As a kid growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk knew pain and learned how to survive it.

作為一個在南非長大的孩子，埃隆-馬斯克知道痛苦，也學會了如何在痛苦中生存。

When he was twelve, he was taken by bus to a wilderness survival camp, known as a

. “It was a paramilitary

,”
he recalls. The kids were each given small rations of food and water,
and they were allowed—indeed encouraged—to fight over them. “Bullying
was considered a virtue,” his younger brother Kimbal says. The big kids
quickly learned to punch the little ones in the face and take their
stuff. Elon, who was small and emotionally awkward, got beaten up twice.
He would end up losing ten pounds.

12
歲那年，他被大巴帶到一個野外生存營，即所謂的
"veldskool"。"他回憶說："那簡直就是準軍事化的'蠅王'。孩子們每人都有少量的食物和水，他們被允許，甚至被鼓勵爭奪這些食物和水。"他的弟弟金巴爾（Kimbal）說："欺負人被認為是一種美德。大孩子們很快就學會了打小傢伙們的臉，搶他們的東西。伊隆個子小，情緒不穩定，被打了兩次。最後他瘦了十磅。

Near
the end of the first week, the boys were divided into two groups and
told to attack each other. “It was so insane, mind-blowing,” Musk
recalls. Every few years, one of the kids would die. The counselors
would recount such stories as warnings. “Don’t be stupid like that dumb
fuck who died last year,” they would say. “Don’t be the weak dumb fuck.”

第一週快結束時，男孩們被分成兩組，讓他們互相攻擊。"馬斯克回憶說："這太瘋狂了，令人震驚。每隔幾年，就會有一個孩子死去。輔導員會講述這樣的故事作為警告。"不要像去年死掉的那個蠢貨一樣愚蠢，"他們會說。"別做軟弱的傻逼"

The second time Elon went to

,
he was about to turn sixteen. He had gotten much bigger, bursting up to
six feet with a bearlike frame, and had learned some judo. So

wasn’t so bad. “I realized by then that if someone bullied me, I could
punch them very hard in the nose, and then they wouldn’t bully me again.
They might beat the shit out of me, but if I had punched them hard in
the nose, they wouldn’t come after me again.”

埃隆第二次去維爾德斯庫爾時，馬上就要滿
16
歲了。他的個子長高了許多，一米八的個子，熊一樣的身材，還學會了一些柔道。所以維爾德斯庫爾也不是那麼糟糕。"那時我意識到，如果有人欺負我，我可以狠狠地揍他們的鼻子，然後他們就不會再欺負我了。他們可能會把我打得屁滾尿流
但如果我狠狠地打了他們的鼻子 他們就不會再來找我麻煩了"

South
Africa in the 1980s was a violent place, with machine-gun attacks and
knife killings common. Once, when Elon and Kimbal got off a train on
their way to an anti-apartheid music concert, they had to wade through a
pool of blood next to a dead person with a knife still sticking out of
his brain. For the rest of the evening, the blood on the soles of their
sneakers made a sticky sound against the pavement.

20
世紀 80
年代的南非是一個充滿暴力的地方，機關槍襲擊和持刀殺人事件屢見不鮮。有一次，埃隆和金巴爾在去參加反種族隔離音樂會的途中下了火車，他們不得不蹚過一灘血，旁邊是一個死人，刀子還插在他的腦門上。整個晚上，他們運動鞋鞋底上的血都粘在人行道上，發出
"粘粘 "的聲音。

The
Musk family kept German Shepherd dogs that were trained to attack
anyone running by the house. When he was six, Elon was racing down the
driveway and his favorite dog attacked him, taking a massive bite out of
his back. In the emergency room, when they were preparing to stitch him
up, he resisted being treated until he was promised that the dog would
not be punished. “You’re not going to kill him, are you?” Elon asked.
They swore that they wouldn’t. In recounting the story, Musk pauses and
stares vacantly for a very long time. “Then they damn well shot the dog
dead.”

