6 ms·

The daylight between instituting a parenting license and eugenics is not very much.

monkeywork 3y ago
that's a hell of a leap - saying take some basic classes (likely not that much unlike how catholic churches require couples classes prior to marrying folks) to understand how to properly care for a child is nothing like eugenics and gene manipulation.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  All eugenics requires is reducing to fertility of a target undesired population to below sustenance. It's actually extremely easy to do because of how 'invisible' it is. Imagine there was a society where literally every single woman had an average of 1 child. It'd be quite weird to claim they were being driven extinct as everybody loads up on diapers, yet that society's population would indeed be trending towards 0 at an exponential rate, but with an 80 year 'lag' in the first wave of deaths that would mask the impact. And country after country has demonstrated how relatively easy it seems to be to reduce fertility. Iran is a not so well known example. Back in the 80s Iran started to feel that their fertility was a problem. Their population was growing far faster than they had the resources to sustain, so they instituted birth control availability and mandated 'marriage classes' [1], not entirely unlike what's being suggested here. And in these classes they worked to try to reduce overall fertility. It succeeded far beyond any expectation. Their fertility went from 6+ to 2 in less than a decade. And then it just kept dropping. Today it's down to below 1.7 and it keeps falling. They've long since tried to reverse this trend and started an equal but opposite pro fertility program, but like China also showed - it's far easier to reduce a population's fertility, than it is to bring it back up. These sort of programs work as a perfectly viable proof of concept of a practically invisible eugenics program, and that's quite dangerous. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran
  - dustypotato 3y ago
    > Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. What you described is not eugenics though.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      Eugenics is generally carried out not through selective breeding, but by removing the populations you do not want to breed. Same thing in 20th century America where the main effort was simply on removing elements from society that "we" didn't want breeding - which has the same effect while reducing the constraints on liberty, which would not be well received otherwise. See, for instance, the famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Interestingly enough, the ruling from that court case (Buck v Bell) was never formally overturned. It's simply that eugenics fell out of fashion, following it being taken to extremes by a certain vegetarian artist in Germany with a knack for rhetoric.
      - EGreg 3y ago
        People have this weird thing where, if something comes about as an emergent property of a market system, then it’s fine, but otherwise a much more carefully organized result is not fine. Like if corporations raced towards an AI apocalypse then there’s no one to blame but if a central planner did it, then that would be an evil plan that should be stopped. Same with non biodegradeable plastic, destruction of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, and so on. (By contrast to all these, fossil fuels are a slowpoke.) For example — we don’t particularly need to do anything to reduce birth rates of technologically advanced societies societies with human rights. That’s because women choose to study and work on their career in their 20s, while men try hard to save up to afford the sky-high real estate prices. The market does the eugenics for everyone. If anything, the fear that uneducated populations or those in low-cost-of-living countries are going to “replace us” is a result of that simple fact. Comparing continents, Africa is expected to continue to have a ton of kids per woman compared to, say, Europe or USA. Religion, of course plays a role. When the condoms are off, the religion doesn’t matter — you’re going to have a lot of babies. The only difference is, how early do you get married? Religions tend to frown on premarital sex.
- NiloCK 3y ago
  ... and if you fail the class?
andsoisthis 3y ago
Well there already is eugenic like behavior going on. Partners select for money, tall and handsome. It's just not framed that way. End result is the same.
- mediaperpetuals 3y ago
  The media perpetuates certain ideals deemed desirable, the masses follow. You don't need a vegetarian artist somewhere in Europe spewing nonsense. You can still achieve the same thing. I would even go as far to say that modern day advertising and public relations borrowed a lot from Goebbels.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    As much as I loathe advertising, I think this assessment is provably wrong. We're genetically driven to pick out mates most likely to produce fertile, healthy, and effective offspring. Even in relatively isolated tribes with 0 access to advertising of any sort, preferences like low waist-to-hip ratios are ubiquitous [1] (random study that also references a bunch of others - this is not a controversial statement). The reason is that low waist-to-hip ratios correlates with all sorts of health, fertility, and genetic strengths. So we are genetically attracted to such. I think you could also make an argument in reverse here as well. An increasingly large chunk of Western advertising is actively seeking to push values like contravening said genetic proclivities, yet it seems to have had little to no impact on what people find attractive. That's even more telling as obesity is rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01916-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01916-9
localplume 3y ago
[dead]
stared 3y ago
[flagged]
- boffinAudio 3y ago
  Eugenics is a vile and repugnant subject to be supporting. Nobody is qualified to state whether another human being should be allowed to live on the basis of 'faults' in their person. It is a totalitarian-authoritarian dogma that must die. EDIT: downvoters showing their roots. Come on, engage in the dialog and defend eugenics ...
  - stared 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - boffinAudio 3y ago
      Absolutely nonsense. You are attempting to equivocate heinous racist ideology with 'natural cause'. EDIT: those defending eugenics without engaging in dialog, by downvoting, are showing their real mettle. Eugenics dogma must die. NONE of you are qualified to make the call.. every single one of you could be qualified for the cull.
    - bdowling 3y ago
      > Eu-genics is literally good-birth. This is a reverse straw man argument [0]. You present your position as something easy to defend (good birth, choice of mates, good diet, etc.), even though some parts of it (forced sterilizations, genocide, etc.) are difficult or impossible to defend. [0] https://en.liberpedia.org/Reverse_straw_man https://en.liberpedia.org/Reverse_straw_man
      - stared 3y ago
        A false dichotomy. It is like saying that if I one is in favor of medicine, they are in favor of the human vivisection and lobotomy. We can (and often - need to be) selective. I don’t argue for every kind if eugenics. Yes, a lot of it were atrocious. And I am against that as well. Yet, I guess you are in favor of things we already do (mentioned in my previous comment).
literalis 3y ago
[flagged]
- esalman 3y ago
  Close to 10 years of marriage and one child. I agree with the sentiment of the OP.
sacado2 3y ago
"Preventing births within a group" is one of the definitions of a genocide.

