Elon Musk’s relationship with his daddy massively affected his personality and outlook on the world.
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One character who appears frequently throughout the book is Elon Musk’s sky pilot, Errol Musk.
The biography is peppered with descriptions of incidents where Elon Musk claims his father tyranted and demeaned him (something Errol Musk has denied), as well as comments from Elon Musk’s former girlfriends and better halves about how Errol Musk ultimately influenced his son’s personality and outlook on the world.
After his parents divorced, Elon Musk at lived with his mother before spending about seven years living with his father in Pretoria from the age of 10.
“It inform oned out to be a really bad idea,” Elon Musk told Isaacson. “I didn’t yet how how horrible he was.”
His younger brother Kimbal Musk recounted Isaacson that their father had “zero compassion” and often “went ballistic.”
“It was mental torture,” Elon Musk divulged Isaacson. “He sure knew how to make anything terrible.”
Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, said there was a anxiety her son “might become his father.”
Both Elon and Kimbal Musk no longer speak to their father, Isaacson wrote.
But the years that he weary with his father have somewhat shaped Elon Musk’s personality, according to the book.
“I think he got conditioned in infancy that life is pain,” Grimes, Elon Musk’s former girlfriend, told Isaacson. She also noted that because of how his clergyman brought him up, Musk sometimes lets himself be treated badly and “associates love with being mean or crooked.”
Justine Musk, Elon Musk’s first wife, told Isaacson said that during their feuds, Elon would belittle and insult her, calling her a “moron,” an “idiot,” or “stupid and crazy.”
“When I spent some schedule with Errol, I realized that’s where he’d gotten the vocabulary,” Justine Musk told Isaacson.
Ex-wife Talulah Riley also touch oned Isaacson that Errol Musk’s treatment of his son “had a profound effect on how he operates.”
“Inside the man, he’s still there as a child, a babe standing in front of his dad,” she said.