Review

AI - Artificial Intelligence

Ambition

Culture

3 November 2023

6 min read

The awe and outrage of Musk's toxic ingenuity

Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk, is a biographic rollercoaster reckons Krish Kandiah. One marked by magnificent moments and moral crossroads.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Elon Musk, wearing a dark suit, stands on a stage to a white robotic looking surgical robot.

Elon Musk at a demonstration of the Neuralink technology in 2020.

There is something both inspiring and unnerving about Elon Musk. He is a game-changing pioneer and innovator in so many industries pivotal to our future: rockets, electric cars, solar panels, batteries, satellite Wi-Fi, and Artificial Intelligence. But he is also no stranger to scandal, controversy and allegation. In his latest biography, author Walter Isaacson explores the toxicity as well as the ingenuity that has come to be associated with the richest man on the planet. As he reveals Musk’s series of successes, and what has been sacrificed to acquire them, I found myself going on an emotional journey: from compassion to awe to outrage.

Compassion: a man familiar with misery

In the opening chapter of his book Isaacson draws attention to the trauma in Elon’s childhood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elon was socially awkward at school. When he once pushed back at a boy who bumped into him, he was being beaten up so badly his face was unrecognisable. When he returned from hospital Musk reports how his father reacted: “I had to stand for hours. He yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless.” There are a number of similar stories from Musk’s seemingly brutal childhood. Errol Musk, Elon’s father, features heavily in a series of shocking revelations including that he slept with his own stepdaughter, fathering two children with her. The background of Musk’s chaotic childhood, his experience of domestic abuse, and his series of fractured relationships provides a context for some of the strange, indeed outrageous things catalogued in the book.

Having worked for many years with children in the care system and with refugee experience, I understand a little about the impact of trauma and how it can change the brain in profound ways. There is a great deal of evidence showing how adverse childhood experiences can cause long-lasting impact on decision-making, impulse control, relationship building, mental health management and emotional regulation. While many turn to alcohol, drugs or self-harm as coping mechanisms, others, perhaps like Musk, channel the pain into ambitions and achievements.

I found myself feeling profoundly sorry for Musk. No child should have to experience such prolonged cruelty both at school and at home. All of us need to know that we are loved and valued, independent of anything we have done or anything that has been done to us.

Awe: a man of magnificent moments

Musk’s ideas have revolutionised so many industries. The automotive industries move to electric power owes a lot to the innovation of Tesla. His Space X programme is currently changing the way we think about space travel. His company was the first to create self-landing reusable rockets and was the first private owned company to develop a liquid-propellant rocket that reached orbit; the first to launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft; the first to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station; and the first to send astronauts to the International Space Station. He is also trying to revolutionise Artificial Intelligence (AI) through his company xAI - a direct competitor to Open AI even though he was one of their early backers.

Musk has a complex relationship with AI as he is not only one of the lead innovators in the field but also the most prominent of the 33,000 signatories of a letter calling for a pause to ‘Giant AI Experiments’ until there is, in Musk’s words, “a regulatory body established for overseeing AI to make sure that it does not present a danger to the public."

AI, alongside each of the other major interest areas in Musk’s work, is way beyond any dreams I ever had of a futuristic world. Musk has managed not only to imagine the unimaginable, but to find a way to get there with impressive speed, scale and sustainability values. The more I read about the innovations involved in each step of each project, the more impressed I am with the genius behind them.

Outrage: a man without a moral compass?

Despite Walter Isaacson’s clear respect for all Musk is achieving, he paints a warts-and-all picture of his book’s subject. We see a man who is ruthless in his hirings and firings, who has often treated staff and colleagues badly. In 2018, he famously called a rescue diver, helping to save teenage boys from a flooded cave in Thailand, a ‘paedo’, in what seemed to be a reaction to a snub to his offer of using his minisub.

In light of these sorts of outbursts, and his apparent desire to save the world from looming environmental disaster, it is no wonder that some people have accused Musk of having a messiah complex. Yet if he does, it is a very different mindset from the true messiah. He appears to me to be morally, emotionally and financially the polar opposite to the Jesus whose willingness to sacrifice himself on behalf of those in need was central to his claim to be sent from God. From the way Isaacson describes Musk, I see him more as a man on a mission to save himself than to save those around him.

The future? Musk, a man at a crossroads.

Isaacson closes his book with the following analysis:

“But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They are reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”

I find this a disconcerting epilogue to the book. It suggests that we can pardon toxicity in the name of innovation, that the ends always justify the means, that morality and decency can take second place to advancement and wealth. If this stance were to be applied to, say, the development of AI, Musk’s fears of it becoming a danger to the public may sadly well be realised.

While factors such as grand ambition, the contribution to society, early years trauma, and mental health struggles may provide a robust explanation of why a person may be toxic, toxicity itself can never be excused. No amount of wealth can undo the harm toxic masculinity does to those around us. No amount of charitable giving can buy a person a generous spirit or moral compass. No amount of environmental awards can create the sort of world we really want to live in in the future – a world where people treat one another with the respect they need and deserve.

Elon Musk’s biography is unusual because he is still mid-journey. Who knows what else he may go on to achieve or fail at, to create or destroy? Will his AI revolution be a force for good, helping to create a better future for those who need it most, or will it become the behemoth of the doomsayers? What will future editions add to his biography? Is being ‘untethered’ really integral to who Musk is, or can he change? The visionary in me would love to imagine a redemption and transformation story for Musk that can unleash a compassionate generosity that could even overshadow his creative genius. The sceptic in me fears he may end up doing more harm than good.

