Review

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.

Review

Books

Culture

Romance

7 April 2025

5 min read

The surprising last chapter of a guide to modern romance in crisis

Emotive love matters because it points to something truer, deeper, bigger.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A neon sign depicts a message balloon with a heart symbol and a zero next to it.

Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

I ravenously devoured the last book I read, gobbling the majority of it up in one train journey. So swept up in it was I that I accidentally let my (extortionately expensive) tea go cold. The person sitting next to me must have changed three of four times throughout that journey and I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t look up once. What do you call a person whose extroversion drains out of their body when a book is in their hand?

It was no surprise that this book found its way to me – I’m nothing if not a bandwagon-hopper. And Shon Faye’s latest book – Love in Exile - was a bandwagon I was itching to catch a ride on.

It piqued my interest for two reasons: the subject matter and the authorial perspective.

Firstly, the subject matter – it’s a nonfiction book about the nature of love and the state of romance. And that places it right up my street. If I’m being honest with you, I think about these subjects far too often. You could say that it’s my Roman(ce) Empire, an ‘at least once-a-day’ kind of topic.

The emotions tied up in romance - the language it evokes, the art it fuels, the power it wields - I find it all utterly fascinating. So, any book that’s analysing the romantic goings-on of a societal moment will catch my eye. Now, how about one written by a ludicrously talented transgender woman who ‘grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love is not for her’?

Oh, gosh. My interest levels are through the roof.

As I worked through the book, I realised that Shon’s experience of, and attitude toward, romance are completely different to mine; it’s like we’re looking at the same object but seeing different shapes, different colours. And that’s precisely why I wanted to read her book. I wanted to read about a topic I know so well from a perspective I don’t know at all. And it was fascinating, a true collision of the familiar and the unfamiliar.

It was like deciding to be a tourist in my own city, you know? Reading Shon’s words was like hiring someone to show me around my own postcode – letting them tell me about all the things I don’t see, the spots I don’t pay attention to, the streets I have no need to walk down. And Shon’s a good writer, a captivating tour guide – hence the cold tea and antisocial behaviour.

And then I get to the last chapter, entitled Agape.

I know that word, I thought. And I’m certain she’s not about to use it in the way I tend to use it – is she? Oh. She is. Shon Faye is about to round up her book on romance with a chapter about the love of God.

My jaw must have hit the train floor as I witnessed her tell her (very many) readers that there’s a spiritual function to romance. That part of the dating crisis we appear to be wading into is due to the spiritual dimension being pulled out of our understanding of love, making dating an inherently selfish endeavour. There’s a missing piece, she proposes, and it’s God.

Now, I don’t wish to misrepresent Shon, she has great trouble boxing herself into one particular religious tradition and/or understanding of God – I’m not planting a Christian flag in the ground of her book, here. But I must say, her reflections on the spiritual dimensions of romance can sit neatly alongside other Christian thinkers’ work on the same topic.

Romantic love is one of the most powerful forms of love, yet it alone, is never enough. It burns brightly, but too quickly. It needs help.

We can dismiss romantic love, roll our eyes at it, pretend we’ve grown out of it. We can boil it down to endorphins and pheromones – or we can take its power seriously, as Shon has done, and as C.S. Lewis did before her.

Lewis argued that the romantic form of love, when at its best and most noble, has a sort of divine-esque quality. It has a particular power because of its ‘strength, sweetness, terror and high port’- indeed, its tangible nature can teach us much about the passionate and intimate love that God has for us and that we’re supposed to have for each other. There’s a reason, I suppose, that a book of erotic literature is housed within the Bible (Song of Songs). Lewis writes that

‘This love is really and truly like Love Himself… it is as if Christ said to us through Eros (romantic love), “Thus – just like this – with this level of prodigality – not counting the cost – you are to love me and the least of your brethren”’.

His point being – this emotively-fuelled form of love matters. Why? Because it points beyond itself to something truer, deeper, bigger.

I always marvel at Taylor Swift’s (yes, she’s being brought up – you’re reading an essay on romance, I shan’t apologise) habit to reach for religious language and motif when she’s trying to confine her biggest and deepest feelings to language. For example, when singing to a man that she has come to regard as ‘the smallest man who ever lived’, she announces that ‘I would’ve died for your sins, instead I just died inside…’ This isn’t trivial. What’s the deepest, most self-sacrificing act of love she has in her locker of references? Jesus dying for peoples’ sins. An act which, apparently, her romantic feelings for this undeserving man point her toward. Jesus’ death is the only love-fuelled act that feels true enough to sit within this anthem of heartbreak.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Romantic love is one of the most powerful forms of love, yet it alone, is never enough. It burns brightly, but too quickly. It needs help. It needs something to fill its (many) gaps. It needs parameters. It needs, Lewis argues, to be ruled. And this is where he and Shon Faye are in surprising alignment.

So strong is romantic love, that we can over-trust it, over-honour it, we can strip it of any kind of self-giving-ness and make it some kind of agent of our own salvation. It can make us selfish, tempt us to use it as a tool of redemption. Instead of pointing toward God, it tricks us into treating it as if it is God. This is precisely what Shon Faye warns her readers of: if you don’t have something to rule over this super-charged form of love, it will rule over you.

We must, both Shon Faye and C.S. Lewis argue, re-imbue romance with spiritual meaning.

We must not fool ourselves into thinking that it is everything, nor should we kid ourselves into regarding it as nothing. We must consider it a glimpse of the love that is God and treat it accordingly.

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