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The dictionary defines a "mongrel" as a mixed-breed animal or plant. The preponderence of the evidence indicates that mongrels often have various superior traits, when compared to their parent-breeds. Those superiorities, in biological terms, are usually lumped together under the heading of "hybrid
vigor".
To obtain a hybrid specimen, simply take any existing species and divide it into two populations. Over several generations, selectively inbreed one population for a particular trait such as disease-resistance, and selectively inbreed the other population for some other trait, such as beauty. About the time when further inbreeding becomes difficult due to accumulation of bad genes (along with the desired one), that is when the two isolated populations are cross-bred. The resulting hybrid usually has both desired traits, and suffers from hardly any bad genes.
The bad-genes thing is easily explained: Since genes tend to come in pairs, on pairs of DNA strands, if one of the pair is defective, usually it is "shut off" and the other gene takes charge. Well, in isolated inbred populations, WHICH bad genes that accumulate tend to be different. So when cross-breeding takes place, almost every bad gene in Population A gets matched up with a good gene from Population B, and vice-versa. So, with the bad genes switched off and the good genes in charge, the hybrid specimen is indeed superior to its parents.
Okay, folks, the human race spread out across the planet, and major groups isolated themselves voluntarily for millenia. There are 5 major "breeds" of humanity, most obviously recognized by skin color, but there are a number of sub-breeds, as well.
We have a fair amount of historical evidence that hybrid vigor is as true of humans as it is of any other species. For example, in the United States today most "black" people are mongrels (no offense intended! --just using dictionary meaning in proper context) that have some "white" ancestry. Just compare them to freshly-immigrating Blacks from Africa, and the dilution of "blackness" in America is obvious.
Meanwhile, a rather large percentage of top American athletes (including the famous Jesse Owens who showed the Nazis the false basis of their ideology in the 1936 Olympics), are "black". I say this is NOT a coincidence; this is proof of hybrid vigor!
Therefore I recommend a great deal of interbreeding in the future! The resulting Mongrel Humanity will by definition of the hybridization process be Superior. Hopefully, during all the years it takes all the combinations of cross-breeds (white + yellow, red + black, brown + white, etc.) to grow up and interbreed some more, we can keep that biological superiority from going to their heads....! (On the other hand, if everyone today participates, then everyone becomes part of the parentage of Mongrel Humanity, and all the Ultimate Mongrels eventually born will be equivalently hybrid, with no one being able to claim biological superiority over any other.)
Coffee Coloured World
http://www.halfbake...ee-coloured_20world
Same discussion, different day. [UnaBubba, May 05 2002]
melting pot as sung by blue mink...
http://www.geocitie...zone_MeltingPot.htm
[po, May 05 2002]
Malthusian Catastrophe In Sight
http://www.observer...6903,750783,00.html
The evidence is accumulting, folks, that there are too many people. [Vernon, Jul 08 2002]
[link]
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I am absolutely certain we've already done this one here. |
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UnaBubba, I think that was me, annotating some other idea. Finally got around to making it stand on its own. |
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--OK nope, that was an independent discussion. Still, I think I did indeed annotate some other idea quite a while back. (And now I have to read "Coffee Coloured World" to see if the hybrid vigor aspect is mentioned.) |
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OK I looked, and sure enough, hybrid vigor is indeed mentioned. But it is not mentioned as the primary reason to do all that interbreeding, as is described here. Can that difference set this idea apart sufficiently? Also, I might mention that in Larry Niven's "Ringworld", he described Earthly humanity as having basically interbred simply as a consequence of the availability easy global transportation, for centuries. Niven's coffee-colored world is a simple byproduct, and not associated with a deliberate improve-the-species goal. |
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Isn't this just another form of eugenics (which is currently seen as a morally bad thing)? |
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On the other hand, I often think of the hybrid vigor aspect when I hear morons talking about how AIDS is a natural punishment for homosexuality. It comforts my mind a bit to imagine that missing out on the hybrid vigor is a natural punishment for racism. |
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beauxeault, the bad rep that eugenics has acquired is mostly due to mis-use of the idea. And a large part of that is due to sheer arbitrariness when defining "superior" traits. Eugenics will become acceptable only if two things happen: (1) A large majority of people have common and technically precise definitions of both "superior" and "inferior"; (2) Everyone gets a chance to contribute to the future of humanity, regardless of inferiority or superiority. |
