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paolo
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 1151
Location: Italy
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 Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:24 pm Post subject: Eugenics |
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Eugenics has been very popular in the early 20th century. The idea was to intervene scientifically in the betterment of the human species, through selective breeding, sterilization of the unfit and insulation of freaks. It was popular in the US even more than in Germany and Europe. Nazi Germany made it one pillar of their program, beginning with the extermination of the “unfit” and gradually developing a sweeping program of “liquidation” of what they considered inferior races, gypsies, Jews, eastern populations.
While this horrors have made hard to talk now about eugenics, I wonder if all efforts to manipulate the human genome are not, in the last resort, sophisticated ways to pursue programs of eugenics. The acceptance of the existence of freaks and their integration in society has something to do with the acceptance and integration of those spiritual freaks that we autistic people are. Can a policy of cultural appreciation of spiritual “difference” be advanced without a parallel program of acceptance of physical difference and the other way around? Our advertisement culture, which, after all is our culture for the great majority of people (physical beauty as a supreme goal) is a culture of physical normality and normalization. Is it a good thing and does it bode well for a policy of acceptance of spiritual diversity?
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Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
--Samuel Beckett |
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edal
Phoenix
Joined: Jul 05, 2007
Posts: 759
Location: Gyor, Hungary
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| Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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It's possible to practice Eugenics without being bad. I carry the gene for cystic fibrosis although I don't suffer from the disease. By deciding not to have any kids I've decreased the gene pool just a little bit and if every CF carrier did this the disease would be gone in two generations. This could be called selective breeding if you want to give it a scientific name.
AS may be genetically based, in which case I've helped twice.
Ed Almos |
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MrMark
Abstract Data Type
Joined: Jul 04, 2006
Age: 50
Posts: 9825
Location: Tallahassee, FL
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| Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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There was the space age, then the information age, and soon, if not now, the genetic engineering age. We have the ability to consciously intervene in our own evolution. The question is do we have the consciousness to do so, and if so, how will we do so. I suspect that the self-centered who accumulate wealth will be the first to have the opportunity to choose to produce more beautiful, more perfect, more self-centered...
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"Walk to the well. Turn as the earth and the moon turn, circling what they love. Whatever circles comes from the center."
- Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks) |
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richie
Ye Olde Bookwyrme
Joined: Jan 10, 2007
Age: 50
Posts: 12131
Location: Lake Whoop-Dee-Doo, Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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| MrMark wrote: | | There was the space age, then the information age, and soon, if not now, the genetic engineering age. We have the ability to consciously intervene in our own evolution. The question is do we have the consciousness to do so, and if so, how will we do so. I suspect that the self-centered who accumulate wealth will be the first to have the opportunity to choose to produce more beautiful, more perfect, more self-centered... |
What will be the defining criteria for fitness? Who will decide who is fit and who is unfit?
"I suspect that the self-centered who accumulate wealth will be the first to have the opportunity to choose to produce more beautiful, more perfect, more self-centered..." The "kakistocracy" breeds more "kakistocracy" and down the chute we all go.... |
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MrMark
Abstract Data Type
Joined: Jul 04, 2006
Age: 50
Posts: 9825
Location: Tallahassee, FL
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| Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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| richie wrote: | | Who will decide who is fit and who is unfit? |
The people paying the bill, of course.
_________________
"Walk to the well. Turn as the earth and the moon turn, circling what they love. Whatever circles comes from the center."
- Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks) |
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CanyonWind
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 12, 2006
Posts: 1359
Location: West of the Great Divide
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| Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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Putting supreme value on wealth, power, and conventional beauty ain't exactly a new idea. The advertizing industry is merely reflecting values, maybe reinforcing them a bit, hell I don't know, but accepting spiritual freaks ain't the same as accepting people with other differences.
I don't have a wheelchair or a white cane that everybody can see. Hell of a lot of people have disliked me, and none of them ever heard of aspergers.
