The Immature Masters of the Universe


Imagine, dear reader, that a 15 or 16-year-old teenager has suddenly come into possession of several hundred billion dollars. Then remind yourself of how mature and wise you looked like at that age. Look at the youth around you today. You may see a tendency — exactly because of the lack of maturity — toward radical and ultra-radical ideas (left-leaning or right-leaning — freeing the world or glorifying a nation); radical dreams (seen as attainable) of personal majesty; and in those who are creatively minded — radical illusions of technological and scientific breakthroughs. Of course, you must add an aspiration toward being sexually irresistible (even when this mania coexists with an anxious incapacity in the same sphere).

Most of us adults would patiently indulge these teenagers because if you consider your own life experience, you are rightfully certain their radical ideas will evaporate soon enough and that a solid liberal arts education will cure them of the utopian “projects” they are “revolutionarily” certain are possible. Yet, I again implore you focus on the thought experiment I proposed — imagine that someone of that age, that particular 15 or 16-year-old, has several hundred billion dollars. Imagine their underdeveloped brain controlling a colossal political resource that allows them to try and realize their infantile ideas. Can you imagine it? You don’t need to — you can look at a realized example of this same experiment. Because today, in the most powerful country in the world, lives a man named Elon Musk. And despite being much older biologically, he has the maturity of a 15 or 16-year-old combined with about $500 billion in political resources.

Now you may understand the worldview of this teenage billionaire. He is, it is known, the biological father of more than 10 children (whose mothers are “females” that Elon does not live with). He continues to procreate because he is convinced that his genes are creating geniuses like himself. He is also financing (near) future-oriented projects to move fragments of humanity to Mars. He is investing in technological immortality, etc., etc. He has openly professed that governments should not continue to care for people who cannot care for themselves and thus should begin to — perhaps indirectly — euthanatize the losers. All of the above, which I call the phantasmagorical ramblings of an idiot, would be utterly immaterial to us if they were bouncing around the head of a 15-year-old from an average family living in an average developed country. I repeat — in that case we would be reasonably certain that the process of growing up would take care of such ideas. Yet, Musk is not 15. He is someone who has an incredibly close relationship with the newly elected U.S. president, and has, I repeat, about $500 billion. These political resources mean that his infantile views will not only fail to disappear, but do the opposite — these resources will allow them to materialize. Of course, to materialize into an unthinkable, monstrous reality that is unavailable to an ordinary teenager. Because while that teenager could grow up to possess significant or even large political resources, the teenage could only attain such resources (in our existing reality) when he has, to use the operative phrase, “grown up.” As in when that adolescent is no longer a teenager. There is no doubt that Elon, having all that he has, will remain a 15-year-old: There is no evidence of any maturity having taken place while he accumulated great wealth.

People will immediately protest that Musk is not some “idiot” and that his gargantuan wealth was not a gift or manna from the heavens. He is an inventor, a genius — at least — in investing in new technologies, he has incredible business intuition and consequently is not someone limited by immaturity.

This is my response: The zeitgeist ulcer that produces people like Musk — yes, technological and business geniuses but otherwise adolescents — is the catastrophic chasm between technical expertise and humanitarian culture. Until 30-40 years ago, the two went hand-in-hand because even the tech professional, entrepreneur or politician had to possess a humanitarian erudition built on an existential maturity. Now the two can be mutually exclusive — the first has no need of the second. Thus, humanitarian (and existential) infantilization does not preclude technological and business success. Consequently, Musk and those like him may become a danger to humanity. Especially if they are tempted to install themselves in politics.

Politics and humanitarianism (in the most general sense) have been drifting apart. Look at Musk’s boss. Trump is even more hollow inside, and he possesses none of Musk’s talent. Trump is simply a man with a deal (or the television version of a deal), a populist who is a zero when it comes to humanitarianism, someone who childishly imagines that in government (and international politics) issues are “settled” just as they are in business or in entertainment. Trump’s knowledge of history matches that of someone beginning junior high school. (He thinks Spain is a member of BRICS and shares a border with the Sahara.)

Just look at the stunted masculinity, the radical vocabulary, even the showman-like (and aggravated) gestures Trump and Musk display. Musk’s raised arm became infamous last week. Maybe it wasn’t a Nazi salute, but it looked more like the body language of an adolescent who just got an A or had their first kiss. The voting public would have felt intuitive antipathy if they had been confronted with Trump and Musk’s character just 30 years ago. Today they have a different impression most people consider humanitarianism irrelevant.

Today we can have “masters of the universe” who are (and continue to be in their later years) existential adolescents, adolescents who are responsible for solving global issues.

The more worrisome possibility is that these adult teenagers with gigantic political influence may begin (successfully) to collaborate with the well-rounded and mature villains that have been with us from the beginning of humanity. Because such villains are, unlike Trump and Musk, existentially mature and could manipulate the adolescent billionaires and presidents so they can together enjoy the “art of the deal” despite their infernal obsessions. I could imagine the alluring voice of Uncle Putin tempting his friend Trump: “Take Greenland, dear, take Panama, make Canada the 51st state — that will make you the greatest. I will just take stupid, boring Ukraine and a few countries a bit to the west whose names you can’t remember.” Or Putin could address the “genius” Musk: “Throw, throw your billions to colonize Mars, become, alongside your progeny, technologically immortal. For me just leave — while I’m still breathing — the barbaric Eurasia. Leave it to me and my dimwitted Tatar hordes. Deal?”

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