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With respect to #2, the way to do that is to take DNA samples of everybody, and put them into storage. As genetic engineering techniques progress, every good thing about every person's DNA can be catalogued. In the future, each new person's genetics can be randomly selected from all the "good" stuff, and only the good stuff, with an emphasis on parental contributions. (People DO tend to prefer that their offspring are actually theirs, of course.) |
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With respect to #1, it is easy to think of things that one person might believe is superior, while another might believe is inferior. Traditional eugenics has acted harshly to suppress the declared-inferior, and promoted excess breeding by the supposedly-superior. I can understand some of that rationale, but have to outright disagree that excess breeding is any sort of good idea in an overpopulated world. With respect to suppressed breeding, well, provided #2 is in place, perhaps that can become more acceptable. Shall we start thinking of a list of types of people who shouldn't be allowed to breed? |
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(1)Rapists, murderers, and various other criminals (such as those who borrow lots of money, live high on the hog, and then declare bankruptcy so they don't have to pay it back). |
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(2)Drug addicts. (This is not a criminal behavior; susceptibility to addiction is a natural part of the human organism. But the lack of self-control that addicts exhibit is not only akin to a similar lack exhibited by various criminals, it also causes personal biology to be damaged to the extent that offspring can be defected -- and NOBODY has a right to inflict defects onto anybody!) |
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(3)Anybody who made a selfish decision that, without modern medical technology, would have led to his or her own death. Remember that people who die are biologically equivalent to people who are sterile -- and without modern medicine. the specified group of selfish decision-makers would both be dead and not-breeding. We may strive to keep those people alive, but letting them pass their selfish-decision genes onto their offspring is not a smart decision for the rest of us! (Naturally, non-selfish decisions, such as soldiers are supposed to make in desperate combat, can also be fatal. We WANT more of those kind of people! And, please note that there is a fine line between bad decisions and bad luck. A person boarding a plane is making an ordinary decision; if the plane gets hijacked, that is bad luck. Sterilizing the terminally unlucky might be worthwile only if it could be proved that luck is something that breeding can enhance) |
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Vernon, when you set out to le pen this idea, I doubt you had a flamewar in mind. Keep going and you'll see just what one looks like, from up close. |
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There is NO right or wrong, there's just our willingness to categorise others by our prejudices, OK? |
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- and when Mephista [the embodiment of the Devil's Advocate?] warns you that you are treading on thin ice, your idea must be truly volatile. Let's not and say we did. |
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Maestro, do you assume that Mephista means she is a Satanist when she calls herself a witch? I believe she uses the term to describe herself as a Wiccan, which is different enough that she may take some umbrage at your characterization. |
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I really hope Vernon's joking. Eugenics is flawed because it's based on the idea that Darwinism can and should be applied to human society, that evolution=progress=greater complexity, and survival/fitness=virtue, which is complete bollocks. If you view biological success as your virtue, we should be looking to turn ourselves into viruses or beetles. |
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It's also ironic that eugenics arose at a time when most of Europe was ruled by inbred freakish idiots, and they wanted to stop the *poor* from breeding. |
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Surely the problem with this idea is that after the first generation of hybrids you're going to end up with a shed-load of individuals who may well have their recessive *bad* genes matched up with dominant *good* genes, but who are, by that fact, carriers of the recessive trait? Two of these individuals interbreed and, roughly speaking, there's a fifty-fifty chance their offspring will also be carriers, and a one-in-four chance that they will actually have the full-blown genetic defect. That's assuming the //take any existing species and divide it into two populations// stage is a part of the process you're talking about; maybe I'm reading you wrong and all you're really talking about is encouraging inter-racial couples. If so, yes, genetically speaking you'll probably get a healthier population simply by reducing the Duelling Banjo Factor - but how do you propose to promote or enforce these marriages? |
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And, um, given the ease with which you got from a fairly harmless *antimiscegenation* idea to making lists of undesireable elements who should be prevented from breeding (by what, forced sterilisation?) I think the civil rights lobby would shoot this idea down before it got off the ground, and for good reason. Even offering incentives to mixed-race couples is ultimately discriminating against same-race couples, and could (would? should?) be seen as an attempt to eliminate cultural heterogeny. Eradicating diversity is not, I think, an idea that you'll find easy to sell to any minority culture. |
