A different path for eugenics

Rstone4

Banned
On my walk today I got to pondering the split between geographic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism came dominate the last half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century before Hitler spiked the ball.

Thinking about eugenics and its dual nature, either we make ourselves better and stronger, or we wipe out those jerks who are bad for us, I got to thinking about some kind of possibility of inclusive eugenics. That is, taking the best aspects from all the races into a new concept of superman. But this would require a POD going back a ways. Since this was a trans western thing (and even infecting Russia and Japan too!) there would have to be an equally global change in history.

I was pondering a kind of religious or scientific revival that was inclusive rather than exclusive. But there are other issues that need to be dealt with. Ethnic nationalism solves so many problems by creating "others" to blame. Jews get picked on alot in eastern europe, Blacks and Hispanics and Indians in the USA, Abos in Australlia, colonials for England, Spain, and France.

Any Idea on what can sway so many people to be generally inclusive and willing to mix rather than the historical exclusive and unwilling to even live in the same neighborhoods.
 
Some kind of humanitarianism would be immensely helpful. However I think most people need something to hate, or to challenge, something to make them feel better than someone or something else. If you go back far enough then these things won't even need to be real. Elves, goblins, demons, gods, any of the fictional stuff. Leave it long enough and looking out for other humans should be ingrained enough that when these things are no longer believed in that other humans will not come to mind to fill the gap of hate. A few wars and the hate will be going strong again against fellow humans so you'd need to be careful. There's also the problem of humans pulling a Salem and accusing people of being these most hated myths. A transition could be made every so often; demons to aliens could be a good one once sci-fi and space programs start up, then maybe against specific humans: rapist and such, people against the world's humanitarian ideology and violate the rights of the peoples. They should be advanced enough that that could go until the end of whatever timeline makes use of this idea. Dunno how you'd manage it, but I had the need to answer this since no one else did. It's a nice concept, but a hard one to bring about. Just about went on a rant debating the inherent nature of humans, but stopped myself. :cool:
 

Rstone4

Banned
Very good point. The POD here would have to be proto-human to the point of being ASB.

If we pick on non humans we run the risk of becoming the Xul from Ian Douglass's marine books.
 
Very good point. The POD here would have to be proto-human to the point of being ASB.

If we pick on non humans we run the risk of becoming the Xul from Ian Douglass's marine books.

Yeah, I thought about that, but I can't come up with anything else to direct people's hate at. Focus it on animals and that's a disaster in the making. Imagine us in a passive war with Mother Nature. The extinctions would be catastrophic to the ecosystems of Earth. Hate other people of whatever differentiallity and the whole point of the argument is broken. Not many options I can find.
 
The trouble is even if you do manage to get people thinking the best human would have a black guy's strength, an anglo-saxon's intelligence, etc... you're still going to have a lot of people that don't seem to bring much to the pot.
i.e. if they're just looking to African's for their physical attributes then what happens to the shorter and weaker Africans? What happens to the redundant African intellectuals?
Even taken from the nicest angle with eugenics you're still picking out the weakest and trying to take them from the gene pool.

Even if it wouldn't give a world I would want to live in it could certainly make for an interesting WI however. Quite a nice idea for a story actually. Mixed race guy, result of evil fascist experiments, struggling to get by in a post war world with bizzare views on race, where the 'good guys' see mixing as bad.
 
Hmmm, wasn't this the basis for the Star Trek Eugenics Wars? An actual nonracist attempt at the Superman Ideal.

One way would be to remove the African Slave Trade(s).
That seems to be the main reason racism developed from normal xenophobic cultural racism to phenotypic racism.
 
Reminds me of the lady allegedly suggesting she have a baby by George Bermard Shaw, think of a child with my looks and your brains but said Shaw what if the child had my looks and your brains
 

Rstone4

Banned
The trouble is even if you do manage to get people thinking the best human would have a black guy's strength, an anglo-saxon's intelligence, etc... you're still going to have a lot of people that don't seem to bring much to the pot.
i.e. if they're just looking to African's for their physical attributes then what happens to the shorter and weaker Africans? What happens to the redundant African intellectuals?
Even taken from the nicest angle with eugenics you're still picking out the weakest and trying to take them from the gene pool.

Even if it wouldn't give a world I would want to live in it could certainly make for an interesting WI however. Quite a nice idea for a story actually. Mixed race guy, result of evil fascist experiments, struggling to get by in a post war world with bizzare views on race, where the 'good guys' see mixing as bad.


The idea with that is they don't have to bring anything to the pot, the pot is poured into them.
 

Rstone4

Banned
Hmmm, wasn't this the basis for the Star Trek Eugenics Wars? An actual nonracist attempt at the Superman Ideal.

One way would be to remove the African Slave Trade(s).
That seems to be the main reason racism developed from normal xenophobic cultural racism to phenotypic racism.

Removing the slave trade and american colonialism will end racism, but it won't deal with any other form of bigotry.

Read Herodetous and you find that the Greek assumption is that anyone non Greek is scum.

Xenophobia like we see in ancient Egypt or China will still exist because of human nature.