馬斯克家飼養的德國牧羊犬受過訓練，會攻擊任何從房子旁邊跑過的人。六歲時，埃隆在車道上奔跑，他最喜歡的狗襲擊了他，在他的背上咬了一大口。在急診室，當醫生準備為他縫合傷口時，他一直拒絕接受治療，直到醫生向他保證不會懲罰那條狗。"你不會殺了它吧？埃隆問道。他們發誓說不會。在講述這個故事時，馬斯克停頓了很久，目光空洞。"然後他們就一槍打死了那條狗。"

His
most searing experiences came at school. For a long time, he was the
youngest and smallest student in his class. He had trouble picking up
social cues. Empathy did not come naturally, and he had neither the
desire nor the instinct to be ingratiating. As a result, he was
regularly picked on by bullies, who would come up and punch him in the
face. “If you have never been punched in the nose, you have no idea how
it affects you the rest of your life,” he says.

他最痛苦的經歷是在學校。在很長一段時間裡，他是班裡年齡最小、個子最小的學生。他很難接受社交暗示。他沒有天生的同理心，也沒有討好別人的慾望和本能。因此，他經常被惡霸欺負，他們會衝上來打他的臉。"他說："如果你從來沒有被人在鼻子上打過一拳，你就不知道這會對你的餘生產生怎樣的影響。

At
assembly one morning, a student who was horsing around with a gang of
friends bumped into him. Elon pushed him back. Words were exchanged. The
boy and his friends hunted Elon down at recess and found him eating a
sandwich. They came up from behind, kicked him in the head, and pushed
him down a set of concrete steps. “They sat on him and just kept beating
the shit out of him and kicking him in the head,” says Kimbal, who had
been sitting with him. “When they got finished, I couldn’t even
recognize his face. It was such a swollen ball of flesh that you could
barely see his eyes.” He was taken to the hospital and was out of school
for a week. Decades later, he was still getting corrective surgery to
try to fix the tissues inside his nose.

一天早上的集會上，一個學生和一幫朋友胡鬧，撞到了他。埃隆把他推了回去。雙方發生了口角。課間休息時，那名男生和他的朋友追趕埃隆，發現他正在吃三明治。他們從後面衝上來，踢他的頭，把他推下水泥臺階。"他們坐在他身上，不停地打他，踢他的頭，"和他坐在一起的金巴爾說。"他們打完後，我都認不出他的臉了。他的臉腫得像個肉球，你幾乎看不到他的眼睛。他被送往醫院，並休學一週。幾十年後，他仍在接受矯正手術，試圖修復鼻子裡的組織。

But
those scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his
father, Errol Musk, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist who to
this day bedevils Elon. After the school fight, Errol sided with the
kid who pummeled Elon’s face. “The boy had just lost his father to
suicide, and Elon had called him stupid,” Errol says. “Elon had this
tendency to call people stupid. How could I possibly blame that child?”

但與他父親埃羅爾-馬斯克（Errol

Musk）造成的情感傷疤相比，這些傷疤就顯得微不足道了，埃羅爾-馬斯克是一位工程師、流氓和魅力十足的幻想家，至今仍讓埃隆寢食難安。校園鬥毆之後，埃洛爾站在了打埃隆臉的孩子一邊。"埃洛爾說："那個男孩剛剛失去了自殺的父親，埃隆罵他愚蠢。"埃隆總是喜歡說別人笨。我怎麼可能責怪那個孩子呢？"

When
Elon finally came home from the hospital, his father berated him. “I
had to stand for an hour as he yelled at me and called me an idiot and
told me that I was just worthless,” Elon recalls. Kimbal, who had to
watch the tirade, says it was the worst memory of his life. “My father
just lost it, went ballistic, as he often did. He had zero compassion.”