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Mephista, are you saying that child molesters should be allowed to breed? |
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UnaBubba, about there being no right or wrong, well, I sort-of know what you mean (many "wrong" things in one culture are OK in some other culture, and if you examine enough cultures, it could be that anything is OK somewhere). On the other hand, people generally do have to get along with each other, and it is convenient to have a list of "don'ts" handy ("don't shoot your neighbor on sight"). |
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pottedstu, as I already indicated, eugenics was flawed because of the way it was applied in the past. It remains true that the human animal is just as biological as any other organism on this planet, and can indeed be improved. Possibly any modern problem with eugenics will derive from conflicting definitions of "improve". (For example, it can be argued that the average human adult body size would be improved by shrinking somewhat. Smaller bodies have higher strength-to-mass ratios, faster reaction times, and lessened environmental impact -- they need less food, clothing, and shelter. Naturally, it may also be argued that larger body sizes are better -- I'm about 188cm tall and know all about those advantages.) Nevertheless, I firmly believe that some things will be called "improvements" by almost anyone, and THOSE are the things we could agree on, to breed humanity towards the achievement thereof (even if genetic engineering never arrives to help). Greater disease resistance, for example. Better ability to process fats, to prevent arteriosclerosis, for another. Neither of which, you might note, have anything to do with the typically-identified "breeds" of humanity (and as is also true of the suggestions I posted in prior annotation). |
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Guy Fox, I also wondered about that recessive-gene thing, and all I can say at this time is, the specialists in hybridization seem to have ways to get harmful recessives out over the long run. Certainly I would prefer that no generation pass on any harmful genes, but I suspect that only genetic engineering will let humanity actually accomplish it. Someday. And yes, the main idea here concerns starting with the fact that humans have already divided the species up into isolated propulations, and all we have to do is encourage interbreeding to obtain hybrid vigor.
You make a good point about how to go about such encouragement, since we do not want to infringe on standard "rights", nor either discriminate or reverse-discriminate. I would be willing to start by simply fining everyone who claims there is something wrong with interbred marriages (they are lying, after all, even if only from ignorance). Removing the social barriers to interbreeding has to be the first step! (Nevertheless, we do NOT fine anyone for saying that inbreeding also can have its advantages -- although some people will take that there statement the wrong way. More on this later.) |
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The civil rights lobby might be asked this simple question: "Where in all of Nature is there such a thing as a Right to breed?" Go ahead and examine Nature closely: You will find that no organism breeds unless it first survives. Nature doesn't even grant that as a Right! When an adult oyster releases a hundred million fertilized eggs into the sea, chances are that most of them will end up being eaten, and only a couple may actually eventually manage to grow to also breed. The fact that humans CLAIM "Rights" to Life and Breeding does not make it true! The Romans at Pompeii probably thought they had a Right to Life, but Nature's Mt. Vesuvius didn't pay them any attention whatsoever. And, I think I once read that perhaps as many of 15% of couples are Naturally childless -- so again Nature pays no attention whatsoever to human so-called "Rights". |
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Obviously then, while some humans prefer to think they are superior to Nature, and go to great extremes and expense to reproduce, it might be better if more people simply accepted the fact that just because they might want something, that does not mean they automatically have a right to have it. (Theft-statistics might actually go down!) |
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All through Nature, reproduction is generally a privilige that is EARNED, sometimes by merely surviving to adulthood, but quite often also by successfully attracting a mate. (Do you hear any civil-rights proponents saying that people have an automatic Right to succeed at finding a marriage partner? In reality there is only the right to try!) Next, investing care in any offspring.is also required of many species, if individuals of those species are to succeed at passing their genes on to future generations. Failure to succeed at offspring-care is just another way to ultimately fail to breed. pottedstu, there is a certain logic to stopping the poor from breeding -- do they have a Right to inflict malnutrition, bad medical care, and all the associated problems of poverty, onto ANY child? Can a poor person get OUT of poverty by giving himself/herself more mouths to feed? Do poor people REALLY have a Right to force others to pay for the consequences, via "family aid", of their own selfish biological drives to reproduce? |
