Ciceronianism

Several years ago, I read a volume from the I Tatti Renaissance Library entitled Ciceronian Controversies (2007, ed Joann Dellaneva), and thought to myself, How odd! that 420 to 530 years ago in Italy, eminent authors of all genres believed that the only way to write Latin correctly was to imitate Cicero! I blogged about this absurd tendency, to treat a single author as if he, and he alone, were worthy of imitation among all of the authors of an entire language which is thousands of years old, and I moved on.

Imagine (if you CAN) how I feel now, having finally noticed (yes, clearly, I am not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, not the quickest to notice things) that Ciceronianism is alive and well today. Latinists, TODAY, may be arguing a point of Latin writing style or usage, and one of them can point out, "Cicero wrote it this way," and, very often, that will end the debate!

People still study Shakespeare in English classes, and I have nothing at all against that. But does anyone, anywhere, teach English as if Shakespeare were the ONLY English-language author worthy of imitation? If someone does, would it even be necessary for me to enumerate the drawbacks of such an approach?

Well, such an approach is taken -- TODAY. AMONG US -- in the study and teaching of the Latin language. How often? I do not know. Oftener than not? I do not know.

I know only that, now that I have finally noticed that Ciceronianism outlived the Renaissance, I can not ignore it. I can not prevent myself wondering about such things as: is it actually unusual, for someone who has devoted their professional life to the study of Latin, that they might read no Latin at all other than Latin written by Cicero for an entire day? A week? A month? A LIFETIME?

Is it unusual for a Latinist to judge a piece of Latin writing, whether written in the 21st, the 16th or the 1st century AD, by the single criterion of how much it resembles what Cicero wrote?

Is it unusual for a Latinist to assume that everything Cicero wrote was above reproach from a linguistic-stylistic point of view?

And how exactly would those percentages change if, the preceeding three paragraphs, "Cicero" were changed to "Cicero and Vergil"?

Whatever the points of view of Latinists on these and other matters, I don't imagine that I will change their minds. I do drastically over-estimate my abilities much of the time, but I don't over-estimate them THAT much. The best I can hope for is to gain a bit more clarity about those who share my enthusiasm for the Latin language. And of course, not ALL of those people are Ciceronianists, or even Cicero-and-Vergilianists. See for example the Ad Lectorum before the novel Capti by Stephen Berard, who, it is entirely clear to me now, will be judged less than an eminent Latinist by the Cicero-and-Vergilianists, but who is appreciated by some others. And there's no need for anybody to fight over anything here. It's just that there is one more thing to debate, about which, I had mistakenly assumed, people had long since ceased to debate. Excelsior. (Yeah, it's also been very recently that I finally figured out that "Excelsior!" had become a common expression because of Stan Lee, and not because of contemporary Latinists in general. Be that as it may, it's still perfectly good Latin.)

I've Changed My Mind About the Tesla Truck

Two days ago, after seeing it for the first time, I blogged about the Tesla pickup truck, calling it an unmitigated disaster. And now I'm back to tell you two things: 1) I have a very different opinion of the truck now; and 2) a lot of other people have experience something similar: shock at first seeing the truck, and then a very quick change of mind as we keep looking at it.

Let me put this in very plain terms: my first reaction to Tesla's pickup truck was wrong. And I have much less excuse for it than do many other people, because I've studied a bit of art history, and anyone who's studied art history can tell you that, over and over, works of Western art, paintings, mostly, have gotten severely negative reactions when they are first shown, and then gone on to be widely loved and regarded as masterpieces. I've learned not to make a snap judgement if I see a painting and hate it at first. I should have been able to apply this to my reaction to the Tesla pickup, a reaction which, as I admitted in the previous post, was entirely based on its looks. I have less excuse for this than many other people commenting who have never studied art history.

And of course, trucks are not entirely about looks. They are -- theoretically, at least, and in many cases actually -- made for work, and when it comes to horsepower, torque, load capacity, towing capacity and other truck stuff, the Tesla pickup puts up very impressive numbers. Also, of course, it will be much cheaper to maintain and fuel than an internal-combustion-engine truck.

