I’m conflicted… and confused. Saddened to the point of near madness. It’s turkey day in prison and the food service cop stood at mainline apologizing for what he had to feed us. I could not have cared less. It was no different than any other day in my last 5,340+.
My sadness arises from what I imagine a 32 year old Julius Caesar felt as he stood before a statute of his hero. At the same age, Alexander the Great had conquered the world; he’d only subdued Gaul. The analog is that I’m 6 months away from conquering what was intended to be a life sentence for refusing to cooperate with Big Brother. Another man has conquered more hell, enduring greater agony — not out of love of family or honor but for something more transcendent.
A man is defined by his hero. Though Alexander is not without his faults, history records that he rose above and beyond the call of duty to engage opponents no sane battlefield commander would dare. Deeper study reveals his driving force was fueled by the Greek words philotema and dynamis, “the love of honor” and “the will to fight,” respectively. He is without equal in my book because he led the vanguard of every assault atop his black charger Bucephalus.
After fighting for thousands of days to realize Justice is just another illusion, I was focused on preparing to return to what Ayn Rand described in Atlas Shrugged as the “looters and moochers” – society in general. Though he’d invented a free-energy fusion engine, her hero John Galt abandoned society permanently. No doubt Socrates’ story of The Ring of Gyges influenced them. In it Socrates proved that men are not inherently moral but act in proportion to the consequences they risk suffering.
With my last 15 years in retrospect, this perspective about humanity seemed more that apropos. I became insouciant — a Stoic Spartan goading Fate to do her worst. Not from insanity but because only through adversity can we arrest the secret that lies dormant within. I’d already climbed my Everest, a feat few can imagine much less endure, respecting only those few who have been baptized by a similar fire. Yet contrary to Galt’s Socratic pragmatism, I have spent my last year scribbling my secrets of survival into a system that I call Rubicon — a name birthed from Caesar’s legendary crossing of the Rubicon River: the point of no return.
Within this life navigational system, a bearing towards one’s personal destiny must be charted — preferably something so audacious that it scares you to LIFE!! I was now within feet of mine, a summit I thought I’d never rest atop. I needed a new “mission impossible” — something even more audacious as Rubicon’s PATHFINDER-0001. I had set a goal to raise millions for Dr. Mohamed Yunus’ Grameen Bank project that won him the 2006 Nobel prize as a proven method to halt poverty by handing out microloans to turn the homeless into micro-entrepreneurs. But never a day passes that Galt’s perspective does not echo in my ears. As I witness the likes of “the 99 percenters” — a society of self-entitled “looters and moochers” who fear adversity and cower in Fate’s presence, I question my mission. Why should I share what has cost me so dearly?
In this quandary I stumbled upon an unusual character that does just this — doubling down on SpaceX and Tesla with his entire $200 million fortune at risk. This caused me pause. Why? Because Rubicon’s prime directive is “to emulate the best or die average like the rest.” I had to know what possessed him to rise above what I had discovered to be the pinnacle underpinning beneath an ultimate life purpose. The Greeks called it “autotelic,” engaging an objective purely for the experience of the challenge itself. Yet Musk drives himself and his cult-like teams for something greater. He exploits inefficiencies, disrupts convention, and revolutionizes our world — for the sole destiny of bettering mankind, the “looters and moochers” that I disdain.
After my Sisyphean quest has revealed the worst of humanity, it is here that my confusion causes sadness:
1. What does Elon perceive in these “looters and moochers” that is worthy of such an Alexandrian philotema and dynamis?
2. How could he disagree with Socrates’ indictment and Rand’s conviction of the despicably mediocre?
Maybe answers to these questions will introduce me to a humanity I have never met.
KAIZEN-DO-KA 