Disclaimer: this episode is based on my proprietary behavior mapping system. This system is used in conjunction with a discovery conversation I have with an individual. In the case of mapping public figures this is purely an independent analysis and opinion based on publicly available research. See citations below article.

Transcript:

You’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. (see below!)

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk Elon Musk. But before we do that, let’s talk about behavioral mapping and my book BeCAUSE!.

Freud’s Pleasure Principle: Monsters and Unicorns

Okay, wait. We have to back up from that and we have to talk about Freud’s pleasure principle. If you are an old fan of this show, you’ve probably heard me say this a bunch of times, but let’s sum it up really quickly. Freud’s pleasure principle is based on the fact that we are binary individuals. We seek pleasure, we avoid pain. Everything and anything we do is broken down into those things. I’ve had a number of episodes on this and the book BeCAUSE! is based on this, but I give the seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain a face. The seeking pleasure is a unicorn and the avoiding pain is a monster. They are neither good nor bad. They are not devils and angels. They simply are.

Visualizing Behavior: My New Mapping Software

After the book BeCAUSE! came out, I ended up developing patent pending behavioral mapping software. It’s software that allows me to actually map this stuff out. And you’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. This episode might be a little bit longer than my self-imposed 10-minute limit, so please bear with me. Paradoxically, when I talk about Elon Musk, I actually want you to not be thinking of him, but to be thinking of you. Every episode of this podcast starts out as an article on Alchemy for Life. This one is no different, and you’ll be able to see the visual mapping on the site if you’d like. You can follow along on there or if you’re listening in your car, you can just visualize based on what I’m telling you.

Deconstructing Elon Musk: The Childhood Trauma

Most people are familiar with Elon Musk. He’s a rather polarizing person. He’s someone who won’t stop talking about going to Mars and now the moon. He’s someone who created an empire. He owns Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, now X, the Boring Company, and X AI. He’s had some romances. He’s currently not married and he has a lot of children. What most people don’t know is what I actually found out in the map showing why all of this is happening. And again, because audio is literally linear, meaning you talk in a straight line, you stop it. You can’t go into branches and things like that. It’s a little harder in audio to tell you what something on a screen can tell you, but I’ll do the best I can.

When he was young, the family dog bit him. It was actually a pretty vicious bite, but he was terrified that the dog was going to be put down. He needed medical attention, but he kept refusing it because he said, “You need to promise you’re not going to put the dog down.” Unfortunately, they put the dog down. And this was a very traumatic thing. And I can imagine for myself, and I’m sure you’re thinking about this, too, that’s a very traumatic thing to have to go through. You blame yourself. You think, well, maybe there’s something I could have done to not have the dog bite me. It’s horrible, horrible feeling. And it’s a feeling of losing something and someone that’s really important to you. You feel like you’re literally responsible for the death of a living creature. and that you have no control. So imagine that. It puts a pretty strong pleasure center. It puts a pretty strong unicorn in place that says, “Hey, follow me and you’ll have more control. You want more control.” Yes, I want more control. As with a lot of things, sometimes you also have the opposite in place. You have a monster that says, “It really feels bad to lose control.” And I’m sure you can understand that. I’m sure there are times in your life when you’ve lost control for some reason and you vowed to never lose that control again. Whether you were placed in a very unfortunate position due to your job or relationship or or even in your childhood

The Teenage Existential Crisis

when he was a teenager and we all remember just how wonderful and clear thinking we were as teenagers. He read both Shopenhau and Nietzsche. And I’ll tell you that Nichi is actually on my wall among five other people. But it’s not exactly something you would read out loud at like a children’s birthday party. So for him, he deeply regretted reading that stuff because it created in him an existential crisis. And imagine that’s essentially what being a teenager is, is having an existential crisis. You you question life. you’re halfway between being an adult and being a child. So reading that created in him a monster of avoiding the feeling of having existential dread and personal meaninglessness.

We all want purpose in our life. Imagine removing that as a teenager. Imagine questioning all of that and saying, “Oh my god, this feels terrible. I I I can’t experience this.” So, conversely, it creates the unicorn that makes it feel really good when you feel purpose and meaning. It’s the same one most of us would have.

The Scars of Bullying and Humiliation

When he was in school, he was severely bullied and beaten basically to the point of not being recognizable. Some of us were bullied, maybe all of us were bullied. And it tends to shape us sometimes in bad ways and sometimes in good ways. But to compound this, when he came home to his father, his father blamed him for this and made him stand for 2 hours while he bered him and called him a loser. How would you respond to that?

How would you psychologically speaking respond to that so that it would never happen to you again? You would have a monster that would be very strong in making sure you avoid humiliation and being vulnerable. And from the bullying, obviously you would have a monster that would say, “I’m never going to be bullied again. Never.” This is probably the first time you’re hearing about a lot of this stuff. Probably what you tend to hear about Elon Musk is his purchase or he makes a decision that you think is chaotic or egotistical. you’ve probably never heard any of this other stuff unless you have read his bio or multiple bios and things like that.

Connecting the Trauma to the Billionaire’s Actions

So, now that you know the monsters and unicorns that he has in place, what actions did these cause? Well, let’s go through them. If you’re trying to avoid the pain of bullying and the monster keeps getting in the way and saying, “You’re going to be bullied. Don’t do that.” Wouldn’t you be a bit combative on social media? Wouldn’t you make sure that in an interview you’re not going to be bullied? Wouldn’t you make sure that when you are dealing with the feds or other court systems or other CEOs that you would tend not to back down? In fact, maybe even not back down even when it’s to your detriment.

If you’re avoiding the pain and fear of scarcity because of what happened with your dog and that you had no control over that, and you’re avoiding the pain of humiliation and especially vulnerability and bullying because of the place you’re in as someone who is almost a trillionaire, would it not affect your approach on forming a family? If you are married and have children, you are in a position of vulnerability. You have more vulnerability right now than someone who, let’s say, doesn’t have children or isn’t married. If you’re in a loving relationship, that’s part for the course. It comes with the territory. It’s something you welcome. But if you combine a fear of scarcity and you’ve developed a sort of pleasure for having absolute sovereignty and control of any and all outcomes and you have a terrible monster that makes it feel horrible. If you are losing control, you would be in a unique position to want to perpetuate the human race, but not in a traditional way that causes vulnerability. which is why he has 14 children across four different women and he is presently not married to any of them.

This monster for avoiding pain and the fear of scarcity, working together with this pleasure of having absolute sovereignty and control and this extremely strong unicorn pulling him towards the feeling of purpose and meaning would obviously lead him to the creation of ...