Eugenics

This morning (July 24, 2007) I turned the television on, and ran across a program that dealt with Eugenics. That is, the idea of attempting to control the reproductive process of humankind to produce a better race.

I have decided this needs some comment, because to say that I favor Eugenics would be wrong, but yet it goes on all the time.

That is, I cannot favor any process which would attempt to control the quality of the human race. Yet, every time that a man chooses to have sex with a woman, or a woman with a man, they are exercising Eugenics. That is, the man is saying that he sees something in the woman that is worth keeping, similarly for the woman. This is eugenics.

However, the idea of forcing eugenics onto people is flawed. There is a scripture this reminds me of. In the third chapter of the Inspired Version of the Bible (unfortunately, it doesn't appear in other versions) a story is told. In this story, which occurs at the beginning, when God sees evil entering the world. God calls to ask for someone to help redeemed mankind. First, Satan comes to God, and says, "send me, and I'll redeem everyone." Similarly, the only begotten comes to God and says, "They will be done." God condemns Satan, because Satan wanted to force people to do that which God wanted people to choose. This, then, is the problem with Satan - not the end desired, but the method of arriving at that end. (Note, many, many characteristics which are attributed to Satan, are not, but are due to the creativity and selfishness of humankind.)

This is the problem with Eugenics. That is, the goal is a noble goal, and I would hope that people could set up conditions that would allow it to be accomplished. However, eugenics will not accomplish this.

That is, the program was talking about selectively impregnating women with the sperm of men who have succeeded. (One problem is immediately obvious. What about the genes of women who succeed?) The problem is that too often success is dependent, not on intelligence, or any other identifiable trait, but rather is dependent on luck. That is, if a person happens to be born to wealthy parents, they will probably succeed. If they don't, they are really bad.

On the other hand, a person born to parents who are poor are not allowed to succeed, particularly in the United States. (Many other nations have free education at all levels.)

All one needs to do is compare Bill Gates, who was born of very wealthy parents, and Linux Torvells, who was born of poor parents. Bill Gates is really not particularly intelligent, and really doesn't show that much creativity. Most of his success has been due to theft, and copyright infringement, most notably MS_DOS, which was a copy of the CP/M operating system. However, he has been extremely successful. Linus, on the other hand, had parents that were so poor that people had to buy him a computer after he wrote the Linux operating system. Today he has made some money, perhaps millions, from the operating system, but only because of donations. Linux wrote the Linux operating system by himself, and, while this did not show extremes in creativity (he copied ideas from the Minix operating sustem) he did it himself. I would suspect that if he were born in the United States he would not have been allowed to get a college education, nor would he be allowed the time to follow this pursuit.

There is a quote I've seen attributed to Thomas Jefferson (I think it was on a government report) which he made in support of public education. The gist is that a poor man is just as likely to be brilliant as a rich man. Therefore, education should be free so that everyone could develop their talents.

This shows the problem with Eugenics. Too often people, even educated people, tend to see the limitations of poverty rather than then the talent which held back by that poverty. For example, my father was forced by circumstances to quit school in the eighth grade. Despite this, I see him as very intelligent, perhaps one of the most intelligent people I've ever known. Were eugenics in force, I would not have been born because people would have seen the limitations he was force to live under, and not the intelligence.

Another problem is culture. For example, I read a book years ago that mentioned a story about the joy which an early Indian chief felt when the British offered to take some Indian boys to be educated in the best European schools. He thought the idea of a culture exchange was good. What he couldn't understand was why the British were unwilling to allow some of the British children to be educated in the tribal ways.

I suspect the Eugenicist at that time would have not selected the Indian people for reproduction because they didn't meet the arbitrary standards of the European aristocracy.

And I could go on. Einstein's father failed at everything he tried, and was bailed out only because of his brothers. Again, the Eugenicist would have insisted that the elder Einstein not reproduce, and Albert would never have been born. And what about Mendelson, who is the father of genetics? He was considered eccentric at best.

That fact is, we don't know what constitutes even what we consider important traits. Therefore, any attempt to proliferate these traits would be bound to fail, or, at best, not succeed any more often than the natural eugenics that I talked about earlier.