Can Eugenics Be Right at All?
Ask Michurin! Well, you'll have to wait until you can accost him.
Welcome to the real world, Neo!
If you haven’t seen the movie, Idiocracy (2006), perhaps it’s not late, although it’s been becoming more and more difficult to find as a movie, but quite easy to experience it in reality. Netflix, assuming you are not completely disgusted of giving it business, offers it as a DVD rental at https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Idiocracy/70028899.
Ebay is offering the DVD for about $7.50 in the US, including shipping; Blu-ray is not available. Haven’t checked anywhere else.
Judging from the comments on Netflix, Amazon, or IMDb, those, who would snugly fit into the not-so-bright future projected in the movie, strongly dislike it (probably take it personally), while the sarcasm is not lost on anyone, who would not be admitted the US police force (usually, nobody above an IQ of 110 is accepted).
I trust, my readers will not be bothered by the little things!
The origin of eugenics
There have always been bloodlines that were considered or, considered themselves, superior. The concept usually led to in-breeding.
In ancient Egyptian poetry, “my sister” and “my love” were the same word! Incest was mandatory for the descendants of the Sun God, so it was unusual for pharaohs to live a long and healthy life.
In-breeding among royalty has been a multicentenarian tradition that also led to disastrous results for royal lines. The Spanish Hapsburgs, for one, preferred to die out than refresh their genetic makeup by admitting outsiders:
Good genetic code can be created
It was a Russian botanist and agriculturist, Michurin (1855 — 1935), who first cross-bred species of fruit trees successfully. In his case, even Wikipedia suffices for an introduction:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Vladimirovich_Michurin
The method became popular and cross-breeding caught up among farmers, who wanted to have crops that would resist pathogens or bad weather more than the ones coming from traditional seeds and even among animals-breeders, who wanted to have more resilient animals, cows that gave more milk, or new, marketable dog-breeds.
The traditional British school system separated social classes with its zoning principles, which was based on property taxes. In the US, whenever children from poor districts were bused around to the schools of the affluent, the experiment failed. Don’t ask me who is to blame.
Eugenics
According to the politically-correct definition of Eugenics (e.g. in Wikipedia), it is a pseudo-science that propagates the elimination of inferior genes from the genetic pool of humanity and encourages, or even enforces the proliferation of those who are deemed “superior.” Considering the outcome of unharnessed breeding in Idiocracy, the idea doesn’t sound fatefully wrong.
The major problem with the officially-dismissed version is that its critics automatically assume that it is race-based. There are definitely trends that show how specific races outperform others in various domains on average, but generalizing deprives the researcher of his humanity and turns him, along with his subjects, into a statistician (which is how allopathic “doctors” operate in the West). I don’t think even Michurin would agree with that! My favorite counter-example is a black scholar, Thomas Sowell, whose quotes are worth reading (a lot of times, he spoke my mind before I even discovered him):
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2056.Thomas_Sowell
On the other hand, an anecdote about Mark Twain has also stood the test of time:
A beautiful, but not-very-smart lady said to Mark Twain,
“Imagine, master, how wonderful our children would be! They could inherit my beauty and your intelligence!”
The author’s reply left no room for misunderstanding,
“Yes, ma’m, but let’s not forget that our progeny might end up the other way around!”
Certain traits seem to be hereditary by race, but race alone cannot be blamed for all the characteristic differences between humans. Primary socialization (in English: a lifestyle based on specific cultural premises) seems to play a lot more decisive part in upbringing (an observation that can be easily made in mixed-race neighborhoods in races with identical socioeconomic backgrounds, usually belonging to the lower-middle class, that is people who work for their money), especially because it cannot be reprogrammed even by the world’s most expensive psychologists.
Ultimately, personal characteristics that are ingrained by culture don’t have to coincide with racial identities and the dispute between nature and nurture or, if you prefer, blood or breed, has not been settled.
Modern genetic modification
The charlatans of modern genetic modification applied Michurin’s idea to the development of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in a business context, where GMO seeds can be planted and grown, but the crops are infertile, so they cannot be used for planting for another year. At the same time, even rats die, when kept on GMOs and pigs, when offered identical-looking stuff, always choose non-GMO over GMO. GMO labeling is becoming unreliable:
https://gmoanswers.com/truth-behind-gmo-labeling
The global bankers are taking control of food supplies. They are doing a good job at it, considering that only a handful of their corporations supply much of the world with food.
The same quacks, who want people to drink their recycled piss (without removing any chemicals, but generously adding some), to eat bugs, lab-made “meat,” and destroy gut bacteria with GMO produce, are now claiming that they have mapped up the human genome to the point that they can turn people into superhuman entities, who can outperform the current stock. They also want to breed humans into a new race, whose members will be infinitely superior to those, who have been sired by fathers and born from mothers. As usual, their “science” is flawed, because their calculations cannot rely on more than the available data. Human traits usually come from a combination of sequences in the genetic code, but the sequences vary and are nearly impossible to isolate, and the combinations have never even been mapped up (they tend to exhibit differences even from person to person, so good luck to the endeavor). Moreover, the codes kaleidoscopically change from time to time, resulting in sequences that have never been seen before. The sequences also exhibit multi-dimensional structures that dynamically change in dimensionality, complexity, variety, and priorities, depending on variables that are unlikely to be ever identified, because genetic history is simply not long enough to be successfully analyzed even by the smartest AI in history. The available data will always stay insufficient!
Who is a “superior” human?
Sometime in the 1970s, psychologists tried to see how far they could agree. There were already hundreds of divisions (“schools”) among them, all successful, based on their marketability. From a therapeutic point of view, they managed to agree on two common denominators:
Listening to the patient works.
When the sense of continuity is lost to the self, the patient loses his mind (well, it could be the other way around, too, but who said psychologists know what they are talking about).
Much more excitingly, apart from the two principles, they managed to agree that a human being needs about 250 years in order to develop into a “mature person.” Whatever that means, it doesn’t look promising for the future of mankind!
So, if someone wants to determine how to breed the finest human specimen successfully, the targeted traits must be identified first!
How could anyone do that before reaching the age of 250 years?
I do bristle (back of neck? I guess) at the idea that 'It was a Russian botanist and agriculturist, Michurin (1855 — 1935), who first cross-bred species of fruit trees successfully' as humans have been at plant breeding for much longer. One specific would be to look at the selective breeding that became the grains as we know them, still in great variety, mostly by human endeavor, and of course the breeding livestock. The variety of types of corn derives from human crossbreeding. So, maybe the first record Wikipedia lists is ....possibly....kind of.....ignoring millenia.
https://archive.org/details/Idiocracy_201507