We live in an extraordinary time when technology and genius are displayed daily. Seeing, understanding, and appreciating the incredible things occurring are essential. This has happened before in our nation’s history, but times were slower and seemed more civil. In the Revolutionary era, geniuses were appreciated and celebrated. Today, geniuses are often attacked by jealous politicians who lack the skill and talent to even approach what these people can accomplish. This rise in resentment seems to me to be a new phenomenon.
Benjamin Franklin
I have wondered if Americans appreciated Benjamin Franklin’s extraordinary genius during the Revolutionary War era. Understanding how important he was to our nation’s founding and the world takes a little study and recollection of our school years. Franklin was a polymath, for sure.
For many, Franklin is best known for signing the Declaration of Independence and guiding those assembled. He was one of the older participants and was already seen as a wise person whose counsel would have been advantageous. But Franklin’s influence reached far beyond the founding of the nation. He was admired in Europe and pivotal to American acceptance after the Revolutionary War.
I believe his experiments with lightning are on the same plane. Many pictures show him flying a kite in a thunderstorm and lightning jumping from an attached key. While the accuracy of the images may be fanciful, his insights into the understanding of electricity and lightning are not in question.
Franklin’s talents and accomplishments are undeniable; a little refresher helps after all these years. Franklin was a printer and is best remembered for his publication Poor Richard’s Almanack. However, Franklin also seized upon other profitable printing opportunities, producing the Pennsylvania Gazette and becoming the official printer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
His invention of the lightning rod was one of his most important. It changed the world by reducing fires from lightning strikes. Franklin was the first to understand that electricity involved a positive and negative charge. Typical of Franklin, he did not patent the lightning rod and considered it a contribution to mankind.
Franklin’s reach stretched to various projects, many of which originated with his friends in his Juno Club. His interests helped spark the Lending Library, the Union Fire Company, the Pennsylvania Voluntary Militia, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Hospital.
But with even more interest and curiosity, he helped map the Gulf Stream, correctly postulated the source of the Northern Lights, figured out that the common cold was spread from person to person, and connected the repeated handling of lead with health issues.
Franklin was also an inventor. When he was eleven, he built a set of swimming fins. He invented the glass armonica, the Franklin Stove, improvements to streetlights, the carriage-attached odometer, and, painfully, the flexible urinary catheter.
Franklin’s success outside of politics certainly opened political doors. This success also gave him the latitude to spend time on efforts that helped form our nation. He served in the Pennsylvania Assembly and was Pennsylvania’s agent in London. He served as the Postmaster General of Philadelphia and was then elevated to Postmaster General for America. He was a member of the Second Continental Congress, and his knowledge of the postal system helped set up our mail system.
Franklin’s involvement with the Declaration of Independence led to an accusation of treason. Franklin was also instrumental in our alliance with France, bolstering our world acceptance during the war. He was instrumental in negotiating a peace treaty with England as the war wore down. After the war, he returned to America and was elected to the Council of Pennsylvania, and then he served as a representative to the Constitutional Convention.
As a genius, Franklin had his quirky side. In his quest for improvement, he wrote out a list of thirteen virtues and worked to perfect his attainment of each. His list included temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility.
Franklin was a polymath, a genius, and had the accomplishments to prove it. He was also an autodidact in many aspects of his life, using his curiosity to propel his discoveries.
Elon Musk
If anyone says just Franklin, you know who they are referencing. Likewise, if you say either Elon or Musk, there is no confusion. There is only one Elon Musk, and his genius may be unique in the history of mankind. It is not that he can think big and dream big but that he can turn his dreams into reality.
Financially successful, innovative, ambitious, self-assured, and quirky are just a few adjectives we use to describe Elon Musk. Strangely, he is more American than most native-born citizens. Born in South Africa and now a citizen of South Africa, Canada, and the United States, he has indeed become a citizen of the world. At only fifty-three, his inventions are changing the world and will continue for decades.
Musk appreciates the opportunity America affords and works tirelessly to achieve personal, national, and world success. His passion for free speech and the purchase of Twitter (now X) may have saved Western civilization and our core values. His support for President Trump in the recent election has been met with some criticism, but that will be short-lived as his talents are brought to bear on the challenges we face as a nation.
Not long ago, Musk was primarily known for Tesla and his pioneering work with electric vehicles. Before founding Tesla, he created PayPal with other entrepreneurs, which became the de facto standard for electronic consumer payments worldwide. This success and the subsequent sale of PayPal gave him financial freedom to pursue other passions, and pursue them he did.
In 2015, he became one of the co-founders of OpenAI, the now famous AI software provider. However, he left OpenAI over disputes with open-source access to software and their change of mission. His interest in AI is deep, and it is showing up in autonomous vehicles and robotics. He now has xAI as a replacement for OpenAI. But he also founded Neuralink, a company focused on computer/brain interfaces to aid handicapped individuals.
Tesla is merely the starting point from which he went on to SpaceX, where he is now the leading rocketeer in the world. He has outperformed NASA, Boeing, Virgin, and others with less money and started from scratch. NASA even tried to block him from starting by lobbying Congress. Fortunately (for once), Congress made the right decision and allowed private space exploration. You know you arrived in the leading position when Boeing and NASA begged you to rescue astronauts from the International Space Station. The jaw-dropping images of SpaceX completing the complex job of landing their rocket boosters from “smaller” rockets have now been eclipsed by the successful “catch” of stage one of their largest rocket. All these feats were considered unattainable by NASA, and without Musk, reducing the cost of going to space would also be slower, and the future of space travel more distant. Musk wants to colonize Mars, and my bet is on him and his vision. The biggest impediments to this ambitious goal are the U.S. government, NASA jealousy, and red tape. But, as Musk recently noted, it has taken longer and been more difficult to get the paperwork through the government that it took to build the rocket to Mars.
Musk has used his rocket expertise to launch Starlink satellites. With his help, the world may soon have universal internet access without physical ground-based infrastructure. If this were not enough, underground, he has the Boring Company creating tunnels to improve transportation in major cities.
I believe he now has accepted his greatest challenge in his partnership with Vivek Ramaswamy and President Trump to form the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As President Trump painfully learned in his first term, the business world does not easily translate into the swamp where the goal is inefficiency, influence, and favoritism. I do not doubt that these two will find enormous buckets of waste and inefficiency and find ways to improve our government. I fear their efforts will hit an impenetrable wall of resistance. In government, a person’s worth is often measured by how much they spend, not how efficiently they perform. So, surrounding themselves with others who are dedicated to the elimination of waste and improvement is critical. If anyone can do it, they can!
As the world’s richest person, Musk could sit back and do nothing else and go down in history as the most successful genius of all time. Bloomberg News recently projected that Musk will become the world’s first trillionaire. He has earned it, and we live in a time when we can watch and appreciate his genius, not just read about it in history books. We all must look forward to the creativity, inventiveness, and execution of Musk’s dreams in the coming years.
Resources
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