當埃隆終於從醫院回到家時，他的父親對他大加斥責。"埃隆回憶說："他罵我是白痴，說我一文不值，我不得不站了一個小時。不得不眼睜睜看著父親咆哮的金巴爾說，這是他一生中最糟糕的記憶。"我父親就像他經常做的那樣，失去了理智，大發雷霆。他一點同情心都沒有。

Both
Elon and Kimbal, who no longer speak to their father, say his claim
that Elon provoked the attack is unhinged and that the perpetrator ended
up being sent to juvenile prison for it. They say their father is a
volatile fabulist, regularly spinning tales that are larded with
fantasies, sometimes calculated and at other times delusional. He has a
Jekyll-and-Hyde nature, they say. One minute he would be friendly, the
next he would launch into an hour or more of unrelenting abuse. He would
end every tirade by telling Elon how pathetic he was. Elon would just
have to stand there, not allowed to leave. “It was mental torture,” Elon
says, pausing for a long time and choking up slightly. “He sure knew
how to make anything terrible.”

埃隆和金巴爾都不再和父親說話，他們說父親聲稱是埃隆挑起的襲擊是不正常的，肇事者最後因此被送進了少年監獄。他們說，父親是個多變的胡言亂語者，經常編造一些充滿幻想的故事，有時是經過深思熟慮的，有時則是妄想。他們說，他有一種
"傑基爾和海德
"的天性。上一秒他還很友好，下一秒就會開始一個多小時的喋喋不休的謾罵。每次咆哮結束時，他都會告訴埃隆自己有多可悲。埃隆只能站在那裡，不準離開。"那是一種精神折磨，"埃隆說，停頓了很久，略帶哽咽。"他確實知道如何讓一切變得可怕。"

When
I call Errol, he talks to me for almost three hours and then follows up
regularly with calls and texts over the next two years. He is eager to
describe and send me photos of the nice things he provided to his kids,
at least during the periods when his engineering business was doing
well. At one point he drove a Rolls-Royce, built a wilderness lodge with
his boys, and got raw emeralds from a mine owner in Zambia, until that
business collapsed.

當我給埃羅爾打電話時，他和我談了將近三個小時，然後在接下來的兩年裡定期給我打電話和發簡訊。他熱衷於向我描述他給孩子們提供的好東西，並給我發照片，至少在他的工程生意做得不錯的時候是這樣。他曾一度開著勞斯萊斯，和他的孩子們一起建了一個野外小屋，還從尚比亞的一個礦主那裡買到了祖母綠原石，直到那家公司倒閉。

But he admits that he encouraged a physical and emotional toughness. “Their experiences with me would have made

quite tame,” he says, adding that violence was simply part of the
learning experience in South Africa. “Two held you down while another
pummeled your face with a log and so on. New boys were forced to fight
the school thug on their first day at a new school.” He proudly concedes
that he exercised “an extremely stern streetwise autocracy” with his
boys. Then he makes a point of adding, “Elon would later apply that same
stern autocracy to himself and others.”

但他承認，他鼓勵人們在身體和情感上保持堅韌。他說，"他們和我在一起的經歷會讓
veldskool
變得很溫順，"他補充說，暴力只是南非學習經歷的一部分。"兩個人按住你，另一個人用木頭打你的臉，以此類推。新來的男孩第一天到新學校，就被迫與學校的惡棍搏鬥。他自豪地承認，他對孩子們實行的是
"極其嚴厲的街頭專制"。然後，他還特意補充道："埃隆後來也會對自己和其他人實行同樣嚴厲的專制"。

“Someone
once said that every man is trying to live up to his father’s
expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes,” Barack Obama wrote
in his memoirs, “and I suppose that may explain my particular malady.”
In Elon Musk’s case, his father’s impact on his psyche would linger,
despite many attempts to banish him, both physically and
psychologically. Elon’s moods would cycle through light and dark,
intense and goofy, detached and emotional, with occasional plunges into
what those around him dreaded as “demon mode.” Unlike his father, he
would be caring with his kids, but in other ways, his behavior would
hint at a danger that needed to be constantly battled: the specter that,
as his mother put it, “he might become his father.” It’s one of the
most resonant tropes in mythology. To what extent does the epic quest of
the

hero require exorcising demons bequeathed by Darth Vader and wrestling with the dark side of the Force?

