4. The Seeker

In the chap­ter titled “The Seek­er,” set in Pre­to­ria dur­ing the 1980s, Elon Musk’s ear­ly life is described, show­cas­ing his pro­cliv­i­ty for ques­tion­ing con­ven­tion­al beliefs and his exis­ten­tial quest for under­stand­ing the uni­verse. From a young age, Elon chal­lenged reli­gious teach­ings at Sun­day school, lead­ing his moth­er to allow him the free­dom to seek answers else­where. His father intro­duced Elon to the idea of faith beyond human per­cep­tion, but Elon, dri­ven by a sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, was more inclined to seek expla­na­tions through sci­ence rather than spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

Dur­ing his teenage years, Elon faced an exis­ten­tial cri­sis, grap­pling with the lim­i­ta­tions of both reli­gious and sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tions of exis­tence. He delved into the works of exis­ten­tial philoso­phers like Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger, and Schopen­hauer, only to find their per­spec­tives deep­en­ing his despair. It was through sci­ence fic­tion that he found solace and inspi­ra­tion. Works by Robert Hein­lein, Isaac Asi­mov, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Dou­glas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” reshaped his world­view. These sto­ries intro­duced Elon to com­plex ideas about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, the poten­tial for human space explo­ration, and the impor­tance of ques­tion­ing exis­tence itself.

Elon’s fas­ci­na­tion with tech­nol­o­gy began ear­ly as well, from play­ing “Dun­geons & Drag­ons” with his broth­ers and cousins to obsess­ing over his first com­put­er, a Com­modore VIC-20. His knack for pro­gram­ming man­i­fest­ed when he devel­oped a video game called “Blas­tar” at the age of thir­teen. Elon’s engage­ment with com­put­ers and soft­ware pro­gram­ming her­ald­ed the begin­ning of his jour­ney into inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship.

This chap­ter out­lines how Elon’s ear­ly life was marked by an insa­tiable quest for knowl­edge, skep­ti­cism towards estab­lished norms, and a pas­sion for tech­nol­o­gy. These traits, com­bined with his expo­sure to futur­is­tic and philo­soph­i­cal ideas through sci­ence fic­tion, set the foun­da­tion for his lat­er ven­tures in tech­nol­o­gy and space explo­ration. It illus­trates the for­ma­tive years of a per­son who seeks to under­stand the uni­verse and finds pur­pose in extend­ing the reach of human con­scious­ness, ulti­mate­ly fore­shad­ow­ing his ambi­tions with SpaceX and his con­cerns over arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.