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In another Idea altogether I described the need for Reversible Sterilization. Sometimes I think that EVERYONE should be Reversibly Sterilized -- no favoritism, see? -- and then set a nice high price tag for getting Sterilization Reversal. The assumption is that those who can earn the Reversal will also be those who can earn the privilige of having children. Hey, modern capitilistic culture promotes "survival of the economically fittest" -- so isn't that what eugenics should aim for, also? If not, then perhaps the culture should be changed!!! |
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Guy Fox, you definitely have a good point about the need for diversity, genetic diversity included. It is inbreeding that allows such diversity to become discovered, so that Great New Genes might later be adopted into the general population. I would tend to think that the ultimate long-long-term procedure would be to promote isolation and inbreeding for some thousands of years (we've done that), then promote interbreeding for as long as it takes, and THEN go back to isolation and inbreeding for more thousands of years, to generate new crops of diverse/better genes, and then do another interbreeding cycle, and so on. |
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Only the cultural diversity problem remains, and this can largely be solved by somehow dissociating a culture from the particular breed of humanity that happens to be organized under that culture. For example, traditional Oriental cultures are strongly xenophobic; if a native of Africa was born and raised in China, that person likely would be both culturally Oriental and socially outcast. Fix that second thing, and cultures will survive as long as their members like them. |
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Vernon, I think you're missing p'stu's point that evolution does not neccessarily equate with progress. Evolutionary theory has come a long way since Darwin, and we no longer follow the somewhat crude idea that evolution is simply about *stronger*, *faster*, *hardier*, *superior* animals surviving where *inferior* animals don't. 'Survival of the Fittest', it has been said, is actually 'Survival of Those Which Fit' - that is to say, it's about species or breeds developing traits which make them more suited to a specific environment or biological niche. As a simple illustration, different skin colours or levels of body hair are advantageous in different climates; it doesn't make one individual *better*, only *better-in-that-climate*. The sabre-tooth trait, as another example, has been selected for in four or five wholly distinct and unrelated species throughout evolution, only for those species to become extinct when circumstances change. And wherever you have a trait that marks an animal out as *better* in some way, in evolutionary terms there almost always seems to be some cost. What the cheetah gains in speed, it loses in stamina. The lowered thyroid bone that allows us to control our breathing sufficiently to form complex speech patterns also allows us to choke while eating. Bigger brains means earlier births and higher rates of death in childbirth. And so on. |
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And even if you can lay out some sort of agreed-upon set of traits we want and traits we don't want, once you get to a level more complex than simple tongue-rolling ability or skin pigmentation, these traits can seldom be pinned down to this or that gene. Rather, a single trait usually involves a whole host of genes, any of which may also be involved in coding for this or that other trait - which may be good and helpful or nasty as hell. [There's something niggling at the back of my mind about sickle cell anaemia being linked to malaria resistance in African gene pools - I'll go look for references. Nuff for now.] |
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Guy Fox, it does not bother me one whit that traditional descriptions of Evolution differ from the modern description. I will say, however, that the main strength of humanity is its environmental NONspecialization. We are not necessarily perfectly suited to any existing Earthly environment (noting average person's preference for air conditioning), but we can manage to survive and often thrive most anywhere, thanks to tools that let us modify the environment that we intimately experience (layers of clothes to ward off cold air, for example). So while I might favor six-fingered hands, or even hands with two thumbs each, because they would enhance our ability to use tools (our actual primary specialization), I cannot favor a change to, say, kangaroo-legs, because they are less versatile than what we have now (how well do 'roos swim?). |
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Next, in terms of "survival of the most fit", well, I already implied that fitness today is often associated with income. We are all out there competing for resources of one sort or another, and those who can gather what it takes to successfully breed, are the fittest almost by definition. To specify money as the only real requirement, crude though that may be, is simply to acknowledge that money can be easily traded for all those other resources. |
