For Elon Musk, the most important life lesson (one he preaches) is "Empathy is not an asset" - which explains so much [View all]

[highplainsdem]

I saw that belief of Elon's mentioned on either Twitter or Bluesky recently, but didn't do any research to confirm he'd said that till yesterday.

From Fortune magazine, September 2023, via Yahoo:

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In recent years, Isaacson reveals, Musk has become particularly obsessed with the multiplayer strategy game Polytopia, which describes itself as a "strategy game about building a civilization and going into battle."

In fact, it became such a staple of Musk’s life—he played it with his partners, coworkers, and brother—that he even made a list of the life lessons the game taught him, which he called Polytopia Life Lessons. The very first rule: “Empathy is not an asset.”

To hear those close to Musk tell it, the game’s importance to his leadership style is more than just inference. “He said it would teach me to be a CEO like he was,” Elon’s brother Kimbal Musk told Isaacson about its influence.

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Kimbal Musk told Isaacson that his brother regularly counsels him to avoid being overly empathetic in his work. “He knows that I have an empathy gene, unlike him, and it has hurt me in business,” Kimbal Musk says. “Polytopia taught me how he thinks when you remove empathy. When you’re playing a video game, there is no empathy, right?”

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But from what Kimbal says here, his brother wasn't talking about a video game, but about real life.

The article goes on to say that Musk shows a weird kind of empathy - for all of humanity, with concern for the future of the human race.

But I don't believe that's a sincere concern or empathy.

It's more a desire to be seen as a savior of humanity. To be admired, even worshipped...and to have control of humanity's future.

And that's megalomania.

Musk is the last person who should ever have been given any power.