And the people who actually work with trucks, as opposed to driving them as big obnoxious status symbols, pay close attention to such numbers. Because it's work. It's business. It's about the numbers. And looking at the numbers may already have induced quite a number of people look at the Tesla pickup differently, literally and figuratively.

To go back to literally looking at it: I think that the launch may have been unfortunate for more than just the shattered windows. The way that Elon Musk stood in front of it on stage, the angle at which Elon and the truck are shown in most photos and videos, makes the truck look smaller, and above all lower, than it actually is. In those photos, the truck is reminding people of the El Camino, which is not a good association unless you're going for laughs. The El Camino is a 70's-style American sedan with a small truck bed where the back seats and trunk should be, and about the same ground clearance as most other sedans, whereas the Tesla pickup is a big truck with front and back seats and a lot of ground clearance.

So, would I buy one? No. I think it's a good truck, maybe so good that it will be game-changing. If so, it wouldn't be Tesla's first game-changing vehicle. So why won't I buy one? Well, for one thing, I don't need a truck, and unlike many other people who don't need trucks, I'm not going to to buy one. There's also the fact that I'm broke.

But also, it's a Tesla. Teslas are great vehicles, but Tesla is a terrible company. Elon Musk poses as an unworldly geek who just wants to help the world, while ripping off Tesla to the tune of billions of dollars per year. That means that if I bought a Tesla, several thousand dollars' worth of the purchase price would be going straight into Musk's pocket. Meanwhile, everyone except Musk who works at Tesla is underpaid. Anyone who even talks about unions vanishes. Working conditions are nightmarish, "layoffs" are frequent. Musk lies about prices. Musk says the truck will start at $39,900. He also said that the Tesla model 3 would start at $35,000. No-one has ever bought a $35,000 Model 3, and if anyone thinks they're going to get a Tesla pickup for $40,000, their stupidity angers and saddens me. Tesla still won't share their Superchargers with any other electric vehicles. Tesla doesn't sell Tesla parts, or authorize very many people at all to make Tesla repairs. Tesla customer service is a nightmare. And all of the above makes it a more shameless lie when Musk says he's just a selfless friend of humanity.

I might consider buying a Tesla someday if Tesla got rid of Musk and fixed all of those problems. Not before. But there's no denying that Tesla's vehicles are outstanding.

The Tesla Truck is Here, And it's an Unmitigated Disaster

This is really what it looks like:

I stayed up a little bit past my bedtime last night to watch the official launch of this ugly thing at the LA Auto Show, and the reactions on various YouTube channels devoted to EV's, and far and away the most frequent reaction was: "OMG it's so ugly." Even on the channel Now You Know, haven of far-gone Tesla zombies, the top comments this morning are all negative. YouTubers who literally build their own electric vehicles couldn't talk about anything except how ugly it is. I've never knowingly seen an adult man who has just pooped his pants, but after the reveal, Elon Musk, and Zac and Jesse, hosts of Now You Know, all looked as if they had pooped their pants: very embarrassed, physically ill, and trying very hard to smile, but not quite being able to do it.

Two of the officially shatter-proof windows on the truck at the LA Auto Show shattered when they were hit with a sledgehammer to show how shatterproof they are, and yet, no-one talked about that, except as a metaphor for someone's career having been shattered: "Who will be fired?" they asked. And if someone is fired, it won't be because the windows shattered. It will be because this thing is so goddamned ugly.

Maybe we once thought that pickup truck buyers didn't care about looks, and just wanted a truck that would haul. We now know that that isn't true. Looks matter, for pickup trucks too. And this is very, very bad news for Tesla.

There were the usual Tesla fans -- for some reason, they're often referred to as fanboys. They're also often referred to as zombies, but the reason for that is perfectly clear to me -- yelling "Alright! Yeah, Woooooooo!" and "Okay, Elon!" and so forth, at last night's reveal. But last night, there was also a lot more laughter. And it didn't sound like friendly laughter. I think that the model reveals up until now were overwhelmingly attended by the zombies. But the Model 3 is selling several times as fast as any previous Tesla, and it has changed things. Tesla is getting much more mainstream attention now. I think this was the first really public Tesla model unveiling, and oh my God did it go badly.

