Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week or so, you know that the amount of cases in which either police brutality or hate crime have occurred in the past few days is absolutely astounding. I mean, it’s been plastered all over the TV, newspapers, and social media sites ever since the death of Alton Sterling. Between the interviews and opinions and developments and all that other hoopla that comes along with a social controversy, many would say (myself included) that it’s all becoming rather tiring and overwhelming trying to even follow it all, let alone try and advocate an opinion of your own. So this article isn’t going to cover any of that. Instead, we’re going to talk about something a bit more uplifting; Specifically, development, improved quality of life, and SCIENCE!

Over the last decade or so, a man by the name of Elon Musk has been at the cutting edge of scientific and technological development, kick-starting programs like SpaceX and more recently the Hyperloop project (if you haven’t heard of these before, don’t worry; we’re getting there.) He’s been on various talk shows, and on one of them (Late Show with Stephen Colbert) he was referred to as, “either a supervillain or a superhero.” Clearly, this man is a genius. And more importantly, he is single-handedly leading the way in major innovations in transportation that could make the human race even more efficient than it already is.

Let’s start by looking at SpaceX. When NASA’s space shuttle program concluded in 2011 with the landing of the Atlantis Shuttle, the question was not if the system would be renewed elsewhere but rather how soon and by who. Although there were more than a few contending companies, the Musk-founded SpaceX program cemented itself at the top of the totem pole in late 2012 by making the first non-government funded contact with the International Space Station with their free-flying spacecraft referred to as Dragon. Propelled by the Falcon 9 rocket model, this huge step made SpaceX a hot company to follow in everything from investment (stocks, for the lack of a better term, skyrocketed in price after the achievement) to production (SpaceX has manufactured over 100 of their Merlin 1D rocket engines, making them the largest private producer of rocket engines on Earth). SpaceX has big plans for the future, too; in the next 2 to 3 years they intend on initiating manned missions, and claim their company’s final checkpoint is ‘enabling people to live on other planets.’ Now THAT’S exciting to think about.

But Musk’s head isn’t strictly above the clouds; he also has big plans for things here on Earth. The Hyperloop project is an inexpensive and just downright absurdly fast method of transportation which consists of a system of elevated tubes that run from place to place with pods that travel through them. The tubes are basically a vacuum, and what little air that the pods encounter is channeled from the front of the pod to under it, which allows the pods to ‘float’ at speeds – get this – UP TO 760 MILES PER HOUR. The comparison given by Musk as to how blazing fast you’d be going in one of these things is that a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which is usually a 6-hour drive, could be completed in 30 minutes. And while all of this may sound like science fiction to you, Musk has landed investors on the project who have legitimized the tube system and shown desire to further the project in the California area. Not only that, but Mr. Musk also created a contest to see what group of individuals could design the pod itself and had a participation count in the thousands (if you’re wondering who won, let’s just say the team from MIT did pretty well.)

Honestly, I could go even further on the topic of Elon Musk and how he’s intellectually and progressively capable of taking over the world someday, and how he’s the current CEO of the car company Tesla, and all of this other good stuff, but I think my point has been made. (Side-note; I got the once-in-a-lifetime experience of driving a Tesla Model S not too long ago, and let me tell you first-hand, whatever he’s doing with that company is working.)

What I’m trying to say is this; Why do we as a society always shift the blazing heat of the limelight on issues that degrade what certain people stand for, or focus on our shortcomings, when all the while we could have our minds moving forwards imagining things like this being introduced to our lives? Why must we look at the bad and the ugly when the good clearly exists? I’m not saying issues like racial equality, police brutality, LGBT rights, feminism, and all of the other social topics of our generation should be ignored, but what I am saying is that it cannot be the entirely of what defines our lives as a whole. Elon Musk’s genius and entrepreneurship is a great stepping stone for the mainstream media to take in shifting the focus of public interaction from entirely controversial and negative to a least a little bit enlightening and hope-instilling. If this were to happen, then I personally believe that society would begin to stop over-analyzing what we are and instead begin to ponder what we can be.