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Speaking of Musk’s career, you may already have a few treasures, but do you really know Musk himself? As an eye-catching and controversial innovative entrepreneur in the world, many of his behaviors can actually be found in his childhood. Unveiling the mystery of Musk, a contradictory figure, can also show us that although Musk’s success cannot be copied, his story can still inspire ordinary people.
Wen, Jennifer, May
Elon musk is the most striking and controversial entrepreneur in the world today.

Elon Musk
Any of his entrepreneurial achievements are extraordinary:
Established PayPal, one of the largest electronic payment companies in the world, subverting the traditional trading methods in one fell swoop;
Established SpaceX, the world’s first private space exploration company, and developed the world’s highest and most powerful rocket to realize the manned flight of commercial spacecraft;
Invented the electric car Tesla, leading the world into the era of electric cars;
SolarCity Sun City was founded, becoming the largest supplier of rooftop solar systems in the United States, promoting the consumption and recycling of solar technology …
This "madman" whose mission is to change and save the world likes to think about the future of mankind, and firmly believes that if the problem of sustainable energy cannot be solved in the 21st century, mankind will be in disaster. Another big problem that may affect human survival is whether Mars migration can be realized.
He not only has extraordinary imagination, but also is really moving towards his mission, gradually turning the Arabian Nights into reality.
However, on the back of great success, Musk has a very inhuman and even described as a "devil". This is not only reflected in his relationship with colleagues and subordinates, but also in his handling of intimate relationships.
Recently, The Biography of elon musk, written by the famous biographer Isaacson, was released, which showed more stories and details of his growth. This writer, who once wrote the Biography of Jobs, followed Musk closely for two years, and interviewed Musk himself, his family, friends, colleagues, ex-wife and opponents in depth.

Biography of elon musk
Author: [America] walter isaacson
In this biography, the Bund Jun is most interested in Musk’s childhood and adolescence.
What exactly shaped Musk and became him today? Although his success can’t be replicated, this genius, who is the richest man in the world and has extraordinary innovation, may still give us some enlightenment as ordinary people.
A boy with a lonely heart
Back in the 1980s, childhood Musk was shrouded in loneliness.
In kindergarten, he spent most of his time in a trance and couldn’t listen to others. This is because when he thinks about problems, it seems that all sensory systems will be shut down, and there is a tendency to stay out of it and ignore external information.
The temperament of genius also makes his socialization difficult. Because he can’t stand the "stupidity" of others, he has few friends since the day of school and becomes lonely and gloomy.
The trauma in his childhood experience further aggravated his loneliness.
He was born in a family with adventure genes. After his parents divorced, Musk and his father lived in South Africa from the age of 10.

Musk’s grandfather was born adventurous. In addition to flying around by himself, he often took his children to explore the wilderness.
His father is an engineer, a man with a violent temper and repeated emotions, and he practices "extremely strict dictatorship" over his children.
He sent 12-year-old Musk to a field survival training camp called "Field School". Here, each child can only get a little food and water, and encourage them to fight for survival materials. Every few years, a child will die here.
Musk, who was short and dull when he was a child, was not beaten less. The most serious time, he was beaten to face deformation and needed to go to the hospital for corrective treatment.
As a victim of campus bullying, in front of his father, he got double reprimand and abuse, calling him a useless idiot.
Such a scene has become a painful memory of Musk’s childhood, and it has also caused him great emotional trauma, which has affected him to this day.

Musk at the age of 8
Musk tried countless times to get rid of his father’s shadow physically and psychologically, but it was difficult to escape his father’s spiritual influence on him. There are two main influences here:
On the one hand, he began to be a copy of his father in some aspects-lack of empathy, dictatorial style and capricious extreme emotions.
The author Isaacson describes Musk in this way. His emotions will cycle between clear Wan Li and darkness, between passionate and dull, between indifference and true feelings, and occasionally fall into a "devil mode" that scares people around him.
On the other hand, childhood adversity made his pain threshold very high. In order to shield his childhood nightmares and fears, he also shielded other emotions, such as happiness and empathy.
In the eyes of his current and third wife, Musk doesn’t know how to enjoy success and enjoy the flowers and birds. Because childhood brought him the most profound constraint: life is pain.
He even hates being satisfied with the present. Therefore, the turbulent environment and fierce conflicts have a very strong attraction to Musk, which is not only reflected in his entrepreneurship, but also in his relationships that he tried to maintain but failed to last.
This is why many of his behaviors are full of childishness and even challenge the bottom line:
Publish irresponsible tweets at will and "openly smoke marijuana" in the live broadcast room; And break the law to attack those who oppose him …
He became the "mad king" Musk.
Save yourself in reading and acting.
Musk once said in an interview that he did not actively seek loneliness, and he did not want to be a lonely person.
In order to get rid of loneliness, he has been keen on attending and organizing parties since his youth. However, he is often the alien "bystander" and sometimes even picks up a book to read.