How about this:

Pro human eugenics develops in a context of all this racism and xenophobia as a counter punch and less popular. The idea of breeding people together while such things make them "inferior" to outsiders. Only... in many places that would revoke civil and social rights... hmmm
 
Romans were pretty inclusive in making subject peoples into Romans, and they didn't seem to be too bothered about the skin color of subject peoples, from what little I know.

I'm not sure if they were ready for this, but if we POD in a few philosophers that gradually moved in this direction....Sort of an antipatrician philosphical direction.
 

Rstone4

Banned
Romans were pretty inclusive in making subject peoples into Romans, and they didn't seem to be too bothered about the skin color of subject peoples, from what little I know.

I'm not sure if they were ready for this, but if we POD in a few philosophers that gradually moved in this direction....Sort of an antipatrician philosphical direction.

Well, they also had issues with barbarians too.
 
Removing the slave trade and american colonialism will end racism, but it won't deal with any other form of bigotry.

Read Herodetous and you find that the Greek assumption is that anyone non Greek is scum.

Xenophobia like we see in ancient Egypt or China will still exist because of human nature.

How about this:

Pro human eugenics develops in a context of all this racism and xenophobia as a counter punch and less popular. The idea of breeding people together while such things make them "inferior" to outsiders. Only... in many places that would revoke civil and social rights... hmmm

Romans were pretty inclusive in making subject peoples into Romans, and they didn't seem to be too bothered about the skin color of subject peoples, from what little I know.

I'm not sure if they were ready for this, but if we POD in a few philosophers that gradually moved in this direction....Sort of an antipatrician philosphical direction.

As said previously racism based on skincolour is a later invention. Earlier as with the Romans and Greeks it was all cultural ie. if you dressed Greek and spoke Greek but were black you were still Greek and better than a white person in woad speaking Celtic who happened to have Greek parents

To get what Rstone4 wants we need to continue this trend over colour racism so that when tolerance and science kick in it's about forging a better physicality rather than culturality
 

Rstone4

Banned
But that's impossible.

Here is what I was thinking. You are John Q. Inferior. You are brought to the Genetics clinic and you have your genes "upgraded" with all the bits and pieces of superiority. This is easier for John Q. Inferior than Jane Q. Inferior because upgrading the Male gonads creates upgraded sperm while Upgrading a female reproductive system requires upgrading each and every Ovum.

You go in an undermench and walk out turning into an ubermench.
 
Here is what I was thinking. You are John Q. Inferior. You are brought to the Genetics clinic and you have your genes "upgraded" with all the bits and pieces of superiority. This is easier for John Q. Inferior than Jane Q. Inferior because upgrading the Male gonads creates upgraded sperm while Upgrading a female reproductive system requires upgrading each and every Ovum.

You go in an undermench and walk out turning into an ubermench.

But that requires an understanding of DNA and its manipulation far beyond the reach of the time. It would also be incredibly expensive and resource consuming.

Why try making every man a god when you can simply cut away the parts you don't need in society. Anyone seriously in favour of such an ideal will see the logic of taking the 'easy' route.
 

Rstone4

Banned
Here is what I was thinking. You are John Q. Inferior. You are brought to the Genetics clinic and you have your genes "upgraded" with all the bits and pieces of superiority. This is easier for John Q. Inferior than Jane Q. Inferior because upgrading the Male gonads creates upgraded sperm while Upgrading a female reproductive system requires upgrading each and every Ovum.

You go in an undermench and walk out turning into an ubermench.

If we were to apply this to a late 19th century context then the undermench as it were would be paired with ubermenchs so the children would have "superior" and obviously dominant genes (this is 19th century type science). After maybe 3 generations the inferior genes were pushed aside.
 

Rstone4

Banned
But that requires an understanding of DNA and its manipulation far beyond the reach of the time. It would also be incredibly expensive and resource consuming.

Why try making every man a god when you can simply cut away the parts you don't need in society. Anyone seriously in favour of such an ideal will see the logic of taking the 'easy' route.

Welfare state? Very expensive, doesn't actually work, but based on the idea that we DON'T want to abandon the inferior.
 
I suppose it's possible for somebody to be both eugenicist and liberal, and I know there were eugenicists who advocated for racial mixing in certain situations.
In college, my library had several volumes of The American Journal of Eugenics. I think they were from the 1910s or 1920s. More than once while bored with studying, I've wondered around the library, stumbled upon this old-timey and surreally ATLish journal and opened it up. There were at least two articles that advocated for mixing Jews and northern Europeans together, saying it produces a group of vigorous intelligent people. It did note one drawback that those mixed people have problems with their nervous systems. However, it also said that if you mix white people and black people, their offspring would be criminals.
The required POD would be a eugenics movement that considers all ethnic groups to have their strengths and weaknesses, and believes that careful breeding would produce a breed of human with more strengths, rather like creating a new breed of dog. However, I need to point out that in the 19th century, people knew enough about heredity to know that you don't make alleles for sicknesses just disappear by mating sick people with healthy people. They believed in blending inheritance in those days, that offspring have traits halfway between their parents, and everyone was fully aware that there were cases where sicknesses skip a generation.
Eugenics would still say that people with a lot of bad traits and no unusually good traits shouldn't breed, and people who are the opposite should. The most inclusive scenario is Eugenicists who believe all races have their strengths, and want to breed races together, and still keep the weak from breeding.
 
Top