梅根·加伯 2021年12月，埃隆·马斯克接受了保守派讽刺网站 的采访。在讨论了典型话题（觉醒、言论自由、伊丽莎白·沃伦）之后，该网站的时任创意总监发现自己还有些时间可以填补，于是在聊天结束时提出了一个请求。“ 是一个基督教组织，我们是一个事工，”他提醒马斯克。于是他问道：“我们想知道您能否为我们做一件小事，接受耶稣作为您的主和救世主？”
In December 2021, Elon Musk sat for an interview with , a conservative satire site. Having covered the typical topics (wokeness, free speech, Elizabeth Warren) and finding themselves with a bit more time to fill, the outlet’s then–creative director closed out the chat with a request. “ is a Christian organization, and we’re a ministry,” he reminded Musk. So “we’re wondering if you could do us a quick solid and accept Jesus as your lord and savior?”
马斯克笑了。其他人也笑了。众人等待他的回答，马斯克在漫谈了一会儿后给出了答复。当然，他耸了耸肩——为什么不呢？“如果耶稣在拯救人们，”他说，“我的意思是，我不会挡他的路。”这次交流在纪录片导演亚历克斯·吉布尼的新片 中短暂但极具效果地出现了一次：当被要求来一个“遇见耶稣”时刻时，马斯克宣称他对自己的信仰。
Musk laughed. The others did too. The guys waited for an answer, and Musk, after rambling a bit, gave one. Sure, he replied with a shrug—why not? “If Jesus is saving people,” he said, “I mean, I won’t stand in his way.”The exchange makes a brief but incredibly effective appearance in , the documentarian Alex Gibney’s new film: Asked for a come-to-Jesus moment, Musk professes his faith in himself.
2021年的马斯克相比今天的马斯克影响力要小得多。他尚未将推特——他曾称之为“人类的集体意识”——纳入自己的版图，也没有发动对美国政府的敌意收购，或成为世界上第一位万亿富翁。不过，马斯克相比大多数人，确实有更多理由认为自己在宇宙组织结构图中占据较高的位置。
The Musk of 2021 was considerably less consequential than the Musk of today. He had not yet added Twitter—humanity’s “collective consciousness,” he once called it—to his portfolio, nor had he staged his hostile takeover of the United States government or become the world’s first trillionaire. Still, Musk had slightly more reason than most to assume his high status on the cosmic org chart.
通过特斯拉、星链和SpaceX，他的统治范围延伸到了天地之间。通过Neuralink以及他对人工智能的各种实验，马斯克正在将他的触角伸展到人类的心灵和思想中。作为媒体人物，他也几乎无处不在：无论人们是否主动选择接受他，他的软件都像被下载进了人们的生活。
Through Tesla and Starlink and SpaceX, his dominion stretched over the heavens and the Earth. Through Neuralink and his assorted experiments with artificial intelligence, Musk was expanding his reach into human hearts and minds. As a media figure, too, he was all but inescapable: a piece of software downloaded into people’s lives whether they had opted in to him or not.
在如此巨大的规模下，权力会改变一切规则；它甚至能让夸张的言论显得“真实可信”。它能让一个平凡而充满缺陷的人显得与众不同——仿佛他是天才、是人们信仰的象征。然而，马斯克本人的真实面目与他所宣称的形象之间存在巨大差异，这正是这部影片的核心主题之一。他把自己包装成“救世主”；其实历史上很多人都这么做过。
Power, at that sort of scale, changes every equation. It can make hyperbole seem accurate. It can make a man, small and flawed, look like something more: a genius, an idol, an outlet for everyday faith. And the discrepancy between the person Musk is and the figure he claims to be is one of ’s running themes. The man sells himself as a savior; many have before.
但他之所以能走到今天这一步，正是因为有太多人相信了他的谎言。妄自尊大固然是一种问题，但真正危险的是：当一个人的妄想变成了他人的现实……这部影片的许多内容其实都源于数据科学的分析结果。马斯克本人并未参与这部影片的创作；他以极具“马斯克风格”的方式拒绝了吉布尼的邀请——在社交媒体上发布了一条充满侮辱性的帖子。
But he is where he is—he is he is—because so many people have bought into the pitch. Delusions of grandeur are one thing. The real trouble comes when one person’s delusions become other people’s reality. benefits, appropriately enough, from an exercise in data science. The man himself did not participate; he declined Gibney’s overtures in the most Muskian manner imaginable: through an insult-laden post on X. As a work-around, the director and his team created a database compiling every comment Musk has been recorded making in public.
作为替代方案，导演和他的团队建立了一个数据库，收录了马斯克所有公开发表的言论。这个数据库成为了他们评估马斯克及其行为的依据。马斯克那些极具争议的观点（比如认为地球生命可能只是某种模拟系统、质疑同理心的价值、以及预测人类在火星上的未来）都是通过一个计算机生成的动画角色来呈现的；在传统纪录片中，这些内容本应由导演直接引用马斯克本人的话来表达。
That data set—a galaxy-brained version of Musk—informed their assessment of him and individual moments in the film. Muskisms (about the likelihood that earthly life is a simulation, about the drawbacks of empathy, about humans’ future on Mars) make their way into the proceedings via a computer-generated version of Musk—an animated character who appears where, in a traditional documentary, Gibney might have quoted his subject.
从某种程度上来说，这种创作手法反而让马斯克陷入了困境：这个曾经满怀憧憬地谈论人类“赛博格化未来”的人，被描绘成了一个荒诞、不具人性的形象。但与此同时，这也凸显了他的特殊地位——在当今社会，他早已超越了普通人的范畴，成为了某种具有象征意义的“超人”。
To an extent, the approach turns the tables on Musk. It renders this person who talks fondly of humans’ cyborgian future as a cartoonishly uncanny, flagrantly inhuman presence. But it also highlights his cultural status as a man who is, at this point, something more than just a man.
