Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_10pzgbi in philosophy
Elon Musk as the example of a meaningful life. Uh-huh.
If we include narcissism as a meaningful pursuit, we might as well include happiness. Being an oligarch of a deeply unequal society is not meaningful. If the meaning of your life is to build a better society, then we actually have to ask: What kind of a society?
I am deeply skeptical of this doe-eyed “multi-planet, beyond-the-stars society” poetic waxing. These billionaires are adopting the language of democracy (“We” are going to the stars, “we” are gonna live in the future) but you aren’t invited on the arc. And even if you were, you would be the janitor. Because “more stuff” solves nothing when you replicate the same social problems that got us in this crisis in the first place.
In my painful life experience, narcissists are rarely ever happy, and seem fairly sociopathic
Musk is a dumpster fire, but I can sympathize with this bit of poetic waxing (relevant XKCD). Trying to fix the world in the conventional way is a monstrously difficult, counterintuitive, dirty and depressing task. Trying to do this without having half of humanity hating your guts is downright impossible. Meanwhile, making space travel more accessible is a low-hanging fruit, fun and relatively uncontroversial (other than the argument from the aforementioned XKCD).
The "we" here refers to humanity in general. Not that every human will get the opportunity to go to other planets, but that some will. I don't know what goes own in Musk's head, but I think that most of his fans accept that they will not go to Mars, and are simply glad that some humans will eventually do. It takes a certain kind of egolessness to look at these promises and not ask "but what about my share?"
I’m not asking “What about my share?” so much as “Is this actually a good future for humanity?”
No, the answer is so obviously no. This is the society we get when we let great-men tech-fetishist hypercapitalists define our future.
You wanna get to space? Me too. But what will space be when we get there? A “progress” that treats exploitation as the cost of doing business may get us to space… but it brings the dystopia with us.
It is subjective whether a life devoted to wealth and power is meaningful or not, as meaning can vary from person to person. Some may find meaning in using their resources and influence to create positive change and better society, while others may view it as shallow and lacking deeper purpose. Ultimately, what defines a meaningful life is a personal and individual choice.
If this is true, it contradicts OP’s thesis that we can rule out happiness as meaningful.
Also, do we really believe this about meaning being entirely subjective? I forget the name of the philosopher, but I remember from intro to philosophy the counter-example of a man who finds meaning in eating his own shit and watching paint dry and torturing babies. There is a big difference between “I can’t prove an objective, universal meaning” and “baby torture is literally identically meaningful as striving to cure cancer.”
Questions of whether a given person's chosen meaning is wrong or if it can be objectively judged are independent of whether it is meaning.
Regardless as I agree that meaning is subjectively applied and made, I’m not going to lie to myself and think Elon is some Renaissance Man out to uplift the species.
The Great Man hypothesis has been bankrupt for a long time, and he’s just a mediocre computer programmer that is good at hyping investors with a start from daddy’s money. If he wants to be altruistic, he can start with better compensation for his employees.
> deeply unequal society
What is an equal society? Everyone is a robot and equal in every way?
I’m talking about access to political power. I think Musk’s project is inherently illegitimate if it inherits the human rights abuses and disenfranchisement from an extremely hierarchical system. That’s not to say that all hierarchy necessarily creates human rights abuses. The key words are “deeply” and “extreme.”
Musk may be a complete schmuck, but it's a massive stretch to say that he hasn't done a whole lot of meaningful things... He did a decent bit to revolutionize usage of the internet in his early days, he's been at the absolute forefront of both the push to EVs and the push for green energy production and storage, and he has revolution travel and access to space and provided strong internet to a whole lot of places where it wasn't previously an option, which wad a game changer for a lot of people?
Massive tool? Definitely. Massive meaningful impact? Also definitely.
I think this “thing good = meaning” argument misses the value of the mission.
Imagine a feudalist lord who owns a castle. He orders his serf to build this new invention called “the hoe.” It’s amazing. It revolutionizes farming, feeds a bunch of people, yadda yadda.
Should I use that feudal lord as an examplar for the meaningful life? No, he did good stuff to perpetuate a system that is awful. Also, he didn’t do jack shit. He’s not a hoe engineer. He just owned stuff and gave orders and raked in the profit.
For crying out loud, we might as well use Trump as the example of the reflective philosopher out there carefully crafting a meaningful life like a work of art just because he instinctively grabbed at power like an especially selfish toddler.
Commissioning a guy to make a hoe is drastically different than taking your entire fortune (that you made from a company that you started and did the majority of the work on yourself) and putting it towards a goal that betters the world.
I honestly do not believe he’s making the world a better place. I don’t share the assumption that the feudal lord’s investment into the hoe project can be plausibly interpreted as some kind of charitable sacrifice. Any account as to whether he’s doing a good thing for the world must ask “Why is he giving orders at all?” “Why did he get to decide what kind of society would be good for the rest of us?” “Is he building a world that replicates our current abuses?” That kind of arbitrary exercise of power isn’t some deeply reflective sacrifice. It’s just narcissism.
>I don’t share the assumption that the feudal lord’s investment into the hoe project can be plausibly interpreted as some kind of charitable sacrifice.
Whether the feudal lord's investment was altruistic or selfish, the outcome is still a better hoe. That better hoe results in higher crop yields compared to work done. That's good. If those higher crop yields go entirely towards banquets for the lord, then the "good" is very limited compared to if it was distributed to the peasants. But it's very hard to see how those higher yields, on their own, could be "bad".
I don’t think the results are bad. I think good results are necessary but not sufficient for a meaningful project.
Yeah there is just no chance of us agreeing on this one
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