"有人曾說過，每個人都在努力不辜負父親的期望，或者彌補父親的過錯，"巴拉克-奧巴馬在回憶錄中寫道，"我想這或許可以解釋我的特殊弊病。"在埃隆-馬斯克的案例中，儘管他曾多次試圖從身體和心理上驅逐父親，但父親對他心靈的影響卻揮之不去。埃隆的情緒時明時暗、時緊張時呆滯、時疏離時情緒化，偶爾還會陷入周圍人所恐懼的

"惡魔模式"。與父親不同，他對孩子們關懷備至，但在其他方面，他的行為卻暗示著一種需要不斷與之鬥爭的危險：正如他母親所說，"他可能會變成他的父親"。這是神話中最能引起共鳴的套路之一。星球大戰》英雄的史詩式追求在多大程度上需要驅除達斯-維德遺留下來的惡魔，並與原力的黑暗面搏鬥？

“With
a childhood like his in South Africa, I think you have to shut yourself
down emotionally in some ways,” says his first wife Justine, the mother
of five of his surviving ten children. “If your father is always
calling you a moron and idiot, maybe the only response is to turn off
anything inside that would’ve opened up an emotional dimension that he
didn’t have tools to deal with.” This emotional shutoff valve could make
him callous, but it also made him a risk-seeking innovator. “He learned
to shut down fear,” she says. “If you turn off fear, then maybe you
have to turn off other things, like joy or empathy.”

"他的第一任妻子賈絲廷是他倖存的
10 個孩子中 5
個孩子的母親。"如果你的父親總是罵你低能和白痴，也許唯一的反應就是關閉內心的任何東西，因為這些東西會開啟他沒有工具處理的情感維度。這種情感關閉閥可能使他變得冷酷無情，但也使他成為一個尋求風險的創新者。"他學會了關閉恐懼，"她說。"如果你關閉了恐懼，那麼也許你就必須關閉其他東西，比如快樂或同理心"。

The
PTSD from his childhood also instilled in him an aversion to
contentment. “I just don’t think he knows how to savor success and smell
the flowers,” says Claire Boucher, the artist known as Grimes, who is
the mother of three of his other children. “I think he got conditioned
in childhood that life is pain.” Musk agrees. “Adversity shaped me,” he
says. “My pain threshold became very high.”

童年的創傷後應激障礙也給他灌輸了厭惡滿足的思想。克萊爾-布歇（Claire

Boucher）說："我只是覺得他不懂得如何品味成功，聞聞花香，"克萊爾-布歇是格蘭姆斯的藝術家，也是他另外三個孩子的母親。"我覺得他從小就被灌輸了生活就是痛苦的思想"。馬斯克也這麼認為。"逆境塑造了我，"他說。"我的痛苦閾值變得非常高"。

During
a particularly hellish period of his life in 2008, after the first
three launches of his SpaceX rockets exploded and Tesla was about to go
bankrupt, he would wake up thrashing and recount to Talulah Riley, who
became his second wife, the horrendous things his father had once said.
“I’d heard him use those phrases himself,” she says. “It had a profound
effect on how he operates.” When he recalled these memories, he would
zone out and seem to disappear behind his steel-colored eyes. “I think
he wasn’t conscious of how that still affected him, because he thought
of it as something in his childhood,” Riley says. “But he’s retained a
childlike, almost stunted side. Inside the man, he’s still there as a
child, a child standing in front of his dad.”

2008
年，在他的 SpaceX
火箭前三次發射爆炸、特斯拉即將破產的那段特別痛苦的日子裡，他會驚醒過來，向成為他第二任妻子的塔盧拉-萊利（Talulah
Riley）講述他父親曾經說過的可怕的話。"她說："我親耳聽他說過這些話。"這對他的工作方式產生了深遠的影響"。當他回憶起這些往事時，他就會昏迷過去，似乎消失在他那雙鋼色的眼睛後面。"萊利說："我想他並沒有意識到這對他還有什麼影響，因為他認為這是他童年的事情。"但他還保留著孩子氣，幾乎是發育不良的一面。在他的內心深處，他還是一個孩子，一個站在父親面前的孩子。

Out
of this cauldron, Musk developed an aura that made him seem, at times,
like an alien, as if his Mars mission were an aspiration to return home
and his desire to build humanoid robots were a quest for kinship. You’d
not be totally shocked if he ripped off his shirt and you discovered
that he had no navel and was not of this planet born. But his childhood
also made him all too human, a tough yet vulnerable boy who decided to
embark on epic quests.

