Sorry, that was hilarious.
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Good luck reading this topic in chronological order!
I am sensitive to the assertions that there is something innately racist about eugenics, but the lack of mutual semantic framing makes it difficult to talk about. I am not denying that in practice, there has been an overlap between racist proponents and practices with eugenics. To understand my difficulty here, consider how cotton plantations of the US south were instrumental in slavery. It is indisputable to many that that relationship exists. But now extrapolate that to saying in the 21st century that growing or using cotton is inseparable from racism! Is it an essentially racist textile? It was racist in that context because of the institutional framework which surrounded it. That was genuinely problematic, but I do not make the leap of assuming that anyone who advocates cotton as a useful crop or textile is advocating slavery of black people!
Sure, if it is forced upon you, it is oppression. But if you and/or your group do it on your own terms, there should not need to be so much semantic hand-waving to disentangle it from the practices of a few high-profile bad actors. Why give them the power to define the narrative?
Are you serious?
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Since you have a different definition of eugenics from the majority of people responding in this thread itâs going to be be impossible to have a discussion with definitions (and their associations).
How about you describe the eugenics system you are thinking about.
As an example I imagine a program enforced by the majority (Could be government, could be church elders, could be a moral mob, could be scientists with guns, etcâŚ). That group decides some types of people can never reproduce (Jewish, Gay, Color Blind, Intellectual, Conservative, etcâŚ) and forcibly sterilizes those people. They may also decide that some pairs of people can never have a child (because what ever reasons they want) and so either these couples canât marry or date, or maybe they sterilize them too just to safe. Then you have to ask what to do with people and the babies produced against the rules. Are there fines? Jail time. Death sentences? What of babies born in secrete? Are they killed? Are they segregated?
I think most people have some sort of image and concerns like me. So can you paint us a picture of America today with a eugenics system that doesnât do these things? I donât see it. Bit I am curious what your vision is in a practical sense.
Edit: fixing typos
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or already have been
o_O
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Uhm⌠itâs one of the reasons Hitler is invalid.
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No. Just no. Eugenics implies an eye toward creating a better person, through manipulation of breeding humans. Sex and reproduction itself is not eugenics, because if itâs operating on such a level, itâs not eugenics.
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Please donât. Itâs a very annoying form of prescriptivism that makes you hard to talk to, because English word use is routinely only tangentially related to etymology, and even you are only doing it intermittently.
What I am reading here is that âeugenicsâ could be great if you changed the meaning to things like breeding tasty apples or having children with someone you think will be a good parent, while âeugenicsâ is awful if you take the meaning to be the unbelievably prevalent one in contemporary English. Weâre all here using English, and some people have even repeatedly explained our definition to you, and youâre insisting on conversing in some uncommon half-Greek parsing instead. Cui bono?
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People who fall in love, generally donât have exposure to many of the genetic traits of their partners. Even when it comes to the obvious genetic features like race, body type, etc, their opinions on which of those traits are good or bad tend to vary wildly from one person to the next. Then you have all of the non-genetic traits on top of that further modifying the issue. Itâs about as far from eugenics as you can get.
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Iâm utterly baffled and horrified that this thread seems to need to exist.
Iâll say this: if you have read the history of eugenics and are still advocating for it, I donât want any part of you around me. Itâs gross. Itâs wrong. Itâs horrible and cruel and so obviously so that a person who canât see that is a waste of space to me.
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If eugenics was actually viable, all the advocates of it would have been bred out of the gene pool years ago.
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Itâs not a difficult concept. Suppose that we on the BBS thought it prudent to yield another three members, so we vote on what characteristics are needed, what genes are likely to result in those, and prepare them from there. Maybe a couple of us can achieve the desired combination of genes readily without further modification. Or maybe get quite close, but need a bit of editing. Or if we didnât mind the labor-intensive approach, pooling all of our genes together and editing them into completely custom gametes.
Or maybe instead of the BBS, it is the people on your block, or your farming co-op, your tribe/village, your research team, or your friends.
People do voluntarily reproduce, believe it or not! Suggesting that people need to do it through EITHER natural selection OR some hierarchy would be a false dichotomy. Empowering people to make new kinds of people, families, and communities can make a tremendous difference in the societal structures we participate in.
If you think that deliberate breeding is inseparable from cruelty and oppression, I am sure that you will do the honest thing and forage only for wild food from now on. Otherwise, there might be some compartmentalization happening behind the scenes to consider.
Yes, and for the most part, most people arenât thinking of desirable traits in their children. [quote=âpopobawa4u, post:55, topic:98920â]
Empowering people to make new kinds of people, families, and communities can make a tremendous difference in the societal structures we participate in.
[/quote]
All laudable goals, which people do on a daily basis already. None of which have squat to do with racial hygiene.
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That was my point!
Racial hygiene is eugenics, the very definition of the word. itâs not about individual improvements, itâs about building a better race of man, free of undesirable traits. Youâre really talking about a whole host of other things that have nothing to do with eugenics.
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You have consistently and deliberately misstated what eugenics is in this thread, despite person after person providing you with articles and definitions.
You are being willfully obtuse.
Whatever youâre going on about isnât eugenics.
Make your own thread if thatâs what you want to talk about.
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This seems to be a very circular argumentâŚ
Thatâs a definition that you appear to be quite invested in. But it simply is not universal, it is very contentious. Hereâs an example of two conflicting definitions even from just one source - merriam-webster. When I read the page summary from my search results it says:
a science that tries to improve the human race by controlling which people become parents
âŚyet on that linked page it says:
a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed
These two definitions have entirely different societal implications, as the first one postulates (as most here apparently do) that such a system is imposed by others. Whereas the second does not. And this is only one example. If even one dictionary canât agree upon The Official Definition, I am not clear why we would in informal discussion.
Thatâs a negative way to frame it. We could also be reenforcing or creating desirable traits. But not all people desire the same things, so rather than a path to heterogeneity, I think it leads to radical speciation. To many different kinds of human, and to greater diversity.
I did mention even in my first remark that there was a lot of semantic baggage to deal with here. I even asked for a more accurate term, if anyone knew of any. The whole purpose of unpacking our respective terms and definitions is so that we can communicate clearly about the topic - not so that we can bludgeon somebody into discussing it in our own preferred way. Even just genetics is hardly recognizable as the same discipline that it was 100 years ago, yet people seem to be doing the same thing here by anchoring a definition in the rudimentary practices of that time.
Thatâs also eugenics. âPositiveâ eugenics is breeding for desired traits. âNegativeâ eugenics is preventing people deemed undesirable from breeding. Itâs even in the wikipedia, ffs.
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I thought this was their own thread.
How can one derail oneâs own thread? That is really an accomplishment.
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It got moved from the rape thread, where it was a derail.
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