Tag Archive for: generation x

For Elon Musk and His Disciples, Mars Is Heaven

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Auguste Meyrat: The Tesla founder is one of the richest and most celebrated men in the world, yet he also has to be one of the loneliest and saddest, bereft of community, meaning, and love.

In terms of revolutionizing the world and pushing humanity forward, Elon Musk has easily been one of the most consequential figures in the last decade. Not only did he make electric vehicles profitable, but he somehow also did the same with rocket science. At the moment, Musk is busy developing self-driving cars, neural transmitters, and high-functioning androids.

Thus, it is right and just that an acclaimed biographer like Walter Isaacson tells the Musk story. The example of a self-made visionary overcoming obstacles is nothing short of inspiring. More importantly, his experience as a member of Generation X (those between 45 and 60) is representative of many in his age group.

Naturally, the biography emphasizes Musk’s technical genius and indomitable will. At so many junctures in his life, Musk drives both himself and his employees to do amazing things, like produce thousands of Teslas in an impossibly short timeframe or design a reusable rocket that can safely transport astronauts to the international space station.

These great feats, however, often come at great human cost, with Musk and his crew often hitting the breaking points of sanity and emotional stability. In such moments, Musk goes into “demon mode,” brutally criticizing and firing employees, denouncing and mocking the competition, and desperately looking to distract himself from a deep internal darkness (usually through work).

Although Musk and his biographer will attribute these manic episodes to his undiagnosed Aspergers Syndrome or his commitment to greatness, a Christian would rightly conclude that almost all of his personal turmoil stems from the absence of a spiritual life.

Musk is one of the richest and most celebrated men in the world, yet he also has to be one of the loneliest and saddest, bereft of community, meaning, and love. At one point, he told admirers: “I’d be careful what you wish for. I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. The amount I torture myself is next level, frankly.”

Like many of his generation, Musk, 52, grew up in a broken household. He had a callous, emotionally abusive father and a vain, passive mother. Inevitably, they divorced as their children reached adolescence. Musk technically attended a Christian school in South Africa, but his family never went to church. Instead of learning how to pray and cultivate virtue, he learned how to fight and write programs. Upon experiencing “existential depression” as a teenager, he found solace in reading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and playing video games.

This background made him tough, resourceful, and well-positioned to thrive in America in the 90s and 00s, but it also made him temperamental and restless. Again, like many in his generation, he filled the hole in his heart with an addiction to work and video games. This led him to make his first fortune with Zip2, then another with PayPal, then another with SpaceX, and then another with Tesla. Each time, he would launch a project “surge,” mandating long hours, maximizing efficiency, berating employees, and constantly taking risks.

Rather than being motivated by fame or fortune, Musk was driven by something much greater: faith. Except that the faith he embraced was the nebulous idea of human “progress,” not organized religion. Judging from his comments, his idea of heaven includes cyborg humans, friendly non-woke robots, spaceships going to Mars, and gloriously high birthrates. It’s a vision somewhat like Ray Bradbury’s short story, “Mars Is Heaven!,” but without the tragic ending.

Despite his uncompromising disposition, Musk has disciples who look up to him as a kind of messiah. As one might imagine, those close to Musk have the same outlook on life as he does. They go “hardcore” with their duties, dispense with personal attachments, and attempt to do the impossible. In a revealing exchange between Musk’s longtime employees, one of them admitted, “I was burned out [working at Tesla]. But after nine months [elsewhere], I was bored, so I called my boss and begged him to let me come back. I decided I’d rather be burned out than bored.”

Somewhere up in heaven, Blaise Pascal, who once wrote that “All man’s troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room,” is likely shaking his head and sighing at these poor souls. While they have applied their remarkable brainpower to things that Musk proudly declares are “far cooler than whatever is the second coolest,” they have sacrificed the very thing that makes them human in the first place: relationships, contentment, and purpose.

At what point can people finally settle down and rest in their accomplishments? When does the constant striving end? What would have to happen to Elon Musk or his disciples for people to realize that this is not a good model for a rich and fulfilling life? If constant work is the way to heaven, does that mean retirement is the way to hell? Was Ayn Rand right after all that our world is lifted by atlases and fountainheads simply being their brilliant selves?

Put simply, the hustle never stops. Of course, it could be worse. One of Musk’s many envious opponents in business or government could take him down and impose on all of us a drab, regressive police state that opposes human achievement and independence. This possibility has made most conservatives generally supportive of Musk who at least believes in free speech, industry, free markets, and humanity.

