Elon Musk: Modern Day Prometheus

End Time Prophecy of Ancient Greece?

Blow off the dust from your High School mythology textbook. Do you remember Prometheus? He was the Titan god that took issue with Zeus’ treatment of mankind and stole fire from the gods to give as a gift to humanity. For this act of treachery, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and sent an eagle every morning to eat his ever regenerating liver. Ah the pantheon…. fun stuff!

Who cares right? Well, call me crazy, but I find the profile of Prometheus very interesting. Here are some things Prometheus is known for:

  1. He was the protector of humanity from the gods.

  2. His name means "the one who thinks ahead".

  3. He represents striving for scientific knowledge.

  4. He overreached and induced unintended consequences.

  5. He was the lone genius whose efforts resulted in tragedy.

These facts are interesting enough by their own merit. Prometheus is a warning to us all about staying in our lane. However, what I find especially interesting is considering the profile of Prometheus in parallel with the profile of Elon Musk.

Of course this is grossly speculative…. but that has never stopped me before.

Elon sees himself as the preserver of the human species. His top priorities are to help make humanity a multi planet species and to safeguard the human race against the dangers of super intelligent ai. Why is he concerned about this? He wants to save humanity from extinction. Elon sees himself as a protector of humanity against the threat of a god-like ai.

Elon Musk is famous for thinking about the future. Prometheus means “forethinker” and there may be no more accurate title for Mr. Musk. His concerns for the future do not stop at the arrival of super intelligence, and colonizing Mars. Matters like technological unemployment and de-population collapse also keep him up at night. Elon Musk is so forward in his thinking that some have accused him of being from the future.

Prometheus symbolized human striving for scientific knowledge. And if there was ever a man on fire for how technology can save the human race; it is Elon Musk. The gas-engine has dominated the automobile industry since its inception. There has never been anyone who has ever threatened to disrupt this dominance until Elon Musk came along. He alone is credited for the disruption of the auto industry with Tesla. Many other companies are now jumping on this wave, but Mr. Musk used scientific knowledge to crack the code of an otherwise impossible feat.

If Elon’s resume ended at displacement of gas-engine cars with electric cars, that would be enough to firmly place him in the humanity hall of fame. But unfortunately he has much larger aspirations as savior of humanity. What breaks the bank are his plans for Starlink and Neuralink. These dual projects remove him from the camp of genius who helps to make cleaner air, and firmly tattoos him as evil mastermind.

Starlink is SpaceX’s project to litter the earth’s atmosphere with a technological blanket of 60,000 satellites that infuses the entire earth with the world wide web. In conjunction with this, Musk plans on developing a brain to Internet interface device sewn directly into the human brain. This maniacal project he has dubbed Neuralink. Together, if these plans succeed will make Elon Musk the most powerful man on earth.

Well intentioned or not, (like Prometheus) these moves will result in tragedy.

“It causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” - Revelation 13:16

Peter Herder