I haven't talked about how this thing actually functions as a truck. That's because I don't know any of its specs, and I don't know anything about trucks, so its specs wouldn't tell me anything anyway. There are plenty of other people who can tell you all about that. The usual car and truck guys. But, as I mentioned above, last night those guys weren't talking about anything else except how ugly this truck is. It might be the best pickup truck ever made, from the perspectives of performance, reliability, maintenance costs and so forth. But that wouldn't matter as much as how ugly it is. One of those guys who literally builds his own electric vehicles said last night, "That's it, I'm buying a Rivian." Rivian is another manufacturer who will be offering an electric pickup truck for sale soon. And they've been showing pictures of the truck all along, and letting journalists look up-close at the prototypes. (It looks pretty much like a pickup truck. Completely different than this monstrosity from Tesla.)

Tesla didn't do that. They allow a normal amount of glimpses into their upcoming models, usually, but with this pickup, they were completely secretive. It was very unusual. Musk kept saying that it was not going to look like any pickup anyone had ever seen. Turns out he was actually telling the truth for once. I figured that it would be a sort of mild let-down when we finally saw it. I figured people would say, Hm, yeah, it looks like a pickup.

But it doesn't look like a pickup. And not in a good way.

If some Tesla zombies read this post, they will call it a hit piece. But it's not. Musk hit himself right in the face last night. All I'm doing is reporting about it.

Dream Log: Hollywood Freeze-Out Over Papyri Scandal

In real life, there is a major scandal in the world of papyrology: Dirk Obbink,

formerly the head of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project, which is far and away the world's largest collection of ancient papyri, is accused of having stolen some of the Project's papyri and having sold them to the Green Collection, a Christian non-profit organization which runs a museum dedicated to the Bible.

This is really horrible. I hope Obbink proves to be innocent. Stealing and selling ancient artifacts in his care is just about the worst thing a papyrologist can be imagined to have done. Criminal charges have not yet been brought against Obbink, but -- well, it looks really bad. The only possibilities I can imagine are either that Obbink is guilty, or that he has been very skillfully framed. His claim is that he's being framed. We'll see.

I dreamed last night that there was a suspected link between Hollywood and the Obbink scandal. In real life, I am aware of no such suspicion. In my dream, I was selected to serve as a liason between papyrologists and Hollywood during this difficult time, presumably because I know a few words of Latin and have acted in some plays at the community-theatre level and lower.

I dreamed that I was at a Hollywood fundraiser, in order to reach out and establish trust with some Hollywood big-shots, and that my mission wasn't going well. People in Hollywood were very nervous about the scandal, nobody knew me, and nobody trusted me. Antonio Banderas was staying right at my elbow. Apparently he had been given the assignment of keeping an eye on me. His hair was shoulder-length, he was wearing a tuxedo with a white jacket, and he was not overflowing with affection toward me: not smiling, not talking more than he had to, just staying close, as if he were guarding me in a basketball game.

Then all of a sudden he noticed a counter where they were giving out... well, it seemed to be some sort of confection which doesn't exist in real life, as far as I know. It was halfway between a cinnamon roll and a cookie. Ooh, Antonio wanted one of those. One or maybe even two. I darted over to the counter, came back with two lusciously-glazed cookies and gave one to Antonio. He finished it quickly, and I gave him the other one. This definitely cheered him up, but did not make him friendlier.

Then I noticed that the back of his white jacket had been drawn on with a felt-tipped pen or magic marker. Some sort of goofy parody of tailor's markings, with great big dotted lines. I couldn't imagine that Antonio would be happy about this. I could easily imagine that he would blame it on me.

If this weren't enough, Antonio informed me that Salma Hayek was about to arrive, and that she had some sort of official message for me. This made me more nervous than the magic marker on Antonio's otherwise-immaculate white jacket. I was afraid that Salma would find me unattractive. Especially when I was standing so close to Antonio. I wished that I had some time, a few months, to work out really hard and diet very strenuously, before meeting Ms Hayek for the very first time.

