His frank opinion of the changes in the position of women in society
taking place then is worth noting as he did not have the luxury of
hindsight. Otherwise it is a reminder of male attitudes a century
ago that was very much instilled through teachers and culture. That
it came apart is also worth remembering and that such belief systems
slowly disappeared also. Perhaps now men and women are taught to
think in terms of equality however individually incorect that
actually is.
Yet the top third of society generally pull it off so I do not think
that the historic change was misplaced.
I know that it is possible to engineer a social structure that
correctly empowers and supports mothers and that shoiuld be the
principal consideration even if many women decline active motherhood.
Their children are readily farmed to those that do.
As lives will be much longer generally, it allows a women's life to
be easily broken into at least three semeters. The first thirty
years are years of maturation. The second thirty years are years of
hands on motherhood. The third thirty years are years of active
engagement in the communal economy. You can see the balance here,
the natural ovelaps and natural support of the biolgical imperatives.
Men have the same natural cycle as well. The middle cycle would be
the aplication of skills to create.
Nikola Tesla
Explains Why He Never Married
By Roosh
I stumbled upon an old
article in the Galveston Daily News that interviewed Tesla
for his views on women. Even though he was alive over 100 years ago,
the observations he made on the deteriorating nature of women seem to
have gone its full course, meaning that the article certainly would
not be published today. We are the unfortunate men who are forced to
deal with Tesla’s disturbingly accurate predictions. Here is the
article in full:
WHEN a man who has
made a name for himself deliberately chooses to remain a bachelor the
world is naturally curious to know what the reasons were that
impelled him to this choice.
Marriage has come to
be considered the natural thing for every normal man, and when some
pre-eminent man shows a firm determination to sidestep it everybody
wonders whether his superior intelligence has revealed to him some
fatal defects in the institution of matrimony which are not apparent
to the average person.
But the public’s
curiosity in this respect is seldom gratified. Most of the
distinguished bachelors try to pass off their bachelorhood as a joke,
saying that it is not a matter of choice, but because they have never
been able to find a woman who would marry them. As a rule, they are
singularly averse to giving any serious reasons for their failure to
become husbands.
Nikola Tesla, the
great scientist and inventor, is a striking exception to this rule.
In a recent interview with a representative of this newspaper he
frankly explains why he has never married and why he probably never
will marry.
And in connection with
his explanation he presents some ideas about woman’s freedom and
what he thinks it is sure to lead to that will be read with interest
by those who agree with him as well as by the many who will not.
In the past the
reason why Mr. Tesla never married was because his estimation of
woman placed her on such a lofty pedestal that he could never bring
himself to feel worthy of her.
Now that she has,
as he feels, stepped down from her pedestal and bartered all her
noblest qualities for what is called her “freedom,” he is even
more disinclined to matrimony than he was before.
Although of course Mr.
Tesla is too gallant a gentleman to say it in so many words, his
comments let it be inferred that he thinks the new woman almost as
far beneath him as the one of other days was above him. According to
his views, the sex has rushed from one extreme to another of quite a
different kind, and in the plunge it has left for Mr. Tesla and other
bachelors who think as he does no “happy medium” such as Josiah
Allen’s wife used to declare one of the essentials to happiness.
“I had always
thought of woman,” says Mr. Tesla, “as possessing those delicate
qualities of mind and soul that made her in these respects far
superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively
speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably
higher than man. I worshiped at the feet of the creature I had raised
to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself
unworthy of the object of my worship.
“But all this was in
the past. Now the soft-voiced gentle woman of my reverent
worship has all but vanished. In her place has
come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in
making herself as much as possible like man–in dress, voice and
actions, in sports and achievements of every kind.”
In those words the
great electrical genius sums up the reasons for his bachelorhood.
Some who read them
will urge that his view of womankind is distorted by the years he has
spent in the laboratory, dealing with inanimate things and developing
perhaps an abnormal shyness which acts as an insuperable barrier to
marriage. Others will say that the very fact of his detachment from
the ordinary routine of life makes him all the better qualified to
point out its defects and to criticize the change for the worse which
he believes new conditions have brought to womankind.
“Women,” says Mr.
Tesla, “are becoming stronger than men, both physically and
mentally.
“The world has
experienced many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of
all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against
men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in
the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to
overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization.
“Woman’s
determined competition with man in the business world is breaking
down some of the best traditions–things which have proved the
moving factors in the world’s slow but substantial progress.
“Practically all
the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his
love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because
some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her
admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought
for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again.
“Perhaps the male in
human society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don’t know. If
women are beginning to feel this way about it–and there is striking
evidence at hand that they do–then we are entering upon the
cruelest period of the world’s history.