When Musk was in primary school, he was always a loner, curious about the world and persistent in facts, and was considered a nerd by his classmates.
It can be said that in adolescence, there was reading that had a profound impact on Musk.
Musk is a veritable bookworm. At most, he can read books for 9 hours a day. He began to be curious about the origin of the universe, the meaning of life and the universe very early, and even felt depressed for a time because of the meaningless life.
During this period, Musk read a lot of works of existential philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Heidegger and Schopenhauer, hoping to find the answers to the universe and life.
However, existentialism philosophy made him more confused and even desperate. That’s why, he would say later, "I don’t advise teenagers to read Nietzsche."
Fortunately, science fiction saved his "adolescent existentialism crisis". He rummaged through the science fiction works of the school and the local library, hungry.
The Severe Moon by Robert Heinlai is one of his favorite works. A question discussed in this novel later became the focus of Musk’s attention: Will the development of artificial intelligence help to protect human beings, or will machines develop their own consciousness and pose a threat to human beings?
Another set of his favorite works, "Base Trilogy", inspired his exploration on how to make human beings fly in the interstellar space, and became the foundation for his later creation of Space X.
At his age of great curiosity, the science fiction works that had the greatest influence on him were The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This humorous story not only shaped Musk’s philosophical system, but also helped him get rid of existential depression.
After seeing a bigger world in reading, Musk began to be not satisfied with traveling in his mind, but to seek to leave in the real world.
At the age of 17, Musk decided to leave South Africa and escape the painful life with his father.
He was very mobile. He went to the embassy alone, applied for a Canadian passport of his mother’s nationality, bid farewell to his mother and brother and sister who stayed in South Africa temporarily, and went to Canada alone.
This is also the first turning point for the young Musk to usher in his life.
He bought a one-way ticket to Canada, took $4,000 in traveler’s checks and cash, and set out on a journey to a foreign country with a list of relatives who had never been masked.
Before leaving, his father said contemptuously to him, "You will come back in a few months, and you will never succeed."
In the process of taking a bus in rural Canada, Musk did encounter big trouble. Because he got off the bus halfway, he missed the bus and lost his suitcase with traveler’s checks and clothes. At this time, he had only a few books left in his backpack. As a result, he spent several weeks replacing traveler’s checks, which was extremely difficult.
Unexpectedly, it was this unfortunate experience that made him realize for the first time that the financial payment system needed a change, which became the ideological spark for his later establishment of pay pal.
I have to say that the difference in thinking between bosses and ordinary people may be here. The same experience, most people may still complain, lament, or sum up lessons, but the master has stood in a completely different dimension, thinking about the possibility of subversion and change.
This way of thinking has been repeated many times in Musk’s later growth experience. However, the problems he wanted to solve later became bigger and bigger, from the Internet to electric cars, clean energy, and then to the Mars immigration plan.
A genius driven by a sense of mission
The 17-year-old Musk went to Queen’s University after coming to Canada from South Africa. As always, he has a keen interest in history and science fiction. At the same time, he is immersed in the world of board games and computer games.

When Musk was studying at Queen’s University,
Source: Biography of elon musk
As early as living in South Africa, Musk, a teenager, liked all kinds of video games. In college, he is more focused on a strategy game, that is, many players compete with each other and use advanced strategy, resource management, logistics supply chain management and tactical thinking to build an empire.
This is the game mode that Musk loves for ten minutes: if you want to defeat the enemy, you must realize complex rules and competitive management of resources. In a way, this has also become a tool for him to hone his tactical skills and tactical thinking, and to prepare for his later commercial competition.

