Not even Elon Musk can escape the great democracy of death

For all his trillions and SpaceX toys under development, Elon cannot escape the gravitational pull of mortality or the feeling of dread that fills the soul when contemplating the cold mechanics of the universe.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk speaks during the election campaign launch rally of the far-right Alternative for Germany via a video transmission. Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The Zen riddles known as koans are designed to exercise, if not madden, the mind. The most famous invites us to imagine the sound of one hand clapping. But this Pythonesque puzzle is bested by the koan proclaiming that “the test of a great truth is that the opposite is also true”. Let us test that via the Western maxim that life is short – an adage that seems a tragically accurate piece of accountancy.

And yet, and yet. Let’s double-check the figures and the stats on mortality. Come July, my dear friend John Winston Howard and I, born just days apart in 1939, will turn 86. Should we make the distance, we’ll have lived over 1000 months. Or nearly 4500 weeks. So, while life is short, it’s looking like the opposite is also true.

Out with the mental abacus to tote up the total number of days … click, click, clack. 31,390. More than enough to watch an awful lot of awful television. Speaking of TV: arriving in Australia in 1956, the year of the Melbourne Olympics, telly finally went polychromatic in October 1974, allowing us to watch Gough’s R-rated Dismissal in full colour 13 months later. I know I speak for Honest John and myself on this issue, among very few others, in saying we’ve lived so long we remember when the entire world was in black and white. This included the Second World War, which began the year we were born. All future conflicts would be in full colour – up to the ongoing horrors of Gaza and Ukraine, and the imminent Third World War.

(John and I will, as usual, blend our birthday parties to the extent of a shared cake with 172 candles, only to be lit if fire regulations permit)

According to the Good Book, the biblical allotment is three-score-years-plus-ten, except for an old bloke who notched up 900 years. Very few of the 117 billion humans who’ve ever lived have made the distance, with those exceeding the speed limit on borrowed time.

In our case – John’s and Phillip’s – we’ll have lived through 45 million minutes, and wasted a third of them asleep. But think of it this way: not even Elon Musk, for all his trillions and SpaceX toys under development to send him to Mars, can escape the gravitational pull of mortality, the great democracy of death. Even if Elon were to “do the ton”, he would only have lived for 1200 months and 36,500 days. Bankruptcy beckons.

But let’s get back to Zen and imagine the sound of one hand clapping. Life is short, yet at the same time, life is long. Before dementia wipes your blackboard, there’s time to sift through a lifetime of memories. The faces, places, events. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. The sad, the funny. And let this octogenarian atheist borrow a favourite word from theology: the numinous. The feeling of awe and dread that fills the soul when contemplating the cold mechanics of the universe. Dunno about you, but I wouldn’t have missed it for quids. Not even for Musk’s billions.

It’s been the best of times, the worst of times. Wars, GFCs, HIV, pandemics, the miracles of medicine, the double-edged sword of “connectivity”. The threat and promise of AI.

Hear that strange sound? You need to listen very carefully. It’s the wildest applause.

The sound of one hand clapping.