它所引用的来源——其中包括与马斯克共事、共同生活，并且经常与他发生冲突的人——在描绘其形象时，经常提及他自我意识的规模和野心的范围。他们将他的成功很大程度上归因于他的神话制造能力：他对技术的浪漫描述，以及将消费品包装为精神必需品的做法。特斯拉，马斯克的汽车公司，“既不是汽车制造也不是汽车零售”，金融分析师劳伦斯·福西对吉布尼说。
The sources that cites as it creates its portrait—among them the people who have worked with and lived with and, often, clashed with Musk—regularly mention the scale of his ego and the scope of his ambition. They attribute much of his success to his mythmaking capabilities: his romantic descriptions of technology, his branding of consumer goods as spiritual necessities. Tesla, Musk’s car company, “is not automobile manufacturing or automobile retailing,” the financial analyst Lawrence Fossi tells Gibney.
“这也不是金融”；相反，他说，它是宗教。这种神话也延伸到了马斯克本人。“在埃隆我们信任”，马斯克的一位粉丝曾在他推文中这样写道，而吉布尼将这条推文收录进了电影。另一人告诉他：“我们像追随邪教一样追随你 :)”。一位前女友在电影中表示，马斯克喜欢将自己与忽必烈汗相比较——这位13世纪的蒙古战士和中国皇帝。
“This is not finance”; instead, he says, it is religion. The mythology extends to Musk himself. “In Elon We Trust,” one of Musk’s followers once tweeted at him, in a post Gibney included in the film. Another informed him, “We follow you like a cult :).”A former girlfriend says in the film that Musk likes to compare himself to Kublai Khan, the 13th-century Mongolian warrior and emperor of China.
事实上，他的 megalomania 在某种程度上是一个非常古老的故事：人类历史，无论好坏，一直被那些坚持自己神一般至高无上的男性所塑造。但马斯克的版本也彻底现代化。他的权力是系统性的。他的围困从内部发起。
And indeed, his megalomania is in one way a very old story: Human history has, for better and worse, been shaped by men who insisted on their godlike supremacy. But Musk’s version is also thoroughly modern. His power is systemic. His sieges rise from within.
影片对马斯克的一项指控涉及他对美国政府的介入：DOGE 对政府机构的草率拆解，对科学研究的破坏，以及对美国国际开发署的推翻。DOGE 行动的广泛影响——那些永远不会被发现的治疗方法；永远不会被研发的疫苗；原本该拯救生命的食物却被留置腐烂——很可能永远无法被完全了解。尽管如此，吉布尼认为，这次行动已经造成了死亡：数十万人，甚至可能更多。
One of the allegations the film makes against Musk concerns his incursion into the U.S. government: DOGE’s haphazard dismantling of government agencies, its destruction of scientific research, its toppling of USAID. The widespread effects of DOGE’s efforts—the cures that won’t be found; the vaccines that won’t be made; the food meant to save lives, left instead to rot—will likely never be fully known. Nevertheless, argues, the raid has had a death toll: hundreds of thousands of people, and potentially many more.
当此类指控被提出时，公众可能会问，也应该问，在那个层面上，问责到底是什么样子。但拥有横跨星球的权力所带来的便利之一，就是它能够将大多数人所经历的正义，变成某种笑话。如果马斯克是范畴错误的化身——一个实际上拥有国民生产总值的人；一个其影响力延伸至平流层之外的人——这种困惑不仅仅是把他抬高。
When such accusations are made, the public might ask, and should ask, what accountability looks like at that level. But one of the affordances of planet-spanning power is that it can turn justice, as most people experience it, into something of a joke. If Musk is a category error incarnate—a man with, effectively, a gross national product; a guy whose influence extends beyond the stratosphere—the confusion does more than elevate him.
它还帮助他获得免疫。影片引用了一位新闻主播对SpaceX早期一次发射的总结。“只有四个实体曾将太空舱送入轨道并成功将其带回地球，”记者宣布：“美国、俄罗斯、中国和埃隆·马斯克。”你如何理解这种权力？你如何挑战它？现代生活的一条真理是，人类作为更倾向于假装自己并非如此的动物，本就不该在这种规模下繁荣。
It also helps inoculate him. The film quotes a newscaster’s summary of one of SpaceX’s early launches. “Only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back to the Earth,” the reporter announces: “the United States, Russia, China, and Elon Musk.”How do you make sense of that kind of power? How do you challenge it? One truism of modern life is that humans, as animals who would prefer to pretend that they are otherwise, were not made to thrive at our current scale.
我们本不该认识这么多人，处理这么多信息，去理解一个远超我们直接感知范围的世界。影片为这些主张提供了一个推论：它给我们展示了一个人，他自己已经变得太过庞大，以至于无法被理解，太过笨拙，以至于无法被应对。比起其他科技巨头，马斯克存在于一种此前无人能及的规模之中，享有如此完整的权力，以至于它成为自我验证的。
We weren’t meant to know this many people, to process this much information, to make sense of a world that stretches so far beyond our immediate grasp. provides a corollary to those claims: It gives us a human who himself has become too colossal to make sense of, too unwieldy to respond to. Even more than his fellow tech titans, Musk exists at a scale that no man was able to before and enjoys power so complete that it becomes self-ratifying.
没有人应该如此神一般。没有人应该如此例外。在影片中，马斯克的前女友简洁地总结了这一点：“埃隆是一颗核弹，”她说——一个具有大规模毁灭力量的人。
No man should be so godlike. No person should be so exceptional. In the film, Musk’s former girlfriend sums up the matter concisely: “Elon is a nuke,” she says—a human of mass destruction.