14 June

A bit longer this, but I’m very tired of the Musk stuff and it needs a longer explanation. There’s a shorter Part 2 of this as a separate post, that explains some things about what Musk is doing that I think are terribly understood. (And no, I don’t agree with his racist and political views. I’m not a kidult, I can hold both positions at the same time, I’m not on any team for-or-against.) I read nearly ever word Shaw wrote, in my late-teens and early 20s. I wanted to dust off one of his major themes, his objection to what he called the ‘snivelling morality’ of righteousness over action. Remembering that Shaw was almost the inventor of modern socialism, no Right-wing culture warrior. I see his now 120-year old play Major Barbara as a way to explain my views on Musk. The play shows the tension between Major Barbara, a Salvation Army warrior of righteousness, and her father Undershaft, an extremely wealthy industrialist, who manufactures arms i.e. he gets rich blowing people up. You’d expect Shaw, as the founder of socialism, to be all for Barbara, and anti the ‘greedy capitalist’ father. But here’s what Undershaft says: “I wouldn't have your income, not for all your conscience.” And when asked if his religion has room for honour, justice, truth, or love, Undershaft responds: "Yes: they are the graces and luxuries of a rich, strong, and safe life... Choose money and gunpowder; for without enough of both you cannot afford the others.” Shaw despised the obsession with ‘ought’. The sniveling moralistic whining about how things should be other than they are. His morality said, BUILD things how they should be. Address the MATERIAL realities of the world. Undershaft was his hero in this play because he made the material conditions of a better life possible, irrespective of the personal views of the man himself. In this way Undershaft was the Musk of that time. Except his business was resolutely ‘immoral’, by most of our standards. That would appall the modern culture of righteous snivelling social media. Look at Musk, his actual business is infinitely more moral than Undershaft’s. But his *personal* views make him toxic, to the snivelling socials. Shaw would have hated that judgment, his character Undershaft has appalling personal views. He saw that as irrelevant. Not because he would have agreed with Musk on many things outside his business. But because he would have judged him by the material actions of his life and work, the phenomenal scale of the industrial impact of Tesla and other Musk businesses. By what he does, not by what he says.