Playboy once asked author Ray Bradbury why science fiction was the “purview of young men.” His response is worth recalling now that Ellen Pao has resigned as Reddit’s CEO amid a censoring scandal.
There are two races of people—men and women—no matter what women’s libbers would have you pretend. The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. They’ve got to find work. Men have no inherent center to themselves beyond procreating. Women, however, are born with a center. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don’t need to read it. They are the future.
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Young men take risks (invent the future) to win over young women (the future). They conquer frontiers to be worthy. America was once that frontier, but with illegal immigration and restrictive housing policy, she’s filling up. The few frontiers that remain are in the mind. Science fiction, Steve Sailer has written, was the new gateway to that “final frontier.” But even that frontier is fading. NASA is grounded and appeasing Muslims while SpaceX rockets are blowing up.
Where are the places for young men to imagine the future in a filled-up frontier? They have but two choices: videogames, where there are infinite worlds to explore and conquer; or the Internet, where there are unimaginable fortunes to be made from weaponizing social science and software. With everything to lose, these young men are fighting back against corruption (#Gamergate) and censorship (Reddit revolt). Aristotle argued that the human sciences were capable of infinite progress because man’s mind was capable of infinite thought. As aging boomers increasingly regulate the world of stuff and atoms, the Internet—that home for infinite thought and bits—is the only place where that freedom frontier is possible.