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Finally, yes, I know about the apparent link between sickle-cell anemia and malaria resistance. This is obviously a mixed blessing, and I would tend to think that the best way to deal with it or any similar mixture, from the eugenics point of view, is to ignore it. There are probably enough obviously-good traits to work toward, that no effort need be expended on the mixed blessings (at this time). Certainly eugenics may be the only way, even after widespread genetic engineering, to obtain improvements in those things that are indeed controlled by a multiplicity of genes. |
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phoenix, nice try, but it remains true that the simplest way to keep child molesters from becoming parents is to keep them from breeding. Yes, we could consider the possibility that they be allowed to have a child that someone else will raise (let's pretend that's you!). So, if there is a genetic predisposition to molest children, then this kid may or may not have it. Three possibilities: have & manifest the predisposition; or have & doesn't-manifest; or doesn't-have. The third possibility is a 50% chance, due to ordinary parental genetics. In the second possibility, you MAY be able to claim credit for raising the kid right -- but ONLY if you are willing to accept equivalent responsibility if the first possibility comes to pass. Obviously if training CAN prevent manifestation of a genetically predisposed behavior, then the trainer is at fault if the behavior isn't prevented! So I tend to think that either child molesters should be sterilized, or those non-child-molesters who oppose such sentence should volunteer to raise molesters' children. Which do you choose? |
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Next, about "mores", yes, not acting like a Roman when in Rome will get you noticed. But the average culture-traveler will probably find it more convenient to have a list of "don'ts" than a list of "dos". Compare the Ten Commandments to your typical behavior, and decide which ones you obey more often (mostly "don'ts", I expect). Far more cultures will have the "don'ts" in common, than the "dos". |
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"Why bring up Nature at all?" Because whether they admit it or not, humans are part of Nature, and ignore Nature at their peril. I hear they just found a smallish asteroid that may (1 in 300 or so) collide with Earth 800-odd years from now. People bet they'll win lotteries that offer far worse odds than that, but nobody seems concerned about a reasonably-possible global catastrophe. They ASSUME we'll have the technology then to swat the thing like a fly, but what if we have World War III first???? Then who will stop it? Human affairs should NEVER lead to the ignoring of Nature!!! |
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""You need to make up your mind. Nature says 'Do what you want, I don't care'. Humans say 'Obey my rules'. Vernon says 'Humans can't beat Nature unless they follow my rules.'"" -- That's a good one! But actually I think you went out of context to reach that conclusion. When I said that people can't automatically have what they want, I was referring to interactions between people, not interactions between people and Nature. Even so, however, there are limits to what humans can take from Nature, just because it is there. Soil erosion, and air and water pollution, are the Natural consequences of such presumptive greed. |
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""All through Nature, reproduction is generally a privilige that is EARNED, sometimes by merely surviving to adulthood, but quite often also by successfully attracting a mate.' " Are you proposing gladiatorial games for reproductive rights? Do you not find human mate attraction difficult enough as it is?" Ho-ho. I was talking about both asexual and sexual reproduction (the first merely requires survival). I was not implying that winning a mate be made more difficult; I was simply identifying it in the "must be earned" category. |
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Society aids the offspring of the poor partly in the hope that success stories like yourself will happen, and generate tax revenue that might actually pay back the investment (in a manner of speaking). But how often do such success stories take place? AND--Well, I happen to know a lady who experienced the fist of Social Services first-hand, apparently doing every thing they could to prevent her from bettering herself. After all, if there are no poor, then leeches like those particular Social Service workers will be out of work. (Hmmm.. find a book by David Eddings, called "The Losers", for more about that subject.) Meanwhile, the question remains, is it better to have such so-called help for the poor, forever -- or should we simply help them survive, with reversible sterilization as the price tag, letting them gently go extinct if they don't actually improve themselves? |
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"Why cash?" I explained in my answer to Guy Fox. |
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"Not even close." Hmmm...two different interpretations. I was working my way down a list of things to discuss, and cultural diversity was the last. That is not the same as saying that nothing remained to be said about all those topics. |
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Well put, phoenix. It seems you shouldn't mix your dicks and taters. <g> |
