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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   38166 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Wow, those Jews and their International Zionist Conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, who could be up to them?

I'm not Jewish and I think eugenics is bonkers and evil. The Nazis just took it to the logical extreme, but before the war there were Eugenics Societies popping up everywhere happily planning the betterment of the human race (by letting the superior stock breed and discouraging the undesirables).

If you think the 'forty years of unscrupulous Jewish conspiracy to stop the goyim from practicing eugenics to improve themselves' is bad, be glad Francis Galton never got his way to make eugenics a common social practice. In order to marry and have kids, you (a gentleman) would need to be working towards your Certificate of Fitness since you were a child, being assessed and scored by your teachers and others all the way up to and through university, until finally you got a high enough score to be a potential spouse.

Meanwhile the young ladies would be advised by their families, and the prospect of an uneugenic marriage would be regarded with the same scorn and detestation as incest. Forget falling in love, that's romantic nonsense the young are confused by, sensible mothers and the neighbourhood nosey parkers would make sure Mabel marries Philip and not Terrance.

I am not one bit surprised Jewish people would think eugenics a discredited notion and work against it.

But here was me thinking Jewish eugenics was "make sure before marriage that you're not carrying the genes for the various bad syndromes that Jewish populations are at high risk of due to centuries of in-breeding in a small genetic pool", but no! It is all a secret plot to reap the benefits of the Super Master Smart Race for themselves and keep it from us Gentiles!

The plot must be working, I feel I have lost 10 IQ points reading the post above.

Meanwhile the young ladies would be advised by their families, and the prospect of an uneugenic marriage would be regarded with the same scorn and detestation as incest. Forget falling in love, that's romantic nonsense the young are confused by,

A common fallacy I've seen is to compare one historical ideology/cultural practice with modern life, and use that comparison as a point against the historical version.

But a much more fair comparison would be the one Galton made, which compares his proposed eugenic society to real life 1860-1870 England:

"The best form of civilization in respect to the improvement of the race, would be one in which society was not costly; where incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources, and not much through inheritance; where every lad had a chance of showing his abilities, and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education and entrance into professional life, by the liberal help of the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in his early youth; where marriage was held in as high honor as in ancient Jewish times;" - Galton 1869

Note the alternative Galton is comparing to is marriages based on inherited title and income. Do you believe that real world alternative in 1869 was better than Galton's proposal?

The Nazis just took it to the logical extreme,

No. The Nazis did their own thing that was not particularly related to actual eugenic proposals. Since you invoke Galton, here's the rest of the quote above:

"where the pride of race was encouraged (of course I do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the present day, that goes under that name); where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, and lastly, where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed, and their descendants naturalized." - Galton, 1869

Galton was generally a friend to Anglo-Jewry and viewed them favorably, as anyone who actually read him would realize: https://galton.org/essays/1900-1911/galton-1910-jewish-chronicle-eugenics.pdf

I'm not Jewish and I think eugenics is bonkers and evil.

You believe the concept itself is evil, or are you just quibbling about the particular method?

Embryo selection- bad too ?

How about cloning exceptional people. Bad ? Why?

How about encouraging women for whom pregnancy is uncomplicated to have a 3rd, 4th child via IVF, based on some very good sperm ? Why is that 'evil' ?

Everyone is pro eugenics. Just ask them if a brother and sister should be allowed to copulate and bear children

The taboo against consanguineous relationships has existed for thousands of years without leading to piles of skulls.

Yes but why should we need such archaic laws and taboos? The taboos against homosexuals also existed for thousands of years without skulls. So meh

Also eugenics has been around for thousands of years in other forms. Baby looks kinda weird? Throw it off a cliff or leave it exposed to the wilderness. Meh.

That doesn't change his point. His point was that it's still eugenics. Regardless of whatever the reason may be. In a rudimentary sense, we're 'all' involved in some form of eugenic practice. If I undergo the subconscious analysis of looking at a woman, and I decide the size of her hips make her a good candidate for having my children, that's a basic eugenic practice. People are always afraid of discussing it at the easiest level though, because they're afraid that you're going to trade on that basic agreement over terms, as a way to push for large-scale, sociopolitical policies that justify someone's comprehensive program of eugenics.