But Salma never showed, and after a while Antonio went away.

The benefit was being held in a brand-new multiplex cinema which was interchangeably ugly with every other brand new ugly multiplex cinema anywhere in the world. The entire dream was inside the multiplex, and there was no way to tell whether we were in LA, New York, Duluth, London, maybe Dubai, or somewhere else. I'd heard jet-setters complain about how every new airport in the world looked like every other new airport. It occurred to me that not only did all new multiplex cinemas look the same -- they all kind of looked like airports.

Movies were showing on all the screens throughout the event, with the lights on in the screening rooms, and with no walls between the screens. You could see several screens at once. I assumed they were going to put the walls in before the thing officially opened, but I didn't know. On one of the screens was one of the big-budget animated movies, of which there have been so many in the past couple of decades that for me they have all became a blur. I thought I heard George Clooney's voice coming from that screen, playing a squirrel or a rabbit or something. I happened to turn around at that moment and see George Clooney himself striding down an aisle, all grey: grey hair, grey tux, grey shoes and socks, looking like a gosh-darn movie star. "Hey George, you in this one?" I shouted, waving my head at the screen behind me. George smiled tensely, recognizing me, said, "I think so," and kept moving.

I sat down and tried for a couple of minutes to involve myself in the animated movie, until I noticed a couple of guys sitting behind me who looked like goons. They weren't wearing tuxes, they weren't even wearing suits. One of them had biceps as big as footballs coming out of the sleeves of his black T-shirt. And they sounded like goons, too. Given the general air of hostility toward me at the place, instead of waiting to see whether these particular goons were going to come after me, I went for a walk, looking behind me all the time.

Back out in the lobby, a short guy in an orange suit had three guys spread-eagled against a wall and was frisking them. I asked him to show me his ID. He didn't look like a cop to me. Maybe that's just because I'm old, and there used to be more requirements for cops to be tall. But the guy didn't show me any ID. And I was frustrated, what with huge movie stars icing me, and goons and whatnot. So I wrestled the guy to the ground and searched him, found no badge, no gun, no cuffs, no law-enforcement ID of any kind, nothing. I told the three guys spreadeagled on the wall that I was pretty sure they were free to go.

The short guy in the orange suit kept laughing at me the whole time, a creepy heh-heh, heh-heh laugh.

I was going to leave the building and go for a walk, but I woke up instead.

Classical Latin Literature Which is (Currently) Lost

When we see an iceberg in the ocean, we know that about 9/10 of it is underwater. When we look at the remains of Classical Latin literature, we don't know how much of it there once was.

In the case of individual literary works we very often do not know whether what we have today is the entire work, or almost all of it, or a small fragment of it or what have you. We have some ancient descriptions of the length and scope of certain literary works, but such helpful descriptions are rare. It's more common that we have the work itself, and must decide whether it seems to us to be a finished work. If it seems unfinished, does that mean that the author never finished it, or that a page or more is missing from the copies we have?

One more thing to think about: did Latin authors 1800 or 2000 years ago have ideas about what constituted a finished literary work which were similar to the ideas we have today?

Sometimes the existing manuscripts have big holes in them, or are nothing but tiny scraps, and so leave no doubt that something is missing. But how much is missing? That is very often a difficult question.

Is the author correctly identified? In many cases scholars have concluded that works are misattributed. In further cases, passages from an ancient work are quoted in an ancient or Medieval collection. Sometimes they are extremely helpful missing pieces from an author's work. In other cases, they are falsely attributed. Yes, it'd be wonderful if that was a passage written by Trogus, but...

Trogus was a Roman historian who lived in the 1st century BC and wrote a history of the Macedonian Empire, founded by Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. Ancient writers praised Trogus' history very highly. All we have of that history today is a condensed version, referred to as an epitome, written by a certain Justinus some time around the 3rd century AD.

Scholars today painfully feel the lack of Trogus, but still, we have that epitome by Justinus. In the case of many other ancient Latin writer who were highly praised by their peers, all we have today is that praise.