在這口大鍋中，馬斯克形成了一種光環，使他有時看起來像個外星人，彷彿他的火星任務是一種回家的願望，而他製造人形機器人的願望是一種尋求親情的願望。如果他脫掉上衣，讓你發現他沒有肚臍，也不是這個星球上出生的人，你也不會感到完全震驚。但是，他的童年也讓他變得非常人性化，他是一個堅強而又脆弱的男孩，決定開始史詩般的探索。

He
developed a fervor that cloaked his goofiness, and a goofiness that
cloaked his fervor. Slightly uncomfortable in his own body, like a big
man who was never an athlete, he would walk with the stride of a
mission-driven bear and dance jigs that seemed taught by a robot. With
the conviction of a prophet, he would speak about the need to nurture
the flame of human consciousness, fathom the universe, and save our
planet. At first I thought this was mainly role-playing, the
team-boosting pep talks and podcast fantasies of a man-child who had
read

once too often. But the more I encountered it, the more I came to
believe that his sense of mission was part of what drove him. While
other entrepreneurs struggled to develop a worldview, he developed a
cosmic view.

他的狂熱掩蓋了他的傻氣，而傻氣又掩蓋了他的狂熱。他對自己的身體略感不適，就像一個從未當過運動員的大塊頭，走起路來像一隻肩負使命的熊，跳起似乎是機器人教的吉格舞。他會帶著先知的信念，講述培育人類意識之火、探索宇宙和拯救地球的必要性。起初，我以為這主要是角色扮演，是一個讀了太多遍《銀河系漫遊指南》的男孩子在播客上發表的鼓舞人心的演講和幻想。但我接觸得越多，就越相信他的使命感是推動他前進的動力之一。當其他企業家努力發展世界觀時，他卻發展了宇宙觀。

His
heritage and breeding, along with the hardwiring of his brain, made him
at times callous and impulsive. It also led to an exceedingly high
tolerance for risk. He could calculate it coldly and also embrace it
feverishly. “Elon wants risk for its own sake,” says Peter Thiel, who
became his partner in the early days of PayPal. “He seems to enjoy it,
indeed at times be addicted to it.”

他的血統和教養，再加上大腦的硬連線，使他有時冷酷無情、衝動易怒。這也導致他對風險的承受能力極強。他可以冷酷地計算風險，也可以狂熱地擁抱風險。"彼得-蒂爾（Peter Thiel）說："埃隆為了風險而風險。"他似乎樂在其中，有時甚至沉迷其中"。

He
became one of those people who feels most alive when a hurricane is
coming. “I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me,” Andrew
Jackson once said. Likewise with Musk. He developed a siege mentality
that included an attraction, sometimes a craving, for storm and drama,
both at work and in the romantic relationships he struggled and failed
to maintain. He thrived on crises, deadlines, and wild surges of work.
When he faced tortuous challenges, the strain would often keep him awake
at night and make him vomit. But it also energized him. “He is a drama
magnet,” says Kimbal. “That’s his compulsion, the theme of his life.”