That doesn't change his point. His point was that it's still eugenics.

A point responded to a century ago. (Part I, Chapter 2, paragraph three.)

I read it, but I'm not sure how that's an adequate answer to what I've said, but I suppose it's a reply. Unless there's something I'm missing.

Did you know that thinking incest is icky is just dumb prejudice based on nothing? I've had to trawl through some of the Father of Eugenics, Francis Galton's, essays and hoo boy. His point there is that there is just social prejudice against incest, without really a factual basis (brother and sister banging and having kids is no big deal, it only gets to be a big deal if you keep inbreeding) and so in the same way, harnessing the same social forces, we can make people frown on dysgenic marriages and treat them like incest!

The Nazis may have given eugenics a black eye, but all the attitudes were baked in from the start. Oooh, they didn't know about genetics? They got the idea of contaminating the pure bloodline wrong? Well back in the day the Eugenics enthusiasts had the same attitudes: all those incapables and lower class types breeding and having children and smothering the good bloodlines.

Galton loved him some statistics and worked out an entire classification system of "good to bad" for humans re: eugenic stock, and backed it up with his stats.

As it will be useful henceforth to distinguish these classes, I have used the capital or large letters R, S, T, U, V, for those above mediocrity and corresponding italic or small letters, r, s, t, u, v, for those below mediocrity, r being the counterpart of R, s of S, and so on.

The one point I will give Galton is that he was more interested in encouraging the 'good stock' to breed than trammeling the rights of the 'inferior stock', though he did think they should be encouraged not to marry etc. A lot more of the Eugenics types were way too interested in working out exactly what desert island they could lock all the undesirables up on so they would be removed from the gene pool:

Many who are familiar with the habits of these people do not hesitate to say that it would be an economy and a great benefit to the country if all habitual criminals were resolutely segregated under merciful surveillance and peremptorily denied opportunities for producing offspring. It would abolish a source of suffering and misery to a future generation, and would cause no unwarrantable hardship in this.

This is how you find the few really high-quality candidates for marriage and offspring:

Diplomas.—It will be remembered that Mr. Booth’s classification did not help us beyond classes higher than S in civic worth. If a strong and widely felt desire should arise to discover young men whose position was of the V, W or X order, there would not be much difficulty in doing so. Let us imagine, for a moment, what might be done in any great University, where the students are in continual competition in studies, in athletics, or in public meetings, and where their characters are publicly known to associates and to tutors. Before attempting to make a selection, acceptable definitions of civic worth would have to be made in alternative terms, for there are many forms of civic worth. The number of men of the V, W or X classes whom the University was qualified to contribute annually must also be ascertained. As was said, the proportion in the general population of the V class to the remainder is as 1 to 300, and that of the W class as 1 in 3000. But students are a somewhat selected body because the cleverest youths, in a scholastic sense, usually find their way to Universities. A considerably high level, both intellectually and physically, would be required as a qualification for candidature. The limited number who had not been automatically weeded away by this condition might be submitted in some appropriate way to the independent votes of fellow-students on the one hand, and of tutors on the other, whose ideals of character and merit necessarily differ. This ordeal would reduce the possible winners to a very small number, out of which an independent committee might be trusted to make the ultimate selection. They would be guided by personal interviews. They would take into consideration all favourable points in the family histories of the candidates, giving appropriate hereditary weight to each. Probably they would agree to pass over unfavourable points, unless they were notorious and flagrant, owing to the great difficulty of ascertaining the real truth about them. Ample experience in making selections has been acquired even by scientific societies, most of which work well, including perhaps the award of their medals, which the fortunate recipients at least are tempted to consider judicious. The opportunities for selecting women in this way are unfortunately fewer, owing to the smaller number of female students between whom comparisons might be made on equal terms. In the selection of women, when nothing is known of their athletic proficiency, it would be especially necessary to pass a high and careful medical examination ; and as their personal qualities do not usually admit of being tested so thoroughly as those of men, it would be necessary to lay all the more stress on hereditary family qualities, including those of fertility and prepotency.

It is terribly weak.

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