The Sons Rise
Lately I've been re-reading some of my favorite old science fiction, including a bunch of Analog magazines from the Sixties. The very nature of sci-fi implies that it will be wrong about the future far more often than it is right; still, there's something staggering about the fact that virtually every writer up to and including William Gibson assumed that we'd have spaceflight before we had smartphones.
Truly, we'd have been better-off as a society had it happened that way. The arrival of spaceflight would have heralded a new pioneer era and brought out the best in humanity; the arrival of "constant connection" has turned us into seven billion navel-gazers continually searching for new and better ways to share photos and videos with our friends real and/or imagined. Let's phrase it in the most heretical way possible:
Spaceflight would have returned humanity to the masculine state: exploring, driving, penetrating, discovering. Smartphones make us feminine: collaborating, communicating, building consensus, being receptive to what others put on our screens and in our minds.
I realize that the current paradigm of feminism, in which women are simply Men Without Dicks, does not agree with such a viewpoint. Nor am I suggesting that men are superior to women, or vice versa. I'm suggesting that we need both sides of the coin and right now Western society has feminized to the point that we are importing rapists to Europe because we subconsciously recognize that something's out of balance. This picture is making the rounds of the "manosphere" right now because it's hugely emblematic of the so-called refugee situation in Europe:
At the risk of being indelicate, what you see there is nothing more or less than what happens when women become tired of feminized men. West German society spent seventy years trying to kill its vicious, nationalist inner demons and this is the result: nice young men who would never think about invading Belgium but who also can't quite keep their women interested. Look in the eyes of that crazy broad and tell me you think that my homebody with the beard there is sleeping alone. Just the body language of the two men indicates who's going to wind up tapping that ass in the long run.
The preservation of German society is not my personal concern --- my ancestors on both sides bid farewell to the mother country in the era of Kaiser Wilhelm, if not before --- but the preservation of American society is my concern. And that is why my son has two motorcycles and a TopKart and an orange belt in TKD instead of me raising him as a princess boy or something similar. At some point in the not-so-distant future, someone is going to have to man the ramparts of the last Western civilization on earth, whether that is America or Russia or (think about it) Japan. Might as well be my kid.
I don't think he will be alone in that. While the Communication Age has done a lot to depersonalize our interactions, it's also enabled me to meet some truly bad-ass dudes everywhere from NorCal to Florida to Singapore, both virtually and in real life. Most of my readers here will be familiar with our commenter and friend, VolandoBajo. He and I have been discussing a plan to put him behind the handlebars of a Ural motorcycle, and during that planning he happened to mention that his son would be in Columbus for a few days.
It seemed like a good idea for us to get our sons together. As we expected, they got along very well despite their age difference. Volando's son, Matt, is quiet and soft-spoken but he also appears to be constructed from solid adamantium and I gathered from our conversation that he's a bit of a scrapper from time to time. I don't think I'd want to trade punches with him; the kid moves like a jaguar. John thought he was "cool".
The relationship that Matt has with his father is respectful and supportive; it gives me hope that I'll be around long enough to be a decent dad to John when he's in his early twenties and I'm in my late fifties. It also gave me hope that if I don't make it that far --- if I wind up cooked to well-done in some crappy race car or succumb to whatever cancerous cells are probably floating around in me right now --- John will have the chance to meet and take inspiration from other young men who haven't quite disappeared into their own navels. Not that Matt doesn't use the Internet; he regaled us with a tale of how he picked up a girl from an online poker league and ended up seeing her in real life, to his considerable satisfaction. "Made some money, too," he allowed, although whether it was from the poker or the girl was a point he chose not to clarify.
It is a goal of mine to meet as many of my readers and online friends as possible. Whether it's a brief dinner or a motorcycle ride across the country. I'm a solitary cat by nature and given the chance I'd rather be alone with a book than doing almost anything else; still, as human beings we are strengthened and reassured by the genuine connections we make with others. So consider this your call to action for the New Year. Go outside, meet people, make friends. Exchange the screen for the sky, however briefly. I'll still be here when you get back.