runs a bunch of companies. But Tesla is essentially just a normal car company with a lot of unfulfilled promises about other things it might do that have never materialized. Most of Musk's businesses, in fact, have not lived up to the hype. Musk couldn't even produce a real humanoid robot—the ones that appeared at a recent Tesla event were voiced by actors.

But still, my friend pressed me on SpaceX. And, admittedly, this one was harder to deny. Who knows how much credit Musk personally deserves, as opposed to his engineers. But SpaceX does in fact seem to accomplish some impressive technological feats. 

So we are forced, then, to confront the question of just how much these "results" can redeem someone's otherwise terrible actions. Can mere technological accomplishments and ambition vindicate an otherwise depraved and cruel existence? Do the angels—as Goethe famously put it, in Faust Part II—look favorably upon all those who "continually strive"? 

I'm inclined to say no. I'm inclined to say, with Alasdair Gray, that Goethe's apologia for the ambitious man—his notion that "striving" alone is enough to save—is nothing better than "an excuse for Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, William the Conqueror, Napoleon [...] and all such tyrants who could honestly say, 'To the end of my days I never had a moment's rest.'"

Men of the sort Gray enumerates certainly achieved "results"—if that's our standard. They certainly had "impact"—in the sense that few of their victims could ignore their intrusive presence. They were perhaps even the "great men" of history—as many have called them; so long as we are applying Henry Fielding's definition of greatness; i.e.:  that of "bringing all manner of mischief on mankind."

By Fielding's definition too—I'll grant—Musk certainly qualifies as a "great man." 

Maybe, then, we need some standard other than "results" by which to judge humankind. Maybe the worship of "mere power or success," as Matthew Arnold once put it, is really a form of vulgarity. 

Of course—as Gray's list shows—the history books do actually grant immortality to people who achieve "results"—even when they are manifestly evil results. Someone who murders enough people—who razes enough villages—ceases to be labeled a brigand and starts to be hailed as a "Conqueror." The same applies in matters of technological feats. The world admires the monuments the warrior kings leave behind. 

And so too, for all I know, future generations may celebrate Musk for creating SpaceX. Maybe the history books of the future will applaud him, in telling tales from Year Zero of the Golden Age, according to the new MAGA revolutionary calendar, for setting forces in motion that ultimately took the human race to Mars (though I personally think his Mars talk has as much substance as his humans-in-robot-suits). 

Maybe the history books of the future will lie in this manner. But maybe our own history books are all lying about the "great men" too. As Tadeusz Borowski once wrote: "Only now do I realize what price was paid for building the ancient civilizations. The Egyptian pyramids, the temples, and Greek statues—what a hideous crime they were! [...] Antiquity—the conspiracy of free men against slaves!" (Vedder trans.)

I am reminded of Bertolt Brecht's "Questions from a Worker Who Reads." He lists the various wonders of antiquity that are attributed to so-called "Great Men." And he asks each time—whose unrecorded suffering made these "achievements" possible? Who actually laid the stones for the many marvels of ancient engineering? 

Let us ignore the history books, then, and the history books that may still be written in future. "Power has never lacked eulogists," as Elias Canetti once put it (Stewart trans.). And no doubt, Musk will continue to find his eulogists (he's already had more than one adoring biography written about him, after all, celebrating his "genius"). But that does not alter the truth of the matter. 

The truth remains the same one that Borowski names. After explaining why the "wonders of antiquity" have become hideous in his sight, after he realizes the sweated labor that went into making them possible, he goes on to conclude: "There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice[.]" No beauty—and no genius or "greatness" either. 

This is the ultimate answer, to all those who would hold up mere "results," mere "striving," as the final excuse and justification for any human evil. Musk is not vindicated by "results," even if he managed to build a nifty rocket company along the way—because all of his so-called "results" have been paid for by injustice.