And how many more may have been praised in pieces of text which have disappeared? That sort of question is somewhere between extremely difficult and entirely impossibly to answer accurately.

The problem of that ignorance is compounded by other things we don't know, such as our ignorance of how exactly these texts we'd so very much like to have, vanished. In trying to explain a certain disappearance, we face the hazard of assuming that we know things which we do not know. Let's take the example of Tibullus, Propertius and Statius. Tibullus and Propertius were Latin poets who lived in the first century BC. They are both very highly esteemed today, sometimes so highly that they are spoken of as among the handful of the very greatest ever to write in Latin. And only a few dozen pages of each of their work has survived, from so few manuscripts that their work very nearly did not survive at all. Statius, on the other hand, a Latin poet of the 1st century AD whose works are not nearly so highly-esteemed, has works surviving today in many hundreds of manuscripts, which together are many times the length of the surviving works of Tibullus and Propertius together.

A scholar today may look at how many manuscripts of Statius we have, and how few of Propertius and Tibullus, and conclude that this shows have great a role chance plays in the survival of ancient literature. But, never mind the lukewarm readership of Statius today, many Medieval texts survive which praise him very highly indeed. It may seem strange to us, but in the Middle Ages Statius may have had a much higher literary reputation than either Propertius or Tibullus.

My point is that literary tastes, opinions about which writer is better than which, sometimes change enormously from one era to another. We must guard against imposing our own opinions upon people of another time, for this may cloud our understanding of what went on in that other time.

And my point in this essay has been merely to point out a few of the factors which make it difficult for us to know how much Classical Latin literature is currently lost, and why, and therefore to urge caution, if one is ever tempted to estimate the amount of this literature which once existed.

Dream Log: NYC: Bridges and Staircases; plus, Jessica Lange

I dreamed yet again last night that I was in New York City. This was one of the dreams featuring an unrealistic New York City. The city I dreamed about last night was even bigger, in its buildings and bridges, and even more bustling in its streets and sidewalks, than the real city.

I was in very good physical shape: I was living in the Bronx, and very often walked to Lower Manhattan. It was winter, and I just zoomed along over the snowy sidewalks.

Some of the unrealistic nature of the dream was that certain landmarks were in different places. For example, the Brooklyn Bridge was in the Bronx, and it was very different from the real Brooklyn Bridge. Much bigger, much broader. To start my walk from home in the Bronx to downtown Manhattan, I had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on a pedestrian walkway made of see-through iron mesh which crossed the bridge over the motor traffic. This walkway was four long city blocks long, because the bridge was four long city blocks wide.

Harvard University was in downtown Manhattan in the dream, instead of across the Charles River from downtown Boston, as it is in real life. After walking downtown from the Bronx, I liked to enter a certain Harvard building and walk all the way down a long ground-floor hall to the back of the building, where there was a huge marble staircase which went all the way to the top floor. There were six stories in this building, and each one was enormously high. The ceilings were thirty feet high on each floor. On each floor, bookcases lined the walls, going up to the ceilings, with huge rolling ladders affixed to the cases for access to the higher shelves.

This version of New York City was so huge and so complex that many versions of it were superimposed upon each other; as the dream went on, it became more and more clear that the many-universes theory of physics was partially manifesting itself in human perception there.

It was different times at the same time that it was 2019. I seemed to be younger, and much more physically vigorous, than I really am, although, at the same time, I was my real age, 58. I seemed much more like 19 or 20, in my physical appearance and condition. I was dating Jessica Lange. Although it was 2019, and New York City, and Jessica Lange was there, she was also back in the 1970's, and was also out of the city, filming the Pacific-island scenes of the version of King Kong which was released in 1976. And although it was 2019, Jessica Lange looked like she did in the 1970's.

Also, as a part of the many-universes manifestation, at the same time that King Kong was being filmed elsewhere, and Jessica Lange was both elsewhere and in NYC at the same time, the movie was also being filmed with several other actresses in Lang's role.