It’s important to realize, however, that human life could be made better, yet Musk will not be the world’s savior. The real progress to be made by society does not reside in rockets and robots, but in community and contemplation. True, these goods can coincide and complement one another, but the former should not overtake the latter. Before man was made for work, he was made for love.

Let’s hope that Elon Musk and the many who share his post-Christian faith in technology and themselves will come to realize this before they burn out for good.

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AUTHOR

Auguste Meyrat

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in Humanities and an MEd in Educational Leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Thinker, and The American Conservative as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission, © 2024 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Gen Z Traded Church For ‘A New Religion,’ Faith Leaders Say

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  • A recent study found that 48.5% of Gen Z identifies as non-religious, atheist or agnostic, and religious leaders have a lot of thoughts about the reasons behind the decline in faith.
  • Gen Z’s mental health has declined along with their faith, as recent studies found that Gen Z reports the highest level of mental illness and suicidal ideation compared to other generations. 
  • “[I]t’s not that Gen Z isn’t religious, it’s that they picked a new religion,” Joshua Mercer, co-founder of the CatholicVote, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Nearly half of Generation Z does not identify as religious, according to a new study, and religious leaders that spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation said the trend is not surprising because they have substituted church for “a new religion.”

Data published this week by the Cooperative Election Study found that 48.5% of Gen Z identifies as either agnostic, atheist or nonreligious, a 3% increase from the previous year and another study from last month found that only 31% believe religion is “very important.” While the data did not delve into what has caused the rift between young people and religion, several experts that spoke with the DCNF had similar ideas about what is behind the split.

“[I]t’s not that Gen Z isn’t religious, it’s that they picked a new religion,” Joshua Mercer, co-founder of the CatholicVote, told the DCNF. “They have fervent beliefs and rituals, they have their symbols and sacraments, and they definitely purge their ranks of ‘blasphemers’ or anyone insufficiently dedicated to their faith. Look at how every corporation rushes to embrace the rainbow flag every June and look at how people adorn their social media platforms with symbols to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Covid vaccination, Ukraine, or climate change. They are definitely evangelizing, [i]t’s just not Christianity.”

Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at the Family Research Council made similar observations but also pointed out to the DCNF that the withdrawal from the church by younger generations has been happening for a while.

“I think the reality is that those who were identifying as religious were doing so more for cultural reasons than out of theological conviction,” Backholm said. “As the culture becomes more hostile to Christianity, for instance, and it’s not popular, you are seeing people not do so when there is not a social reason because a lot of their identity wasn’t theological in the first place.”

As faith has declined for Gen Z, so has mental health, as recent studies found that Gen Z reports the highest level of mental illness and suicidal ideation compared to other generations. In 2022, a study revealed that 42% of Gen Z reported being diagnosed with a mental illness and 70% said that their mental health has gotten worse since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joseph Capizzi, executive director at the Institute for Human Ecology, told the DCNF that “loneliness, despair, unhappiness, and declines in worship and belief are connected.”

“This is something people have known for centuries, long before the rise of social science. For instance, Christians have long believed that hope requires more than material progress,” Capizzi said. “Believing in ‘progress’ — which is always ambivalent — cannot be a ground of hope; it will lead to despair. Instead, we must have experiences of great love to give our lives meaning. That can help explain why in an age of unprecedented material affluence we have so much hopelessness.”

Backholm agreed with Capizzi, saying that while mental health is a “complex question” the two things were “absolutely” related. He explained that in recent years the message “follow your heart” has backfired on Gen Z especially because they have “thrown themselves into that effort more zealously than any generation before them.”

“Gen Z has believed that following your heart will make you happy and they are just proving that it does not,” Backholm said.

The solution to the decline, according to Backholm, is to stop trying to “market Jesus” to young people who are actually “craving authenticity” and “purpose.” While Capizzi restated that “belief isn’t going away” but going to a different place and encouraged churches and people of faith to draw Gen Z to faith by giving them the space to encounter the love that they are “seeking.”

“As Pope Francis always reminds us, Christianity is first an encounter with a person, Christ,” Capizzi said. “People have to be drawn to faith by encountering love. Otherwise, our age of despair and loneliness will continue indefinitely.”

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Nearly A Third Of Americans Rank Evangelicals As The Most Unfavorable Religion: POLL

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