I saw the National Geographic documentary, Everest – the other side. My struggles pale in comparison to almost nothing though going through it,it appears insurmountable. I think that is why I went to see Musk, the movie, because some of the world’s firsts such as the reusable rocket is indeed groundbreaking. Musk was inspiring in a negative way about the failings of human greed and lust combined with ambition.

In a stark contrast the mountaineer Hillary’s life in contrast was truly inspiring, a true fiery spirit of adventure pushing the bounds while being a mother of two children. The bonds between unrelated Homo sapiens who come together of their own volition and when that team spirit is tested as when the team decided to give up the attempt is the most beautiful part of teamwork.

How Hillary was the inspiration to her husband, after her death to keep trying, and him scattering her ashes from a vial on the summit, was reminiscent of the endurance, team work but most importantly the bonds that provide the inspiration.

I had the privilege during the AIDS era to be part of an effort that took five years of research in a lab led by an oncologist-virologist, Dr. Richard Gaynor. He wasn’t particularly liked by some people. Just while dropping me off at the airport after the job interview, he popped a question, do you believe we will beat Oxford, Cambridge and MIT in using the data he had shared during the interview to the Nobel Prize in using the HIV tat protein as a tool to understand transcription. I blurted out, I would love to, though I don’t know if I have the smarts, but to go after the evidence, yes.

When COVID happened a similar effort was launched by the US in building an RNA vaccine. That to me was a huge leap in science. 45 could easily have owned that discovery but his ego came in the way just like Musk’s because the true heroes of the reusable rocket were the Apollo engineers who just like the Everest team attempting from the North face of the summit shows how there is no work life balance possible if you believe in extending the frontiers of human knowledge and exploration. That term exploration when used by Musk is highly sullied because of ego and a lack of empathy and commitment to people in a real sense and not vacuous words.

In an exciting era of exploration with AI that truly holds vast potential as I can vouchsafe from my experience using the AI tools at work, we do indeed have greed and ego on a gigantic scale that I hope we surmount as a species because just to ponder upon what we know is sufficient when you take into account the story of human evolution and cosmology from a standpoint of science.  That is when all mythology, and mysticism at least to me pales beyond comparison.

These two movies offer a comparison between The fundamental contrast is between leadership that treats power as a means to serve people and leadership that treats people as instruments for maintaining power.