Also as a part of the many-universes thing, Jessica Lange and I both were and were not in a relationship. We were in a relationship in one dimension, but in other dimensions she was seeing other people. I was bothered by her other relationships, and I said so. Jessica said that I was being ridiculous, because those other relationships of hers were occurring in entirely different universes, so she wasn't even being promiscuous. She was monogamous with me, because I was the only one she was seeing in this dimension. Jessica pointed out that I could see as many other people in other dimensions as I wanted to, and that wouldn't mean that I was being promiscuous. She said the words "promiscuous" and "monogamous" with a certain mocking pronunciation. It was clear that, even if she had been seeing someone else in the same dimension or universe where she was seeing me, she wouldn't like it at all that I was so jealous and possessive.

Intellectually, I not only understood her position but agreed with it, and also agreed that jealousy is an ugly, un-constructive thing. Emotionally, however, I was still very upset. Moreover, even though it was separate dimensions, separate universes, I could still see everything she was doing with the other guys, just as clearly as if it were happening right in front of me in the same dimension.

Although Jessica and I were disagreeing about certain implications of philosophy and physics, at the same time, it was just another relationship which was difficult because the two people wanted different things from it. We went for long, long walks through the wintry, snowy city, holding hands and not saying much, both of us upset because we wanted to keep seeing each other, but we didn't know how to fix the problems we were having.

For some unexplained reason, Jessica and I both had full access to all of the employees' areas of the New York City Transit Authority. (This seems somewhat ironic to me now that I'm awake, because she and I walked a lot where other people would take a bus or train.) In the middle of a long walk, we went into a subway employees' office to warm up. We helped ourselves to coffee and put our feet up on desks. The employees greeted us in a very friendly fashion and made small talk with us. I whispered to Jessica that maybe my main problem was that she was so beautiful that it was literally driving me insane. Then we both started laughing and crying at the same time. Transit employees saw this and closed in on us with Kleenexes and hugs and kind words, and soon we got a grip on ourselves.

There was a brass box slightly larger than a matchbox, which was traveling back and forth between dimensions. Despite the many dimensions, there was only one of these boxes, and it always stayed the same. At the moment, I was holding it in my hands. It contained a very long, thin brass chain with a clip on the end, from which you might hang keys. All of a sudden, it occurred to me that, because there was only one of these boxes in all dimensions, it might be able to teach me something about multiple dimensions which Jessica and most other people already understood. I suddenly felt very happy. I gave Jessica a big hug. It was one of those winter hugs which are well-padded by many layers of winter clothes. Then I woke up.

Renaissances

In Classical Studies, in Western Europe, there has been a 9th-century Renaissance, the Carolingian Renaissance supported with the enormous power and purse of Charlemagne;

a 12th-century Renaissance featuring John of Salisbury, William of Malmesbury, and great bursts of Classicism in cathedral schools in Chartres and Orleans and elsewhere, and a sudden great rise in interest in Ovid, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Seneca, and Cicero;

the Italian Renaissance we've all heard about, which occurred mostly in Italy, from the 13th through the 15th century, with Dante, Petrarch, Bocacccio, Salutati, Bruni, Biondo,

Poliziano, Ficino, Valla, Pico della Mirandola and so many others;

the 19th century Renaissance featuring British and German universities, and the beginnings of the Classical series from publisher such as Oxford and Teubner;

and perhaps eventually people will look back to our time, to things such as the Living Latin movement, and speak of a 21st-century Renaissance.

The number of Renaissances seems to keep increasing. And I'm sure I've left some out -- should I have mentioned an Insular Renaissance in Ireland and England in the 7th century, or earlier? Wow, I haven't even mentioned the 16th century yet, and Erasmus! They're beginning to crowd together so tightly that there's barely any time left between them. Which would mean that...

Perhaps something which has been reborn so many times hasn't ever actually died. Perhaps Classical Latin and interest in ancient Rome have been pronounced dead many times over the centuries, and this isn't remembered so often today because of the natural tendency to select the best literature and most sensible statements from every era, and forget the everyday pronouncements, however persistent the latter may have been. And so we look back upon the best Classical scholars in every era, and tend to forget about those who insisted that there were no such.

How many more Renaissances will there be?