當颶風來臨時，他就會成為那種感覺最有活力的人。"安德魯-傑克遜曾經說過："我為風暴而生，平靜不適合我。馬斯克也是如此。他形成了一種圍攻心態，包括對風暴和戲劇的吸引，有時甚至是渴望，無論是在工作中還是在他努力維持卻未能維持的戀愛關係中。他在危機、最後期限和狂飆突進的工作中茁壯成長。當他面對曲折的挑戰時，這種壓力常常讓他徹夜難眠，甚至嘔吐不止。但這也讓他精力充沛。"金巴爾說："他是一個戲劇磁鐵。"這是他的強迫症，也是他生活的主題"。

When I was reporting on Steve Jobs, his partner Steve Wozniak said that the big question to ask was

When I turned the question back to Woz at the end of my reporting, he
said that if he had run Apple, he would have been kinder. He would have
treated everyone there like family and not summarily fired people. Then
he paused and added, “But if I had run Apple, we may never have made the
Macintosh.” And thus the question about Elon Musk: Could he have been
more chill and still be the one launching us toward Mars and an
electric-vehicle future?

當我報道史蒂夫-喬布斯時，他的搭檔史蒂夫-沃茲尼亞克（Steve

Wozniak）說，最重要的問題是，他有必要這麼刻薄嗎？如此粗暴殘忍？如此戲劇化？報道結束後，當我把這個問題反問沃茲時，他說，如果由他來管理蘋果公司，他會更和藹可親。他會像對待家人一樣對待那裡的每一個人，而不是草率地解僱員工。然後他停頓了一下，補充說："但如果是我管理蘋果，我們可能永遠都不會生產
Macintosh。"這就是關於埃隆-馬斯克的問題：他是否可以更冷酷一些，然後仍然帶領我們駛向火星和電動汽車的未來？

At
the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX making thirty-one
successful rocket launches, Tesla selling close to a million cars, and
him becoming the richest man on Earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his
compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from
being in crisis mode,” he told me, “which it has been in for about
fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life.”

2022
年初，在這一年裡，SpaceX 成功發射了 31 枚火箭，特斯拉銷售了近 100
萬輛汽車，他也成為了地球上最富有的人，馬斯克沮喪地談到了他的煽風點火強迫症。他告訴我："我需要把心態從危機模式中轉移出來，""這種狀態已經持續了大約
14 年，也可以說是我生命中的大部分時間。"

It
was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he made the
pledge, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s
ultimate playground. That April, he snuck away to the Hawaiian house of
his mentor Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, accompanied by the actress
Natasha Bassett, an occasional girlfriend. He had been offered a board
seat at Twitter, but over the weekend he concluded that wasn’t enough.
It was in his nature to want total control. So he decided he would make a
hostile bid to buy the company outright. Then he flew to Vancouver to
meet Grimes. There he stayed up with her until 5 a.m. playing a new
war-and-empire-building game,

. Right after he finished, he pulled the trigger on his plan and went on Twitter. “I made an offer,” he announced.

這只是一句俏皮話，並非新年決心。就在他許下承諾的同時，他還在秘密購買
Twitter 的股票，這是世界上的終極遊樂場。那年四月，他悄悄來到甲骨文公司創始人拉里-埃裡森（Larry
Ellison）的夏威夷別墅，同行的還有他的偶遇女友、女演員娜塔莎-貝塞特（Natasha Bassett）。他獲得了 Twitter
董事會的席位，但在週末，他認為這還不夠。他的天性就是想要完全控制公司。於是，他決定出價惡意收購這家公司。然後，他飛到溫哥華去見格萊美斯。在那裡，他和她一起玩一款新的戰爭與帝國建設遊戲《Elden
Ring》，一直玩到凌晨 5 點。遊戲結束後，他立即扣動了計劃的扳機，並登上了 Twitter。"他宣佈："我開出了條件。

Over
the years, whenever he was in a dark place or felt threatened, it took
him back to the horrors of being bullied on the playground. Now he had
the chance to own the playground.

多年來，每當他陷入黑暗或感到威脅時，就會想起在操場上被人欺負的恐怖情景。現在，他有機會擁有操場。

媽媽是模特，父親是工程師，還是賊有錢的那種。可是，馬斯克的童年，在很多時候，卻像噩夢一般。因為性格非常與眾不同，在學校被老師特別對待，甚至被認為智商有問題；還老是被同學欺凌，被揍的爹媽都差點認不出來，關鍵自己的親爹腦回路也是十分奇特，竟然還責怪馬斯克被揍

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