Nikola Tesla is something of an exemplar, if not a god, in MGTOW circles. Given his scientific achievements, that is understandable. Just as significant to MGTOW adherents are his views on life:
Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.
I don’t think that you can name many great inventions created by married men.
Intelligent people tend to have less friends than the average person. The smarter you are, the more selective you become.
Tesla is also revered because he correctly foresaw mobile phones, television, and the internet. Consequently, interviews with him often took an oracular turn. A number of these interviews are available online, notably postings from the August 10, 1924 issue of The Galveston Daily News, the January 30, 1926 issue of Collier’s magazine, and the February 9, 1935 issue of Liberty magazine.
In the Liberty interview, he proclaimed, “In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.” Now that we’re one fifth of the way into the twenty-first century, this prediction seems to be well on its way to fulfillment.
When Tesla stuck to predictions involving his specialty of electricity, he was on the mark or close to it. When he strayed from his specialty…well, you win a few, you lose a few.
For example, in the same Liberty interview Tesla missed badly when he said, “The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established.” Granted, that’s 80 years away, but he made his prediction before the downfall of Hilter. Today, 75 years after the collapse of Nazi Germany, any advocacy of eugenics amounts to career or political suicide. You might agree with Tesla when he says, “Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.” If so, best to keep your opinion to yourself.
Tesla also foresaw that “within a century coffee, tea, and tobacco will be no longer in vogue.” Well, after 94 years, coffee is riding high and tea is holding its own. Only tobacco is on the ropes. One out of three…not too impressive. He also foresaw the “end of all devastating droughts, forest fires, and floods.” Tesla certainly went down swinging with that statement.
He also missed the boat on this one: “The idea of atomic energy is illusionary.” The Manhattan Project started in 1942 but Tesla died on January 7, 1943, so he didn’t get the memo. If he did, he wouldn’t have been able to read it, as he suffered from dementia.
The jury is still out on: “The world’s internal reservoirs of heat, indicated by frequent volcanic eruptions, will be tapped for industrial purposes.” Well, geothermal energy is a fact but it’s expensive to tap into it, so it hasn’t been a major threat to coal, oil, and gas. But a breakthrough may occur, so Tesla may be vindicated one day. Let’s give him an incomplete on that one.
The foregoing is not an attempt to trash Tesla or his prognostications, but to point out that that his eminence as a scientist did not mean all his utterances were of Delphic import. We must keep this in mind when we consider his quotes on the future of women, particularly in the Collier’s interview.
Tesla’s status as a lifelong bachelor disqualified him from offering an informed opinion; on the other hand, lacking a wife and daughters allowed him to be more objective. As a brainy guy with an accent, impeccable grooming, and a fair amount of fame, he probably could have been a bigtime pickup artist if he was so inclined.
Born in Serbia on July 10, 1856, Tesla doubtless started out with old-world, old-fashioned ideas about women’s place in society. By the time he was a senior citizen, female emancipation was a done deal. The 1920s brought women the vote, freedom to smoke and drink, shorter hemlines, even petting parties…which sounds pretty mild today.
Like a number of his contemporary pundits, Tesla pointed out the increasing encroachment of women in areas that had been reserved for men. But he predicted it wouldn’t stop with equality. He foresaw “a new sex order, with the female as superior.” If he were around today and could benefit from the volumes of neurological and sociobiological research on sex differences, he might have thought differently. It all depends on what he meant by “superior.”
In one sense, “superior” means someone or something better than you. Or it could mean someone who outranks you, as your superior officer. Your “superior” may or may not be better than you by any objective criteria, but he is higher up in the chain of command, so he gives orders and you take them. If Tesla meant “superior” in that sense, then he was on the mark.
More disturbing is this statement:
The acquisition of new fields of endeavor by women, their gradual usurpation of leadership, will dull and finally dissipate feminine sensibilities, will choke the maternal instinct, so that marriage and motherhood may become abhorrent and human civilization draw closer and closer to the perfect civilization of the bee.
Well, the beehive may be the perfect environment for bees…but what about human beings?
There are the vast, desexualized armies of workers whose sole aim and happiness in life is hard work. It is the perfection of communism, of socialized, cooperative life wherein all things, including the young, are the property and concern of all.
Doesn’t sound like a workers’ paradise to me. Yet Tesla has unwittingly exposed the connections between feminism, communism, and gynocentrism.
The center of all bee life is the queen. She dominates the hive, not through hereditary right, for any egg may be hatched into a reigning queen, but because she is the womb of this insect race.
“For queen and colony,” might be the motto of the male bee, technically known as a drone. You might find it highly symbolic that the drone has no stinger. His main role is to mate with the queen bee. Sort of like a cougar and a teenage boy.
Now one can readily see how the elites might envy the bee society. Bees have no free will. They cannot revolt against their “superiors.” They are not capable of rebelling. No need to crack down on them…no need to formulate propaganda…no need to institute censorship…no need for the queen to sequester herself in a gated community. Perfect obedience is assured.
The human male is not quite as degraded as the male bee. Man’s offspring, however, require nine months of gestation and years of maturation. Luckily, his “queen” only rarely gives birth to more than one individual. So that sounds like a manageable amount of “enslavement,” at least it was before the rise of the welfare state, or the welfare hive, if you prefer. Remember that Tesla’s Collier’s quote was from 1926.
Two years later Herbert Hoover proclaimed, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any other land. We shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” Well, those are the most edible words anyone ever uttered, but they do point out how far away we were from a welfare state when Tesla made his comments.
The rise of the welfare state assures that all male taxpayers will participate in supporting other people’s children, or the children of the hive (great name for a horror movie). Federal government transfer payments are the biggest problem, but state and county taxes go to public schooling, from pre-school programs to state universities. A lot of those male-privileged incomes are taxed to support single mothers and their children. Every man – even an incel – is affected if he earns a living and pay taxes.
In a way, the drone bee is lucky, as he has but one hive to serve. The human drone serves multiple hives: the city hive, the county hive, the state hive, and the federal hive. If some international do-gooders have their way, the global hive may one day be a reality. Tesla himself thought so:
International boundaries will be largely obliterated and a great step will be made toward the unification and harmonious existence of the various races inhabiting the globe.
Well, that global nirvana hasn’t worked out as well as the computer models, but it’s still on the drawing board. As a number of commentators have noted, however the rise of social media has given birth to a hive mentality. Hence the term “hivemind” to indicate a mindless, unreasoning conformity of thought. Disturb the hive – on purpose or not – and a cosmopolitan swarm will attack you.
Though Tesla was neither a sociologist nor an entomologist, he may have been on to something with his observations about women and beehives.
After all, there must be a reason man has long referred to his significant other as “Honey.”
And whatever happened to the beehive hairdo?