that's a hell of a leap - saying take some basic classes (likely not that much unlike how catholic churches require couples classes prior to marrying folks) to understand how to properly care for a child is nothing like eugenics and gene manipulation.

somenameforme 3y ago
All eugenics requires is reducing to fertility of a target undesired population to below sustenance. It's actually extremely easy to do because of how 'invisible' it is. Imagine there was a society where literally every single woman had an average of 1 child. It'd be quite weird to claim they were being driven extinct as everybody loads up on diapers, yet that society's population would indeed be trending towards 0 at an exponential rate, but with an 80 year 'lag' in the first wave of deaths that would mask the impact. And country after country has demonstrated how relatively easy it seems to be to reduce fertility. Iran is a not so well known example. Back in the 80s Iran started to feel that their fertility was a problem. Their population was growing far faster than they had the resources to sustain, so they instituted birth control availability and mandated 'marriage classes' [1], not entirely unlike what's being suggested here. And in these classes they worked to try to reduce overall fertility. It succeeded far beyond any expectation. Their fertility went from 6+ to 2 in less than a decade. And then it just kept dropping. Today it's down to below 1.7 and it keeps falling. They've long since tried to reverse this trend and started an equal but opposite pro fertility program, but like China also showed - it's far easier to reduce a population's fertility, than it is to bring it back up. These sort of programs work as a perfectly viable proof of concept of a practically invisible eugenics program, and that's quite dangerous. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran
- dustypotato 3y ago
  > Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. What you described is not eugenics though.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Eugenics is generally carried out not through selective breeding, but by removing the populations you do not want to breed. Same thing in 20th century America where the main effort was simply on removing elements from society that "we" didn't want breeding - which has the same effect while reducing the constraints on liberty, which would not be well received otherwise. See, for instance, the famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Interestingly enough, the ruling from that court case (Buck v Bell) was never formally overturned. It's simply that eugenics fell out of fashion, following it being taken to extremes by a certain vegetarian artist in Germany with a knack for rhetoric.
    - EGreg 3y ago
      People have this weird thing where, if something comes about as an emergent property of a market system, then it’s fine, but otherwise a much more carefully organized result is not fine. Like if corporations raced towards an AI apocalypse then there’s no one to blame but if a central planner did it, then that would be an evil plan that should be stopped. Same with non biodegradeable plastic, destruction of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, and so on. (By contrast to all these, fossil fuels are a slowpoke.) For example — we don’t particularly need to do anything to reduce birth rates of technologically advanced societies societies with human rights. That’s because women choose to study and work on their career in their 20s, while men try hard to save up to afford the sky-high real estate prices. The market does the eugenics for everyone. If anything, the fear that uneducated populations or those in low-cost-of-living countries are going to “replace us” is a result of that simple fact. Comparing continents, Africa is expected to continue to have a ton of kids per woman compared to, say, Europe or USA. Religion, of course plays a role. When the condoms are off, the religion doesn’t matter — you’re going to have a lot of babies. The only difference is, how early do you get married? Religions tend to frown on premarital sex.
NiloCK 3y ago
... and if you fail the class?

