I think that “eugenics” is in some ways fairly universal, but that small-minded creeps simply made the term and concept appear unpopular. All that it means is “good genes”. I contend that most people appear largely unconscious of the basis behind their attraction and mating, and that what mostly happens then is that most of these people have some deep assumptions that the person is better genes/memes than other possible selections. Vague claims of “attraction” and “chemistry” mostly obscure what actually happens.
Obviously, thinking that somebody is beautiful, smart, funny, loving, etc and that this might make them a good choice to mate with in no way needs to suggest implicit racism! Nor am I of the opinion that people, their behaviors and experiences can be reduced to genes, there are many interdependent factors. How about people who have de-coupled sexual and mating behaviors? If you are not reproducing with someone, then why should you even need to be concerned with what their body is like?
Anyway, I think that casually dismissing the notion of “good genetics” is an exercise in self-deception. Like with many things, “good” is still largely subjective.
This isn’t so much a problem of countries, but the primary failure mode of democracy. At it’s purest form (everyone votes and majority wins) it is a system precisely designed to oppress any and all minorities. (And everyone is a minority in some way or other once you get enough people together.) Combined with low voter turnout (whether due to apathy, lack of time/information/ability to make an informed opinion, difficulty of voting, or disenfranchisement), with the mass media’s ability to sway opinions, and with wealth controlling the options, and we get a mess.
But in small-scale situations, with mostly homogenous people, it can be kind of pleasant, especially if there are checks and balances. Scaled up to global level? Probably not without a lot more homogeneity and some serious checks and balances.
It’s similar with communism. It seems to work in small groups that all know each other fairly well. Once the groups grow large enough to form subgroups that are “others” and “different” instead of just “friends/acquaintances I don’t always agree with but can compromise with”, then the communes start to break up or switch to socialism.
Authoritarian hierarchies avoid that problem because at any given level, there are relatively few relations (those immediately above and below). So an authoritarian hierarchy could much more easily scale to global government. That scenario, however, is a little frightening.
The EU is a government of unelected bureaucrats, chosen by national governments, and not accountable to the people they govern. Rather, they are accountable to the most powerful of those national governments. That’s not a prototype for anywhere I want to live.
Some accountability might have limited their austerity response to an economic downturn.
First, practically, because a more diverse generic population is preferable over a less diverse one. Take the Cavendish banana: since they’re all genetically identical, they all fall prey to the same fungus. If there were more generic diversity, the ones resistant to that fungus would prosper, and the whole Cavendish banana species as a crop would not be threatened by this fungus. Or, to use another example, there is a gene where, when you inherit it from one parent, gives you resistance to malaria but, when you get it from both parents, can lead to sickle cell anemia. Whether a gene is “good” or “bad” is not a simple question, so the Vulcan maxim of “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” is the best thing to strive for.
Second, morally, the idea of eugenics practiced on a species as a whole means that the people with “inferior” genes must not be allowed to reproduce. As reproduction is one of the fundamental drives of human nature, it is cruel and inhumane to deny people the ability to fulfill what is such a fundamental part of being human.
That isn’t actually true, you know. See here, for example.
While the senior staff of the Commission are indeed unelected, so are bureaucrats almost everywhere, including those in Whitehall. And those staff – as well as being appointed by the elected governments of the member states, and being subject to confirmation in their positions by the elected European Parliament, and having to report regularly to the EP – cannot make final decisions on EU law or policy. Those decisions are made by the Council of Ministers (consisting of ministers from the elected governments of the member states) and the elected EP. Furthermore, the general direction of the EU is guided by the European Council, consisting of the elected heads of government (or state) of the 28 EU member states. And all the EU institutions are accountable to the treaties and the European Court of Justice. The idea that there is a European government in Brussels with independent powers is nothing more than a myth.
That is in no way an argument against eugenics. Like I said, all it essentially means is “good genes”, so striving for more diversity can also be considered “eugenic” but usually isn’t because of the ideological baggage people associate with the term. There is no universal benchmark of what constitutes good genes. The fallacy I was being critical of is that those who decry eugenics seem to deny that they have any such criteria. Those who choose to mate, or choose not to, arguably do still have selection criteria.
This relates to what I was saying also. Why assume that reproduction is something done to you, rather than something that you yourself do? The totalitarian outlook hides the subjectivities, in that others would simply be subordinating themselves to the subjective preferences of some elite, which is still not universal.
This all underscores my point that there is a lot of baggage behind a term which describes many of the basics of how people reproduce.