Brings to mind the line from Alice in Wonderland: "I'm glad I don't like asparagus, because if I did, I would eat it, and I cannot stand it."
I'm not holding my breath waiting for people to change their mind about asparagus.
_________________
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son.' -Yeats |
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KimJ
Legend in my own mind
Joined: Jun 11, 2006
Posts: 2538
Location: Arizona
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| Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 8:42 pm Post subject: |
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Breeders use and are prey to Eugenics all the time. I think it's okay when the individual decides what to promote or what to discourage. Where Eugenics crosses the line of ethics is when there is a Bloc that decides for the individual, literally (sterilization, execution, education). There were state-enforced Eugenics in this country until the 70's, I believe. I think Indiana just officially apologized for it.
Like someone mentioned, the deciders were not only incorrect in their presumption of authority, they also used subjective gauges to sterilize people. Women were diagnosed with mental illness to justify sterilization.
Without knowing about Asperger's or autism, my husband and I selected each other to breed. To each other, we are fit and healthy. To others, we are weird and incompatible. I'd call that selective breeding. |
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paolo
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 1151
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2007 3:19 am Post subject: |
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One of the reasons is brought forth in favor of genetic manipulation is that it's just what farmers have been doing since agriculture exists, that is taming nature and trasform living things like objects. I am in favor of Tao, let things as they are.
Chuang-tzu, 400 hundred years AC:
"Horses have hooves to carry them over frost and snow, and hair to protect them from wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, and fling up their tails and gallop. Such is the real nature of horses. Ceremonial halls and big dwellings are of no use to them. One day Polo (famous horse-trainer), {44} appeared, saying, "I am good at managing horses." So he burned their hair and clipped them, and pared their hooves and branded them. He put halters around their necks and shackles around their legs and numbered them according to their stables. The result was that two or three in every ten died. Then he kept them hungry and thirsty, trotting them and galloping them, and taught them to run in formations, with the misery of the tasselled bridle in front and the fear of the knotted whip behind, until more than half of them died." |
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Flagg
Vivez sans temps mort.
Joined: Nov 09, 2006
Posts: 5657
Location: Western US
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| Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2007 4:37 am Post subject: |
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| paolo wrote: | | One of the reasons is brought forth in favor of genetic manipulation is that it's just what farmers have been doing since agriculture exists, that is taming nature and trasform living things like objects. I am in favor of Tao, let things as they are. |
But then things become stale and die all to quickly, mostly due to boredom and stagnation. The world is fueled by change and choas, it makes life worth living. A human nudge to try and kill off AIDS or Cancer seems to be an excellent way to shake up the board a bit. We are the children of choas and we only bring more of it, our mark in this slowly dying maelsturm. |
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ouinon
chemical reaction
Joined: Jul 11, 2007
Posts: 3478
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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I believe that doing as little as possible ( while not causing harm , falling ill , creating work for others, etc) is a great ( and largely lost,) art.
Last edited by ouinon on Mon Oct 15, 2007 3:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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paolo
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 1151
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Flagg wrote: |
But then things become stale and die all to quickly, mostly due to boredom and stagnation. The world is fueled by change and choas, it makes life worth living. |
They don't become stale, they move according to internal forces. Chaos may be all right, but not manipulation, and we don't move in chaos, but in ordered armies towards destruction. |
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Postperson
The Daughter of Indifference
Joined: Jul 10, 2004
Age: 51
Posts: 2908
Location: Uz
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| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 2:04 am Post subject: |
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| ouinon wrote: | | I believe that doing as little as possible ( while not causing harm , falling ill , creating work for others, etc) is a great ( and largely lost,) art. |
I think this is my creed too |
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Prof_Pretorius
troubled Soul
Joined: Aug 21, 2006
Age: 50
Posts: 4939
Location: Hiding in the attic of the Arkham Library
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| Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 8:18 pm Post subject: |
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Last night the Missus and I went to the most amazing dance performance. It was regards DNA. There was bits of propaganda about eviloution, but there was the most amazing dance.
