Elon Musk has never hidden his aversion to the new progressive ideologies.
He even made them his favorite fight, thus inviting himself into the culture war like never before.
Few CEOs have been so caught up in the conflict between traditional values and change. In recent years, a host of companies have spoken out on many hot topics, including racism, abortion, guns, and LGBTQ equality.
This involvement has often been dictated by their desire to respond to issues important to new generations of consumers, particularly Generation Z.
Two important points of the new progressive ideologies, ESG and pronouns, have been divisive and have been the subject of much rejection from conservatives for several months. Musk has emerged as the face of this counterattack. He believes that ESGs and pronouns are expressions of awakening that lead to cancel culture, that is, to intolerance and the dictatorship of thought.
‘A counter narrative’
ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance, while “pronouns” points to the gender identity debate. It means that people have to stop assuming that gender is binary and accept that everyone has the right to decide what they want to be called: he/his her/him, her/her/them/them/them.
“I’m not conventionally left or right, but I agree with your point,” Musk wrote on Twitter on November 25. “The virus of the awakened mind has fully penetrated entertainment and is pushing civilization towards suicide.”
“There has to be a counter narrative.”
Two days later he said that “ESG is the devil.”
To him, there is no doubt that these markers of progressive ideology are being pushed by young liberals. He recently commented on a 2019 video clip of former President Barack Obama criticizing the prevalence of “call culture” and “wake up” during an interview on youth activism at the Obama Foundation summit.
“I get a feeling sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, sometimes there’s this feeling of, ‘The way I make change is to be as judgmental of other people as possible,'” Obama said. . “‘And that’s enough.'”
“For example, if I tweet or post a hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb,” he continued, “then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, because, ‘Man, you see how I woke up was, I called you. ‘”.
Obama then pretended to sit down and press the remote control to turn on a television.
“That is not activism. That is not bringing about a change,” she said. “If all you’re doing is throwing rocks, you probably won’t get that far. That’s easy to do.”
Musk agrees: “Wise words from President Obama,” the billionaire commented on Dec. 14.
‘Young people are works in progress’
So it’s no surprise that the Tesla (TSLA) – Get a free report CEO has just indicated that it is better to ignore those under 30, at least what they say.
It all started with a thread launched by famed author and cartoonist Scott Adams, who advocates ignoring anything said by people under the age of 25 because they aren’t mature. Adams does not say what led him to this radical advice.
“I think a good standard for social behavior is to ignore everything a person said before the age of 25,” Adams wrote on Twitter on January 13. “Young people are works in progress. We usually get better.”
He then said “(I’m ignoring the details of the story that triggered this tweet)”.
Musk more than agrees, even offering to go further by suggesting simply ignoring anything people under 30 say.
Musk’s post drew plenty of comments from like-minded Twitter users. Some commentators believe that, along the same lines, it would be prudent to change the voting age from 18 to 30.
“Then let’s raise the voting age,” said creator Dennis Michael Lynch.
“Raise the voting age to 30,” joked one Twitter user.
But other users pointed out to Musk that he might not be here if we had ignored what he said or did when he was under 30.
“How different would your life be if people ignored you in your 20s and 30s?” asked a Twitter user.
“How did you feel when people ignored or dismissed what you said before the age of 30?” one user tweeted the billionaire.
