On eugenics
I worship Plato and oppose democracy and liberalism. My totalitarianism would have, however, insurmountable limits: no one could decide on other people’s marriages, and eugenics would be prohibited (both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’).
You can’t know everything, and if you don’t know everything, you’re bound to make monstrous mistakes whenever you intervene in these matters.
Without going into monstrous outcomes, let’s just think about the immense number of interconnected elements like these. Something good linked to something bad; not to mention things that aren’t even clear whether they are bad or good:
— I read, a while ago, that the predisposition to suffer from anxiety disorders was genetically related to joint flexibility. More recently, I read that resistance to local anesthetics was rife among red-haired people. I am particularly keen on these topics. I have resistance to local anesthesias, despite not being a red-haired except for some hairs on my sparse beard. My joints are remarkably flexible. Finally, I have exceptional reflexes too: it must have a connection with other genetic features — and not, as has been frequently said, with physical conditioning, which I have never had: this one was therefore a false connection, as well as sleazy.
The word eugenics, like euthanasia (which means good death), is treacherous: no one (who weren’t possessed by envy and/or dullness) would oppose eugenics if, in practice, it unequivocally meant good birth, good offspring, good genetic makeup. In that sense, one could say that spontaneously, with every decision, big or small, that humans make in their lives, they already apply a eugenic criterion: when they choose the mother or father of their children, when they go to the movies, when they buy a book, etc. Obviously, this isn’t the sense in which the eugenics are debated, but rather the, shall we say, laboratory sense.
The two positions presented by mass media to us as the only ones opposed to eugenics are (1) the one that protests because eugenics would become a privilege of the rich, and (2) the one that warns that we should not meddle in God’s domain - but in a way that God’s will is portrayed as arbitrary or detached from any purely empirical and rational reluctance to eugenics.
Regarding the latter, (2) [belief in God as a necessary and sufficient condition for resolving the dilemma], I recently stated that it applies to the case of euthanasia, and, lest the inclusion not be obvious, I now add that it applies (in the same way and for the same reason) to the cases of suicide and abortion. But the case of eugenics, on the contrary, I believe has a purely ‘earthly’ objection — one that does not require supernatural gifts to be accepted.
The problem with eugenics isn’t that a God with criteria beyond our human knowledge and understanding would punish the rebel, nor is it that eugenics would become a privilege of the elites: the problem (as I said earlier in this thread) is that we can’t know absolutely all the data we would need to avoid achieving just the opposite of what we intended with eugenic intervention in the laboratory.
Some clues had already been pointed out in this post, but now I’m going to illustrate everything I’ve said with the example of Handel.
What allowed this man to compose a work like Messiah in just three weeks? Many ‘experts’ might interpret what they call ‘bipolar disorder’ as a flaw that could and should be not only remedied (!) but directly eradicated (through the laboratory).
Would it have been better for Handel not to be ‘bipolar’? Would it have been better for everyone? Would it have been better, in general, absolute terms, if Handel hadn’t been the way he was, if he hadn’t done the things he did, if he had done other things — in short, would it have been better if Handel hadn’t existed? Would it be better to prevent someone like Handel from existing in the future (through laboratory manipulation)?
Studies claim that deep and prolonged sadness damages and shrinks brain cells.
On the other hand, many people who have gone through deep and prolonged sadness demonstrate that their brains function better than the brains of those who are eternally euthymic — emotionally flat.
Assuming that the former observation — on brain cells — were as true as the latter one undoubtedly is, there would be two possible explanations for the compatibility of both occurrences:
— either the stimulation and insights that deep and prolonged sadness also bring are so powerful and numerous that they make the mind more capable despite the damage and shrinking of brain cells, or
— some minds are so capable that they remain far superior even after the damage and shrinking of brain cells and even when the stimulation and insights from sadness do not compensate for the loss.
In any case, it could be eugenically counterproductive if, after assuming that we know which genes are related to sadness, we proceeded to eradicate them.