From claiming aliens built the pyramids, to lamenting that the government is taking people’s freedom away, to forewarning layoffs, to doing his best to help the underpopulation crisis, to buying Twitter and then pulling out of it, Elon Musk continues to surprise and unsettle business watchers. The prototypical 21st century tycoon at the intersection of tech, social media capital and wealth, Musk sounds equally erratic and rational.

A dig at corporate traditionalists, his statements — which often seem carved out of a Hollywood sci-fi story — wink at those who seek a break from the past. Yet, despite its originality, Musk’s approach not only reinforces the old business culture but also risks succumbing to it.

Breaking Away From The Ordinary

In many ways, Elon Musk’s histrionic style is a step-by-step reenactment of the traditional charismatic leadership model. The similarities between the traits he has displayed over the years and the dispositions that define that personality type are uncanny. Whether it’s his vision of a future where the impossible becomes possible, his bold confidence in overnight progress or his eccentric behavior that makes him appear rogue and unfettered by rules, he fits the charismatic mold effortlessly.

What makes leaders like Musk impactful is their ability to tap into their followers’ needs and offer a long-awaited vision of fulfillment. Take, for example, Musk’s statement that humans must build a self-sustaining base on Mars because that’s the only way to survive a third world war or a natural disaster. All but far out, his suggestion savvily speaks to the desire to escape the struggles of everyday life.

In embracing the alluring dream of traveling to another earthly macrocosm in the universe, leaving a world in which everything seems to go awry, Musk turns a growing aspiration into a viable possibility. Under the urge for change, it doesn’t matter whether a break from the norm comes by means of a conspiracy theory or the conception of a futuristic colony on another planet. What counts is that somehow, somewhere, the desired shift can finally materialize.

Notwithstanding his ability to convince others to buy into a phantasmatic future—an ark that brings the best of Earth to an alternative dimension—how can Musk actually move everybody to the red planet? After all, humans are deeply set in their habitual ways of doing things.

Using Absurdism To Change Behavior

In a classic psychology experiment, people in a group are asked to indicate which among a handful of lines of different lengths is the longest. One of the lines is objectively longer, but the other participants, who are stooges instructed by the experimenter, choose a shorter line.

Most respondents in this situation ignore what they see and give the same answer everybody else provides. Solomon Asch’s study, an insightful demonstration of conformity, shows how an absurd alternative, made prominent in the experimental setting by the majority’s choice, can lead people to stray away from their normal response.

In the study, the fact that most select the wrong line creates pressure. But it’s not merely social pressure that causes participants to ignore what they see with their own eyes. It’s also the departure from reality — the fact that the line the others choose is objectively shorter. Confronted with an absurd alternative — one that is both odd and predominant — people start wavering.

Like the shorter line that the stooges in the experiment offer as a viable answer, Musk’s absurdism keeps fabricating a competing reality. So bizarre is this other dimension that within its ever-expanding boundaries, ordinary concerns may feel misplaced. In a world that has a billion-to-one chance to be primal, in which aliens built the pyramids, AI could give us immortal dictators and cyborg dragons might find a home — as Elon Musk narrates — worrying about charging stations, defective batteries or the atmosphere on Mars may be unnecessary and beyond the point.

In this fantastical realm, the weight of long-standing habits and knowledge, which would otherwise raise doubts and objections, loses gravitational strength, It is at that point that novelty becomes a more acceptable choice.

Musk’s success story owes to his ability to weave absurdism into it. While the automotive industry has finally caught up with the electric car, it was Musk who, using a unique form of storytelling, engineered that shift.

Succumbing To The Old

Indeed, the narrative Elon Musk gives the world is both new and old, including strokes of originality next to ideas taken from the same top-down culture of the past. Aliens can come over and build monuments, but people cannot work from home. AI can ensure a dictator’s immortality, but employees must work endless hours to prove their productivity with their jobs on the line. Technology may get us to Mars, but discriminatory work practices are unworthy of attention. And so on.

More than paradoxical, Elon Musk’s overall storyline is dangerously regressive. Despite humanity’s endless ingenuity, the ability to innovate remains stubbornly unable to carry over to the workplace and the larger business ecosystem.

In part, Musk may fail to use his imaginative brain to envision deeper solutions because he is not a transformational leader. Thus, he may offer a gateway to his followers’ needs without being interested in finding long-lasting answers to their underlying inquiries.

In part, his unwillingness to deconstruct the status quo may stem from the limitations that characterize a charismatic style. Research, for example, suggests that these leaders tend to “overwhelm, coopt, intimidate, manipulate and persuade,” using power to impress themselves and others — as Musk often does when he tackles challenges with a brass voice.

But at the core of it all, there are also the negative consequences that absurdism creates for ethical decision-making. In a reality detached from perception — where shorter lines are suddenly said to be longer, left turns into right and aliens swap places with humans — achieving the next frontier can easily become the most important thing. Solving ethical dilemmas, integrating needs across stakeholders and moving toward truly conscious evolutionary progress — no matter the overwhelming potential this would have for humanity’s stewardship — may still fade into the background.

Unsurprisingly, as he makes people awe, Musk also makes many sigh — his gaze toward the future unable to conjure up an alternative to the trite culture of the 20^th century. We may get pyramids on Mars one day only to find that building them required as many sacrifices as the twisted bones and broken limbs the Egyptians immolated.

What’s different today is that we know that not even those breathtaking erections made the pharaohs immortal.