An older woman danced and spoke about the history of the apple, and how it was found in Kazatstan, then brought to the western world and tamed. While she was dancing, and telling the history of the apple, a dwarf lady in a wheelchair did the most amazing dance. She did all these moves, and you could see how thrilled she was to be part of the performance. The older woman helped her out of her wheelchair, and they danced. Finally the older woman concluded that the apples you get in the grocery these days are tasteless and soft. Not at all like the wild apples she picked as a child.
The metaphor was: we can allow scientists and politicians to muck about with eugenics, but remember where that road leads, to a tasteless sameness that defeats the variety and marvelous mistakes that nature makes. Typing this almost moves me to tears ....
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I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. ~Theodore Roethke |
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ZakFiend
Toucan
Joined: Sep 13, 2007
Age: 28
Posts: 269
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:25 pm Post subject: Re: Eugenics |
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| paolo wrote: | Eugenics has been very popular in the early 20th century. The idea was to intervene scientifically in the betterment of the human species, through selective breeding, sterilization of the unfit and insulation of freaks. It was popular in the US even more than in Germany and Europe. Nazi Germany made it one pillar of their program, beginning with the extermination of the “unfit” and gradually developing a sweeping program of “liquidation” of what they considered inferior races, gypsies, Jews, eastern populations.
While this horrors have made hard to talk now about eugenics, I wonder if all efforts to manipulate the human genome are not, in the last resort, sophisticated ways to pursue programs of eugenics. The acceptance of the existence of freaks and their integration in society has something to do with the acceptance and integration of those spiritual freaks that we autistic people are. Can a policy of cultural appreciation of spiritual “difference” be advanced without a parallel program of acceptance of physical difference and the other way around? Our advertisement culture, which, after all is our culture for the great majority of people (physical beauty as a supreme goal) is a culture of physical normality and normalization. Is it a good thing and does it bode well for a policy of acceptance of spiritual diversity? |
Eugenics can be practiced in a positive way, and also, I think Eugenics needs to include AUGMENTING those who are trapped in less able bodies and minds, we should try to HEAL those (i.e. gene therapy, stem cell implants, whatever), so that they will not be shunned for not having the same kind of POWER.
Eugenics is about power relations and survival efficiency in a HOSTILE universe.... most people don't like to think about or even know about the HUGE destructive forces in our universe, the sun will one day die if we do not find ways to stop it and there may be enormous natural phenomena that will destroy us if we don't take surviving and our races betterment seriously. Just because it is somewhat peaceful now and we have a window of relief from some of the destructive forces, doesn't mean it will always be that way. |
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kyethra
Snowy Owl
Joined: Dec 16, 2006
Posts: 128
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| Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:51 am Post subject: |
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| edal wrote: | It's possible to practice Eugenics without being bad. I carry the gene for cystic fibrosis although I don't suffer from the disease. By deciding not to have any kids I've decreased the gene pool just a little bit and if every CF carrier did this the disease would be gone in two generations. This could be called selective breeding if you want to give it a scientific name.
AS may be genetically based, in which case I've helped twice.
Ed Almos |
It is no longer as simple as just deciding to reproduce or not reproduce and roll the genetic dice, so to speak, for your offspring. With new technologies now like Pre Implantation Genetic Diagnosis, (this is done on embryos) it is possible to make sure offspring wouldn't have certain disorders. Right now it works best with single gene disorders. The multi gene disorders are complex, difficult, even if they do know all the genes involved. Or what about having hemophelia run in the family? Is selecting for the female sex so one knows they won't have a son who is afflicted eugenics? I think these sorts of things are too individualised to be eugenics. No one is pushing a social agenda. I am not reading about these technologies used for malificious purposes. Perhaps one day I might be. But overall I believe that there is a difference. When it comes down to individual choice, then it isn't eugenics. When it isn't, then it is eugenics. This is just my opinion though... |
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