“As for humanity, we don’t want to be one of those lame, one-planet-civilizations. Any self-respecting civilization should have at least two planets.”
7. Do you believe in God?
Weidel followed the spaced-out riffing on the end of humanity with a classic deep-and-meaningful, end-of-the-night question. “Do you believe in God?” she asked.
“I’m open to believing in things that are proportionate to the information that I receive,” he replied, indicating he was “open to the idea” of God. “I try to form my opinions based on what I learn. And as I learn more, I aspire to change my views.”
Again, it wasn’t perhaps the profound poetry that Weidel’s question deserved. But she didn’t mind. “Yes, same here,” she said. “To be honest, I’m still on a search.”
8. Life, the universe and everything
Musk had more to say on the existentialist theme. “I’m curious about the nature of the universe. I would say I subscribe to the Douglas Adams School of Philosophy that was described in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.’ In that book, the Earth was sort of a giant computer that was trying to answer the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’ And that goes back with 42 and what does 42 mean?
“And actually the answer is the easy part, and the question is the hard part. That was actually quite an illuminating thing for me, because I had sort of an existential crisis when I was 12 or 13 about the meaning of life. I read the religious texts and the bookstore philosophy. I was reading Schopenhauer,” he said, “which is a bit depressing if you’re to read it as a child.”
9. War. What is it good for?
It wasn’t all froth and frivolity. Musk and Weidel also discussed the conflict in the Middle East and how the Ukraine war could escalate into nuclear Armageddon. “I want to have strong leaders in Germany,” she said. “This is also my hope in Donald Trump and in your administration that you end that terrible war [in Ukraine], this worthless dying of young people every day, as fast as you can, because the Europeans, they cannot.”
Musk reassured her: “I think President Trump is going to solve that conflict very quickly. As you point out, it’s now been in somewhat of a stalemate for a few years. And all that’s happened over the past few years is hundreds of thousands of people dying, but for no gains. And the longer this conflict goes on, the more Ukraine weakens relative to Russia. Ukraine is a much smaller country. It simply cannot afford the losses relative to Russia … the longer this drags on, the worse it is for Ukraine.”
