Most people will be aware of Elon Musk. Business entrepreneur; corporate CEO; Forbes list billionaire; space exploration pioneer; design and technology innovator: Elon Musk wears many ’guises. He has founded SpaceX; co-founded Tesla; been the driving force behind PayPal. Wikipedia states that Musk’s goals include reducing global warming and establishing a human colony on Mars. It throws my own goals of remembering to put the bins out into a cruel perspective.
Elon Musk is a twenty-first century phenomenon.
And I do not believe that he exists.
Ask yourself this: how many people have actually seen Elon Musk? Seen him in the flesh that is, not on a TV screen, or via social media. Not many, I’ll wager. In the interests of scientific investigation, I’ll attempt to put a figure on the question. It is suggested that the average person meets 80,000 other people in a lifetime. Now Musk is 46 years old––allegedly––having lived roughly ⅔ of an average lifespan. ⅔ of 80,000 gives a figure of 53,000 possible interactions. Given his celebrity status, it would be conceivable that this figure could be doubled. Let’s make it a nice round 100,000, and I don’t think it would be far out as a working estimate.
So, Elon Musk has met 100,000 people in his lifetime. As a proportion of the total world population of 7.6 billion individuals, that is 0.000013%. Tiny. A far greater proportion of the planet claim to have been abducted by aliens, or believe in the Loch Ness Monster, or live in Sale, Greater Manchester.
I am not normally so agnostic in my outlook on the world. I do not normally demand eyes-on proof to accept that something could exist above and beyond that which I have had personal experience. Particularly as I get older, I realise that Hamlet spoke wisely when he said “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. But, Elon Musk?
© Simon Turner-Tree; image © Steve Jurvetson
Simon Turner-Tree wonders what he might have achieved if he had been a little more ambitious.
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