Musk is not completely addicted to the online world. He is lonely and unsociable, but he has a strong "self-recommendation" ability in the real world.
When studying at Queen’s University, Musk and his younger brother, kimball, developed a very interesting habit: after reading the newspaper every day, each of them chose the most interesting person, and his younger brother called to try to invite each other to lunch.
On one occasion, they selected Peter Nicholson, an executive in charge of strategic planning in scotiabank. Unexpectedly, the executive with a master’s degree in physics and a doctorate in mathematics agreed to have lunch with the two brothers.
After discussing the essence of philosophy, physics and the universe with each other, Musk was highly appreciated by his predecessor, and got a summer internship and directly entered the strategic planning team of each other.
Although this internship experience is not long, it gradually makes him clear what kind of career path he should take-that is, he is more suitable for starting a business than working for others.
There is no doubt that Musk is an ambitious careerist, but his ambition is still driven by what "big problems" he was concerned about when he was a teenager, and it gradually became his mission during his college years.
In 1992, in order to seek academic challenges, Musk took the initiative to change again. With the support of scholarships and student loans, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and started a new college life.

Musk and Ren Yuxiang at the University of Pennsylvania
Source: Biography of elon musk
During his studies at Penn University, Musk, who was interested in engineering issues, decided to major in physics. He hopes to become an engineer and study the most basic principles of physics. This is also the "first principle" that he later admired. Everything starts from the essence and seeks solutions to problems.
At the same time, he decided to take a double degree in business. This is not because he is interested in business, but because he is worried that if he does not study business, he will have to work for those who have studied business in the future.
Here, Musk met the only person who he admitted was "better than himself in physics"-Ren Yuxiang, who won the 22nd international physics olympiad gold medal on behalf of China, and later became his important partner in building a Tesla factory in Shanghai.
They do experiments together, study the changes of various materials at extreme temperatures, and discuss how to apply the laws of physics to making rockets. During this period, Musk has been chanting to be a rocket that can fly to Mars.
The dream of a distant rocket was planted at this time.

Source: documentary "Back to Space"
Musk, who was in college, was also very concerned about electric vehicles. When sitting on the campus lawn for lunch, he will read academic papers about batteries. When learning that California has just passed a regulation that 10% of vehicles in 2003 must be electric vehicles, Musk’s first reaction is that I want to achieve this goal.
At the same time, he also believes that solar energy, which has just started, is the best way to realize the vision of sustainable energy.
He wrote in his graduation thesis "The Importance of Building a Solar Society" that "human society will soon have no choice but to focus on renewable energy." On the last page of the paper, he also showed his idea of a "future power station".
The professor gave him a high score of 98 points, saying that the paper was "very interesting and well written, except that the last picture was too abrupt and a little puzzling".
Looking back, the three areas that Musk paid attention to in his student days-Internet, sustainable energy and space exploration-really shaped his career step by step, and personally founded a number of subversive companies such as PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX and Solar City.
Musk is not only a genius figure, but also an ambitious man driven by a sense of mission to some extent.
In his childhood and adolescence, the big problems he thought about and the sci-fi works he was obsessed with contributed to the formation of a sense of mission, which will further ferment and mature in the future.
Even his motivation for learning in the future is driven by a strong sense of mission, in order to realize the big problems in his mind and have an impact in the real world.

Source: documentary "Back to Space"
When a person learns knowledge with the desire to change reality, knowledge will be transformed into ability and value.
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A gifted child, with the blessing of reading, action and mission, has achieved success, which is simply a matter of course.
However, this genius who is changing, or has changed the world, should always deal with his demons.
As the author Isaacson said, the influence of his father on Musk in childhood seems to be a dark force. This strong and fragile boy, in his epic expedition, is ready to compete with this dark force.

Source: documentary "Back to Space"
The story of genius cannot be copied, but we can still see how much magic a person’s childhood experience has on his shaping.
At the same time, for most people, we don’t have Musk’s amazing talent, and we don’t necessarily have some opportunities for him. However, it should be a good thing to find the areas of interest from reading, to find the changes that we can make from the real world, and to live and learn new knowledge with a mission-like enthusiasm.
The unlabeled graphs are all from the network.
Original title: Musk: A Lonely Boy Who Changed the World
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