andsoisthis 3y ago

Well there already is eugenic like behavior going on. Partners select for money, tall and handsome. It's just not framed that way. End result is the same.

mediaperpetuals 3y ago
The media perpetuates certain ideals deemed desirable, the masses follow. You don't need a vegetarian artist somewhere in Europe spewing nonsense. You can still achieve the same thing. I would even go as far to say that modern day advertising and public relations borrowed a lot from Goebbels.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  As much as I loathe advertising, I think this assessment is provably wrong. We're genetically driven to pick out mates most likely to produce fertile, healthy, and effective offspring. Even in relatively isolated tribes with 0 access to advertising of any sort, preferences like low waist-to-hip ratios are ubiquitous [1] (random study that also references a bunch of others - this is not a controversial statement). The reason is that low waist-to-hip ratios correlates with all sorts of health, fertility, and genetic strengths. So we are genetically attracted to such. I think you could also make an argument in reverse here as well. An increasingly large chunk of Western advertising is actively seeking to push values like contravening said genetic proclivities, yet it seems to have had little to no impact on what people find attractive. That's even more telling as obesity is rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01916-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01916-9

localplume 3y ago

[dead]

stared 3y ago

[flagged]

boffinAudio 3y ago
Eugenics is a vile and repugnant subject to be supporting. Nobody is qualified to state whether another human being should be allowed to live on the basis of 'faults' in their person. It is a totalitarian-authoritarian dogma that must die. EDIT: downvoters showing their roots. Come on, engage in the dialog and defend eugenics ...
- stared 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - boffinAudio 3y ago
    Absolutely nonsense. You are attempting to equivocate heinous racist ideology with 'natural cause'. EDIT: those defending eugenics without engaging in dialog, by downvoting, are showing their real mettle. Eugenics dogma must die. NONE of you are qualified to make the call.. every single one of you could be qualified for the cull.
  - bdowling 3y ago
    > Eu-genics is literally good-birth. This is a reverse straw man argument [0]. You present your position as something easy to defend (good birth, choice of mates, good diet, etc.), even though some parts of it (forced sterilizations, genocide, etc.) are difficult or impossible to defend. [0] https://en.liberpedia.org/Reverse_straw_man https://en.liberpedia.org/Reverse_straw_man
    - stared 3y ago
      A false dichotomy. It is like saying that if I one is in favor of medicine, they are in favor of the human vivisection and lobotomy. We can (and often - need to be) selective. I don’t argue for every kind if eugenics. Yes, a lot of it were atrocious. And I am against that as well. Yet, I guess you are in favor of things we already do (mentioned in my previous comment).

literalis 3y ago

[flagged]

esalman 3y ago
Close to 10 years of marriage and one child. I agree with the sentiment of the OP.

sacado2 3y ago

"Preventing births within a group" is one of the definitions of a genocide.