added, “But if I had run Apple, we may never have made the Macintosh.” And thus the question about Elon Musk: Could he have been more chill and still be the one launching us toward Mars and an electric-vehicle future?

The thesis seems to be that each advance, from the Pythagorean Theorem to Marxism to the atom bomb to the Boeing 747, came ultimately from one person’s desire to express their individuality. This claim—more believable in the case of an oil painting than in the invention of TNT—is, as we’ve seen, the kernel of the postwar concept of creativity itsel