“Our civilization
will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants
and other insects–a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed
off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established the female
rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The
male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme
of the continuity of life.
“The tendency of
women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation
with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me.
“Woman’s
independence and her cleverness in obtaining what she wants in the
business world is breaking down man’s spirit of independence. The
old fire he once experienced at being able to achieve something that
would compel and hold a woman’s devotion is turning to ashes.
“Women don’t seem
to want that sort of thing to-day. They appear to want to control and
govern. They want man to look up to them, instead of their looking up
to him.”
Mr. Tesla is not given
to making statements that he cannot prove. His life’s work has been
based on logic, not on guesses.
In voicing his gloomy
views of modern life Mr. Tesla says his observations are not confined
to the women of this country. Conditions abroad, he says, suggest
that the same tendency is world-wide. Having always regarded woman as
a super-being, he expresses great sadness over the change he thinks
the last few years have brought in her.
“I am considering
this question not merely from the standpoint of a man,” he points
out. “I am thinking of the woman’s side of it.
“As we contemplate
any change, we naturally take into consideration the results that may
follow such an innovation. One of the results to my mind is quite a
pathetic one. Woman, herself, is really the victim instead of, as she
thinks, the victor. Contentment is absent from her life. She is
ambitious, often far beyond her natural equipment, to attain the
thing she wants. She too frequently forgets that all women cannot be
prima donnas and motion picture stars.
“Woman’s
discontent makes the life of the present day still more overstressed.
The high pitch given to existence by people who are restless and
dissatisfied because they fail to achieve things wholly out of
proportion to the health and talent with which Nature has endowed
them is a bad thing for the world.
“It seems to me that
women are not particularly happy in this newly found freedom, in this
new competition which they are waging so persistently against men in
business and the professions and even in sport. The question that
naturally arises is, whether the women themselves are the gainers or
the losers.
“Discontent makes
for cranks and unnatural people. There seems to be an uncommon number
of them about to-day. This is one of the reasons I remain apart from
the crowds. The public, or semi-public, character is the target for
all sorts of attacks and unpleasant communications.
“For example, I used
to receive all sorts of strange notes, many of them letters from
cranks threatening my life, because they had read about my
experiments in manufacturing lightning bolts. They wrote that they
believed I was using these lightning flashes to kill them!
“It seems to me that
anything which adds to the great discontent which we observe on every
side to-day must be a bad influence on our life. Women who keep
themselves agitated by their tremendous ambition to beat man at his
game are losing at the same time something that counts for more in
the end, it seems to me, than the empty honors that success in
business or one of the professions can ever give.
“The power of the
true woman is so great that I believe if a beautiful woman–that is
to say, one beautiful in spirit, in manner and in thought, in fact,
beautiful in every respect, a sort of goddess–were to appear
suddenly on earth, she could command the whole world. Her leadership,
I believe, would be universally recognized.
“History has given
us many examples of the wonderful influence exerted by unusual women.
Among these have been the mothers of great men. But their influence
lay not in their determination to outdo man, or even to compete with
him.
“Perhaps because
woman is a finer and more highly sensitized instrument she knows by
instinct her power and understands that the extent of it lies in the
high position she takes for herself. But the superior never descends
to the level of the commonplace.”
These views of Nikola
Tesla will be received with great interest, whether one agrees or not
with his idea that woman in her new role is a sinister force that is
going to pull down to ruin our whole social structure. He is
generally recognized as one of the greatest mentalities of the
present day.
Twenty years ago Tesla
astonished the world by flashing a wireless message clear around the
globe.
His experimental work
paved the way for the radio age in which we are now living. Many
scientists think it quite possible that one of his highly sensitized
machines actually caught signals from Mars.
For several years past
he has been living in comparative seclusion in the Colorado Rockies,
devoting himself to the perfection of two or three inventions which
he expects will revolutionize methods of transportation and
communication. He is almost ready to explain to the world a way of
transmitting electrical energy without the use of wires.
This will enable the
energy from some great source of power like Niagara Falls to be
quickly and economically transmitted to any desired part of the
earth–and, perhaps, some day to Mars and other planets.
Some philosopher has
said that it is as perilous for a man to say he will never marry as
for a physician to try to predict the exact hour of a person’s
death. Mr. Tesla is not an old man. Perhaps he will live long enough
to find some woman who will be able to convince him that she has
attained her new freedom without sacrificing any of the womanly
qualities which he so greatly admires.
-end-
The irony is that
Tesla is a favorite of modern day millennials who “love”
science and underdogs, yet I wonder what they would think of him when
he has so disparaged the poor victimized female that they believe are
being held down by the all-powerful patriarchy.
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