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Back to the Forum Archives One day, I was out with a very good friend named Eugene. We were having a brat and beer in a local park. We often spend time together because we like to use our minds in conjunction with our mouths. You may have noticed, as have I, that our society has a dearth of people who choose to do that. Most are content to shout their opinions over and over again as they get stupider and stupider at the bar. Shouting seems to be a substitute for thought. My friend and I not only prefer the outdoors for our meetings, we prefer to discuss things in a mindful way, as near to intellects as two old fools can get. For sure, we also like to joke and catch each other in any intellectual slip and we like to make up nonsense for the fun of it. On this particular day my friend was overloading me with nonsense of a most odorous variety. Finally I told him we should codify all of this stuff he had been laying on me and give it a name. I suggested, as a word play on his name at that time, that we call it eugenics. Little did I know. It was not until I got home and typed eugenics into my word process that I began to get a clue. My word processor did not indicate a spelling error for eugenics. Oh, oh! Of course, that meant eugenics was a legitimate word. So, I looked it up. That is when I began to realize what a horrible accusation I had accidentally put upon my friend. It turns out, eugenics is a pseudo science which dates way back to Plato. Briefly it means the study of human improvement by genetic means. Plato's Republic is a tome about a society wherein there is an official effort to improve humans through selective breeding. The name, eugenics was given to this notion of selective breeding by an English scientist and statistician, Sir Francis Galton, (1822-1911). In his book Hereditary Genius Galton presented evidence intended to prove that talent is an inherited characteristic. Out of that he founded what was called the eugenics movement. So eugenics is his word for this alleged science. His plan was to create a superior master race through a system of arranged marriages between what he called "men of distinction and women of wealth." Weird as it may seem to us, he kept at it until he died. Lest I lead anyone astray, Galton was a true scientist and he did some outstanding work in the study of genetics with respect to heredity. His error came out of his upperclass background which he allowed to color his thinking about human genetics. He did not have a solid scientific basis for his conclusions, because he did not consider the effect of environment on human behavior. The world has never had a shortage of bigots and Galton certainly provided them with plenty of pseudo scientific ammunition. In 1926 the ever present racists of America founded the American Eugenics Society. This was a real pack of sickos who believed in the superior white race theory. In fact, they got even more specific in their claim that Nordic whites were even superior to other whites. They also believed that the so-called upperclass got where they were because of superior hereditary qualities. These people believed some crazy things and did some pretty awful things because of it. They got a truly racist immigration act passed in 1924 even before they founded their society. America was not the only land of madmen at the time. Sterilization laws, backed by these insane people, were passed in America and several European countries. To their credit, many American states failed to implement this madness. However, several southern states and California did. By 1935, California had sterilized about 10 thousand people. Then, along came Hitler with his "master race" theory. Eugenics was the rationale he needed and he used it. He carried it to a new extreme in the systematic murder of millions of human beings, all of which, I am sure, were superior to him. For sure, that finally was enough to put the ideas of eugenics back onto the dung heap it was extracted from. To give these insane theories the status of a legitimate science was ridiculous. It is no more legitimate than Scientology or theology. These racists notions fall to the dung heap when we look at evolution and realize all humans evolved from a single stock. The stock was Australopithecines or Southern Apes of Africa. The only way they can sustain racism is by refusing to accept evolution. That is the lie and the terror that underlies the creationists theory. Without the lie, they would be identified by ancestry with the people they fear and hate. To be sure, that terrorizes them. In practice, we have two schools or notions of eugenics. There is a school called positive eugenics wherein people attempt to identify superior genes. The idea is to encourage people with good genes to go forth and propagate, so to speak. That is the Galton view. It is relatively harmless. Negative eugenics, on the other hand, tries to identify inferior genes and discourage or prevent people from reproducing. That is the Klu Klux Klan position. It is beyond evil. In either case, the definition of superior and inferior genes is a matter of who is doing the classifications. These notions work well in plant and livestock breeding where the goals are very clear. We can specify our requirement for superior corn with considerable precision. We run aground, however, when we try to define superior human characteristics. It becomes very much a matter of opinion. This does not mean we should not consider genetics. There are some human hereditary defects that we can identify quite well. I see no great sin in providing people with genetic information that will save them from making grievous errors. No one, in their right mind, would want to give birth to a hemophiliac or a child with Tay-Sachs disease. So let us not go overboard in rejecting genetic ideas. Let's just reject the bigoted notions that are sometimes justified in the name of science. I would be for calling the science by its correct name, genetics, and discarding eugenics altogether. As to what my friend laid on me, I suppose we could just call it BS. Sorry old friend.
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