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phoenix, I know of no proof that child-molestation is a genetically predisposed thing. I do know that molesters are usually punished harshly when convicted (sometimes they get killed by fellow inmates in prison). So what is wrong with sterilization as just more punishment? Your whole sequence of arguments seems to boil down to the absurd notion that humans who can POTENTIALLY be conceived must be allowed to be conceived, JUST because someone might happen to want to breed -- and regardless of whether or not the offspring will be supported by the parents (or even be able to be supported by the parents). That is farther beyond the limits of sense than even the Vatican's traditional stance against contraception! |
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About the cultures, do you expect me to believe that most of the wildly different cultures across the globe all approve of killing, stealing, hearsay, and the like, WITHIN those cultures, while at the same time they all, for example, believe in a single God? The proof you want on this topic can probably be found in any decent anthropology book. Go look. |
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About ignoring Nature, you should consider the case of the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelee and the city of St. Pierre on the island of Martinique. That volcano rumbled for quite some time before erupting, but the Governor insisted there was nothing to fear; just ignore it. So the entire city of 30,000 died when the mountain finally blew (just one survivor). |
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The idea that people can't automatically have something just because they want it ...does, as you say, depend somewhat upon the mores of a culture. The Vikings probably thought it was just fine to have whatever they wanted of OTHER cultures -- but within their own culture, that wasn't the rule at all! (Just a bunch of hypocrites, possibly of the same mold as the Nazis, were the Vikings.) Anyway, the point I tried to make is that WITHIN almost any culture, you will indeed find that the average dude does not automatically get what he or she happens to want. |
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As for first-world countries all abhorring all manner of discrimination, you will probably find that discrimination against lawbreakers is quite tolerated. Do note that the first three or four categories that I recommended for sterilization were all of the criminal variety. |
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Obvious or not, the simple fact that reproduction must be earned is a simple fact that must percolate into the conscious mind and yield logical consequences: Thus, if poor people can hardly feed themselves, how can anyone think they automatically earn the privilige of reproducing -- especially at the expense of others? |
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Do you know what an "ecological niche" is? It is ANY cubbyhole in the Environment that allows for successful reproduction and growth of offspring. The Welfare system is indeed an ecological niche for otherwise-incompetent human beings -- without that assistance, most children currently in that Niche would die instead of grow, and so the overall reproductive process for the adult humans there would generally be a failure. I do not wish to deny the chance for a decent life to anyone currently in that Niche, but I do think it most extremely selfish of them to insist that they be allowed to give us more mouths to feed, forever. (A similar Niche is found in Africa, where vast amounts of American humanitarian aid has been sent for decades. They also have given us many many more mouths to continue needing such aid! Thomas Malthus had the right of it -- humans are just a bunch of animals that like any other species will automatically breed up to, and beyond, the limits of the food supply. The more we try to postpone the upcoming Malthusian Catastrophe, the worse it will be -- unless we take charge of our animal bodies, and drastically lower birth rates everywhere. Soon.) |
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Penultimately, I'm pretty sure that nowhere here have I said that hybridization of humanity must be forced. Sure, drag down the currently existing social barriers against it, and recommend and encourage it, but it need not be forced. Simply granting easy permission should be adequate. (And note that there will be those initial few who conciously want their offspring to have a competitive advantage over others, so they will deliberately seek out mates who can help provide hybrid vigor to their children. Then, when the complaints of unfair competition begin, the blame can justly be pointed at the people of today who didn't care about how their descendants might fare in the world.) |
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Finally, one does not have to be God to add two and two to get four. Similarly, one does not have to claim any Authority, in order to logically deduce that if reproduction must be earned, then not everyone automatically earns it. (Just like college degrees must be earned....) Logical consequences remain logical consequences, no matter how officiously -- or ineptly -- they may be presented. I can apologize for my tone, but I do not apologize one whit for the logic. |
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And so, logically, it simply has to be said: "If you help people out by giving them food, HOW DARE THEY 'thank you' for it by giving you more mouths to feed!" |
