I do admire and appreciate all the things Musk is doing with new technologies. Legacy car makers dragged their feet for decades on EVs until Tesla came along. I just don't care what his opinions are on social and political matters.
I am not one to admire people for their success. There are tons of people who work hard, are very driven, are very brilliant and are able to achieve various measures of success. I admire their hard work, their effort, their drive and their genius, all of them equally, regardless of the level of their success.
I don't put them on pedestals.
In part because pretty much every human who achieves outlier success has benefited from a great deal of good luck along the way. And they rarely, if ever, do it alone. They almost all stood on the shoulders of many others in their lives, who typically go largely unrecognized.
And in part because I know that bad things happen when humans put other humans on pedestals. There are many obvious notable examples throughout history.
I'm much, much more likely to admire people who, with no measurable benefit to themselves, quietly set out to help others in need. I mean, there's always a benefit to that in how it makes us feel, right? A huge benefit, IMO. But it's not exactly measurable, it's pretty intangible.
If Musk retires from his active roles in his companies, and instead spend all his time personally involved in doing good for others with no financial or political benefit to himself, then that's something I would admire. Same with Trump or Biden or any public figure of any kind you could name.
Still no pedestals. Admiration and gratitude is enough.
