[hashim]

Couldn't disagree more and this is exactly why I worded the text very carefully in the way that I did. It's true that you need to be a certain level of self-driven to achieve a goal or project, and that a good portion of the motivation for it should come internally, but human beings are not the machines that we program and it doesn't benefit us to pretend that we are. Long hours of working on the same overwhelming things has the very natural effect of burning us out, so external motivators are necessary from time to time, and I would argue much more beneficial than running on fumes just because you have some irrational belief that you're too much of a Terminator to need external motivation.

[soheil]

Of course we're influenced by the world around us, but I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you can't look for inspiration. It kind of has to come to you. This is why movies are probably a bad source. As a commenter below mentioned Apollo 11 was a very inspirational achievement to lots of people, it was an incredible event that changed people's lives specially impressionable children.

You need to be shaped by those events like a statue.

That's why those events need to be powerful, significant and life changing not mere theatrical plays.

[hashim]

you can't look for inspiration. It kind of has to come to you

You need to be shaped by those events like a statue.

those events need to be powerful, significant and life changing

Sounds like you're making a lot of speculation on what you/Elon Musk think humans should be instead of what they actually are.

It's shifting the goalposts compared to your points earlier, which was that human beings could not rely on external motivation.

More importantly, without being accompanied by citations of some sort, your claims about what should be are basically religious/superstitious, and therefore meaningless to anyone else but you.