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I've not been back here for a while to see the debate, but I'd like to point out that no one addressed the other part of my point way above, that being able to survive does not mean you are more virtuous or more deserving of life than someone who is likely to die young. |
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John Keats suffered from ill-health all his short life, yet produced some of the best poetry in the English language. Mother Teresa was a frail and tiny old woman, and it appears a miracle that she lived so long and did so much to help the poor. Many great writers, thinkers and leaders, such as Sylvia Plath, Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Walser, and Winston Churchill suffered from varying degrees of mental illness. Are you saying that such people have less right to breed than someone who's only claim is that he's got big muscles? The traits that lead to survival, I reiterate, are not those which are beneficial to society at large. |
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It is a gross mistake to assume that because something exists in nature, it is good. Morality is based on rational thought and the experience of tradition, not on comparison with nature. Western moral systems give us all a right to life, even though nature will kill us all in the end. So would you be happy if someone stronger than you killed you and stole your girlfriend, for example? |
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pottedstu, mere survival is only the first type of "earning" that one has to do, in order to breed. (Obviously if you die young enough, you won't.) As mentioned in another annotation, for asexual life-forms, mere survival is sufficient to allow breeding. For sexual life-forms, creatures also have to win mates. Not all succeed at that -- and among humans "winning" a mate is not a lot different from "earning" a mate. Yes, there will be cultural variations in the meaning of "earn" here. Modern Western cultures mostly do not accept outright person-stealing force as part of the process of earning a mate. |
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And even after the first two things have been earned, there is still the third: raising offspring. The kids have to be successfully launched into the world on their own before the parents can begin to think they have fully succeeded at having EARNED the privilige of breeding -- and now you know what is behind the pressure your parents put on you to make them grandparents! Because if the kids don't succeed at breeding, then their own efforts have GENERALLY been wasted. |
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There are people who contribute greatly to humanity as a whole, and they can represent a category in which even if they don't happen to breed, their parents' efforts were not in vain. But that group is quite a small part of the total population. So, as just said, if the average parent fails to succeed at getting the offspring to breed, then the parent's own overall multigenerational success is as much a failure as if that average parent had instead died before the age of two. |
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So, phoenix, tell me: -- Knowing that every generation of humanity will produce some people who are somhow unable to survive without the help of others, and knowing that it is generally a Good Thing to provide help to those by-definition poor people, WHY shouldn't such aid be linked to a prohibition from breeding? Why doesn't it make sense to say, "As soon as you, like anyone else, are able to support both yourself and offspring, then you have earned the privilege of having offspring. But not before." |
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The original idea: Fishy for wanting to promote any specific class of personal relationships above others. None of your business.
The rest of Vernon's ideas as described in his annotations: Yikes. How utterly unpleasant and wrong-headed. |
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trifling matter, you raise an interesting point about personal relationships. Certainly there is no accounting for taste, and if personal taste does not encompass mixed marriage, well, so what? From the perspective of great distance, almost any human male is "mechanically" compatible with almost any human female. The philosophy of eugenics has a problem in that it tends to think that such a distant perspective is the only one of importance -- and we both know how mistaken THAT idea is! People mostly have to deal with each other on an "up close and personal" basis, which means that personal tastes will always be significant factor. |
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Nevertheless, all cultures are guilty of promoting certain "tastes" over others (it's partly what makes cultures distinct from each other). So, if I recomment promoting the idea that mixed marriages be APPROVED, rather than denounced, it would constitute a cultural modification, certainly, BUT this is not something that has to affect individual personal taste. Individuals who desire unmixed marriages will not be stopped from seeking them. |
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I submit, therefore, that your comment was not well thought out. And as for your claim regarding my annotations being wrong-headed, perhaps you'd like to be more specific, using actual facts rather than buzzwords? Thanks in advance! |
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