I’ve been thinking the last few years, and especially with Brexit, that representative democracy simply doesn’t scale well. Too many voters per representative, and too much of an accountability problem the higher one goes. And as the unit of organization gets larger, the bureaucracy gets larger, increasing the size of that layer where accountability is worse.
I also wonder why there hasn’t been more reaction to Brexit along the lines of “the death rattle of the Nation-State”. In an increasingly mobile, communicative, multicultural world, I think the nation state is becoming an increasingly irrelevant unit of organization. Some people might prefer it to be replaced or enhanced by a world government, but I’d rather see it go the other direction.
While democracy obviously been a tremendous tool for mankind, it clearly has just as much potential for disaster as any other form. It strikes me as pollyannish to think that a world government, by virtue of being democratic, would somehow get it better and more right than most existing democracies, many of which are pretty terribly governed. I guess maybe what I’m trying to say is that before sending a representative to tell the rest of the world what to do, get one’s own house in order and one’s own shit together. Look around at the elected presidents of the world- yeah, I don’t want them to have a say in my life either.
Yes, @Michael_R_Smith, this was the point I was trying to make. Although I do understand the fear that a global governance system will only disempower smaller countries more.
Honestly, I don’t know if that’s the right answer. And I do think that the context in this case should be taken into account. Much of the one world movement coalesced around fears of nuclear war and a repeat of the two world wars (and it has a history that goes back to an earlier age of globalization, the late 19th century). Whether that’s a workable solution, I don’t know. But clearly, what we’re doing right now isn’t working for a large number of people in the world.
Sadly, that’s the way language works. “Eugenics” now brings up thoughts of forced sterilizations and euthanization of infants. We have more than one language to work with, though; if the Greek term doesn’t cut it, the next term can be in Latin. Or German. Or Chinese. We have lots of languages to work with; we can have a descriptive term for “good genetics” that doesn’t have the baggage.
Thanks for the link, I had never heard of Tepper before.
No, I don’t think that it does. This relates to what I was saying before, that people commonly associate the concept of “eugenics” with the practice of reproductive decisions being made by others for oneself. There is no more reason for this than to assume that “cuisine” means that people eat what I tell them to. It can mean that, but it is in no way implicit.
The problem I see here is not that people should reconsider the ideas of eugenics, or rehabilitate the term in some way. But rather that people’s often strong reactions prevent them from noticing that all reproduction overlaps with such ideas. For instance, if someone and I agree to form a couple and mate between us exclusively, we are in a very real sense imposing our selfish mating preferences upon society at large. But since it is a pervasive norm, people tend to not see it that way. Also, how many people complain about the atrocity that their domestic dogs or cats were bred by humans?
Many people still sublimate mating routines into their personal relationships and sex lives, even when they claim to decouple sexual behaviors from biological reproduction. Such factors as defaulting to heterosexual relationships, economic/security providence, and aesthetic ideals are quite prevalent.
Pair bonding and nuclear families are rather selfish notions, and seem responsible for much of the structure of societal institutions. Even most leftists seem to get drawn into this. When sex, child rearing, and household economics are more often seen as collective social activities, I think we will start to see some structural progress.
I don’t see how you’re “imposing” anything on anyone. If I decide to spend a night watching a movie alone, am I “imposing” my evening preference on the rest of the world, just because my choice means that no one else is able to spend the evening with me? If I read a book, am I “imposing” my reading preference on all of the other authors whose books I’m not currently reading?
If I impose on someone, that means that I’m doing something to override their personal preferences; describing monogamy as “imposing our selfish mating preferences upon society at large” carries a connotation that someone else’s preference for what I do with my body is of higher importance than my own. I reject that idea vehemently and almost nauseously.
I don’t disagree; I think to see true equality, to ensure that everyone has an equal shot at life from start to finish, that you’d have to remove the parent-child relationship, so that the parent can’t exert influence on their child’s behalf. However, the parental (and especially the maternal) bond being as strong as it is, I don’t think that society will ever let that happen. And I think that forcing it on society (literally ripping children from their mothers’ arms) would be a catastrophe.
Another option would be the fictional cyberpunk dystopia where all the governments have become increasingly irrelevant, superceded by the multinational/extraterritorial megacorporations and the super-wealthy. With things like prisons being privatized for profit, police forces armed with military-grade hardware, surveillance everywhere. Shady operations, secret tribunals without proper trials, organized crime rings profiting off of drug smuggling. That could be pretty awful though. At least it’s just fiction.
Cyberpunk got a lot of attention for being technologically prescient, but barely anyone paid attention to the ways in which it was politically prescient.
Read John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up. Stock up on antidepressants first, though.