Elon Musk and Publicity and Money

Recently, Elon Musk donated $1 million dollars to a charity which plants trees, and claims that 1 tree will be planted for every dollar people donate. So, that's good. That's a million trees, assuming that the charity's claims are correct, and I haven't seen any claims to the contrary. The donation has gotten a lot of publicity, and hopefully will lead to many other similar donations, large and small.

Musk probably made the donation because he needed some good publicity, badly -- but still, those million plantings are a very good thing. The example, and the challenge to others to follow the example, are good. Afforestation and reforestation are important parts of repairing Earth's climate and saving our own lives.

And it's especially remarkable that Musk would donate $1 million, given that he is earning no money whatsoever.

No, I didn't really mean that last part. Me saying that Musk is earning no money, that's sarcasm. It's also the claim which Musk is making in his defense in the lawsuit being brought against him by the guy who rescued a youth soccer team from an underwater cave in 2018, and Musk was rushing to the scene to be a part of the rescue with a submarine he'd built, and the young soccer players were rescued before Musk's submarine got there, and Musk reacted to that by calling the rescuer a pedophile.

Musk really needs good publicity from things like the $1 million for trees, because of the bad publicity from things like the whole rescue incident, which make it look like appearing to be a hero is more important to Musk than being one, and that it is extremely difficult for him to share credit with others.

It also seems perfectly obvious to me that it is extremely hard for Musk to share money with others. How can I say that about someone who just gave $1 million to a good cause? I can say it because it seems to me that Musk was just buying goodwill with that $1 million, and buying it pretty cheaply. For a guy who receives $2 billion a year, $1 million is 1/40 of a week's pay. For a new employee at Tesla, who receives $16 an hour, 1/40 of one week's pay would be $16. Which would be a nice contribution to a good cause, but not really astonishingly generous.

Musk was given Tesla stock options worth over $2 billion dollars in 2018. That's what Tesla's own SEC proxy statement says. That statement also says that the $2 billion worth of options are part of Musk's compensation for 2018. I have to admit, I got very tired before I found out what other parts there were, but if anyone wants to look: it's called a proxy statement, filed by Tesla with the SEC.

So, it's good that Musk gave $1 million to that charity. It's also good that Telsa makes EV's, and has sold so many of them.

But the very widespread opinion that the emerging success of the EV industry is due above all to Musk, I think that opinion is mistaken. I disagree. I think we don't know, can't know, what Tesla would have done by now if Musk hadn't taken the company over from its original founders, forced them out, and then won a lawsuit giving him the legal right to refer to himself as the founder of the company. I don't think we know, I don't think we can know, how well other EV manufacturers, and other EV models made by traditional automakers, would have been doing by now, if Musk had never gotten into the automotive industry.

I don't think we can know how well Tesla would be doing if those billions of dollars per year which have been going into Musk's compensation, had instead been going into higher wages for Tesla employees, and lower prices for Tesla automobiles, power-storage systems, solar panels and solar roof tiles and other Tesla products, and so forth.

I certainly don't think that we can know how different the world would be today, it the CEO of the world's largest manufacturer of EV's were actually a nice guy, instead of a ruthless narcissist multi-billionaire who has hit on pretending to be a nice guy as a successful business model.

I don't think anyone can know for sure how much of the technical excellence of Tesla's car is directly attributable to Musk. I'm completely certain that he gets way too much credit for it. (Quick, name 5 other people who've been involved in designing Teslas! Name them right now! No googling allowed!)

Now, being a fan of electric vehicles, and being concerned about the Earth's climate, doesn't necessarily mean that you're blind. There are many intelligent EV enthusiasts who are familiar with his methods of finance and self-promotion. Still, they maintain they the EV "community" owes Musk a lot. I don't think anybody owes this guy, who already has over $20 billion, anything. I don't see exactly how life has been unfair to him. I think that Tesla, and the EV industry in general, would be much better off if it and Musk went their separate ways. Even if that meant a multi-billion-dollar golden parachute for Musk. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm literally the only member of the EV "community" who feels this way. I'm certainly not the only person on Earth who does.