Article

Culture

Film & TV

Trauma

Work

23 September 2025

5 min read

What would Pascal make of Emmy-winner Severance?

Locking ourselves away in a room still doesn’t work

Rick Hansen

Rick writes and speaks on leadership, transformation, and culture.

Pascal ponders a steampunk TV showing Severance.

Nick Jones/Copilot.

Severance, the hit Apple TV series, garnered the most Emmy nominations at the star-studded 77th Emmy Awards. Colors and fame popped on the vibrant red carpet as Hollywood’s elite strolled along the walkway, exuding famous smiles, elegant evening wear, and their signature flair.

It was strikingly ironic, however, to see the Severance actors in such formal attire, ripe with ready-made smiles. Their presence was, well, very Hollywood. This contrasted sharply with their on-screen characters, who are typically set against a dark, desolate backdrop of despair, compelled to force smiles as if it were an immense burden on their very souls.

The stark contrast between the opulent Hollywood red carpet and the sterile, bland workspace Severance is set in underscores a core theme in the show: the tension between faith and doubt, belief and despair, light and darkness.

In the show, the main character Mark S. grapples with the challenge of navigating his own tension in his own calibrated nightmare of hope and despair. He has to cope with the sudden loss of his wife, and it's suffocating him.

His company, Lumon, helps him deal with this loss through a surgical procedure called Severance. This procedure implants a chip in his brain that creates two separate identities: an "Innie" for work and an "Outie" for home. These two co-existing selves are emotionally, physically, and psychologically unaware of each other, essentially severing the person's whole self into two pieces. Whatever they are trying to bury or escape, becoming “severed” keeps the person’s “Innie” from dealing with this delicate paradox of the “Outie”. In short, they don’t have to choose the light or the dark.

For Mark S., severance offers a thin thread of disguised hope, a potential breach in his unbearable pain.

In his Pensées, French philosopher Blaise Pascal explores this intrinsic human tension between faith and doubt, belief and despair - a fundamental aspect of the human experience. He says, "In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t."

He posits that the evidence between the light and the shadow is just enough to sway us in one direction or the other. It’s calibrated on either side allowing us to lean into our personal autonomy. We are free to choose the hope of the light or succumb to the despair of the darkness; the outcome depends entirely on what we choose.

Leaning into Pascal, the act of severance relieves Mark S. of this beautiful yet complicated tension.

A review on Reddit said it simply, “Severing allows Mark to just literally shut his brain off, get the work done, then go home and distract himself with TV and alcohol... he doesn’t want to let it go.”

It’s real pain and he doesn’t know how to manage it. The shadows are pervasive. However, by choosing severance, Mark avoids the light and the shadows. The more he relies on severance for hope or healing by attempting to bury the shadows, the more the shadows intensify - the shadows Pascal says will blind us in our disbelief.

The battle that Mark S. faces embodies the very tension that Pascal is surfacing. This tension of choosing the light or the shadows is something we all must face.

We all carry shadows wrapped in our own circumstances. I think many of us would likely prefer to avoid confronting them. They are painful. They are dark. They are heavy. In truth, if we had the choice I think many of us would likely choose an escape instead of dealing with the darkness, with the secrets and the pain that hide in our souls.

For example, many of us show up to work or to life like Mark S. in some version of our “Innie” - a professional face of compliance, rule following, corporate persona, goal oriented, etc. and leave the version of our “Outie” at home alone and isolated to wrestle with our demons, with our painful, confusing questions. We curate our internal messiness and disguise ourselves with our own “Innie”.

For some, our day job is an actual version of a self-imposed severance.

I wish this tension between the light and shadows Pascal speaks of was less “tense” to say it plainly, and yet it is an inherent, essential part of the human experience.

This faith that both we and Mark S. wrestle with, by its very nature, lacks complete clarity; this tension is, in fact, a testament to this profound mystery of life itself. It's the wonder of life. There’s just enough data for us to lean into the light and also just as much for us to lean into the shadows. What we see depends on what we choose to believe in.

This tension is similarly addressed in the Biblical book of Hebrews. It highlights Pascal's subtle paradox and defines faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

The freedom to choose “the substance of things hoped for”, this inherent tension of Pascal, is the true marvel and mystery of life. It’s both messy and wonderful.

Our capacity for choice, to engage with the light and shadows and to lean into one over the other as we wish is a profound gift.

While some find this very tension a reason for disbelief, Pascal tugs on this and says it's actually fundamental to belief, it's a wonderful component of the human condition - a true gift. It hints at the very essence of hope. It’s the same process we must engage when choosing to believe in or not to believe in something beyond our selves, and ultimately beyond this world.

This struggle, the shadows of pain and suffering and the light of hope and belief is precisely what makes us alive; it’s what makes us human. It points us to the heavens where hope and faith were authored.

The question isn’t whether we have an “Innie” or an “Outie”, a tension of light and darkness, of faith and doubt. We all do. We all wrestle with this essence. The question is do we have the courage to wrestle with these internal conflicts, enabling us to bring our whole selves - our flaws and pains, our joys and hopes - into every interaction.

This tension Pascal speaks of is ultimately a mirror that shows us, us. We are all tempted to numb our pain, divide ourselves, to compartmentalize the shadows. But Pascal reminds us there is always enough light to see, if we choose it.

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