Introduction
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence. Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” The Great War and subsequent Depression undermined the mentality of Empire and class privilege, leaving a vacuum which was filled by an intellectual climate of extreme egalitarianism. Western society of the twentieth century came to be dominated by a new, unified ideology. Freudianism, Marxism, B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorism, Franz Boaz’s cultural history, and Margaret Mead’s anthropology all stressed the marvelous “plasticity” and even “programmability” of Homo sapiens. It was explained over and over that human minds differ little in their innate qualities, and that it is upbringing and education which explain the differences among us. Software is everything; hardware is identical and thus meaningless. The road to utopia lies through improved nurture alone.
During the last third of the twentieth century, even while scientists were generally allowed to teach the theory of evolution, that freedom did not extend to raising the topic of humanity’s future evolution. It is remarkable that this suppression coincided with a revolution in our understanding of genetics. The censorship has now been lifted, and there is agreement even among the most implacable foes of the eugenics movement that the taboo on eugenics can no longer stand.
The issues involved are so fraught with consequence at all levels that, tiny as the group of individuals concerned over the future genetic composition of humankind is, a single ideological spark in this area has the potential to set off an allconsuming conflagration, so that hostility all too often squeezes out rational discussion. But no matter how desperately society attempts to avoid these issues, they already stand before us, demanding at least recognition, if not resolution. In this book I attempt to present the heretofore largely suppressed arguments surrounding the current renaissance of the eugenics movement.
Much as we humans might pride ourselves on our achievements, we are really little closer to resolving the great questions of being than when we still dwelled in caves. Time extending endlessly backward or forward is as unimaginable as is time having a beginning or an end. Psychologically, however, we need a map – a concept of being and of our place in the universe – and thus we engage in elaborate mythmaking to fill the vacuum that we find so intolerable. To be durable, a worldview must first explain the universe to us, and then assuage our fears and satisfy our longings. Logic is not a prerequisite. Myth can even contradict itself – not to mention be at variance with the real world.
Regardless of when or where we live, we inevitably perceive ourselves as the Middle Kingdom, and either we smile condescendingly at the mythmaking of other cultures or we go to war with them to force upon them our (uniquely correct) worldview. And if we are better at crafting weapons, we are generally able to persuade those we have physically conquered of the superiority of our myths over theirs.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Western world accepted a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, but then the theory of evolution presented a radically different explanation of man’s origins. Today, attempting to reconcile religion with science, we have created a new mythology which, not surprisingly, is ripe with contradictions. Here are some of them:
a) While other species of animal and plant can undergo significant change over a few generations, we maintain that thousands of generations of the most radically varying conditions of selection and selective mating have left only the most superficial genetic variance within our species.
b) Intellectuals (albeit not the man in the street) are firmly convinced that we are the product of evolution, but they are equally entrenched in the odd assumption that human beings are the one species no longer affected by that process.
c) Even as society pays a premium for ability and gumption in virtually any form of activity, it has become fashionable to claim that such factors play no role in the formation of social classes, which are held to be entirely a function of chance and privilege. Indeed, the scholars who dominate the publishing marketplace and academia deny the very existence of innate IQ variance in human populations.
d) We have developed a huge academic testing industry, but its findings are widely declared to be not merely approximate but lacking in any validity whatever.
e) With the transition to smaller families, we have observed that generation after generation of the intellectually endowed are failing to replace themselves– exactly as was feared by earlier eugenicists – but we accept the phenomenon as natural.
f) We are more and more successfully implementing a process called “medicine” for the elimination of natural selection, and are firmly convinced that future generations will remain unaffected by our reluctance to implement a substitute for natural selection.
g) Hard at work deciphering the map of the human genome, we continue to apply moral criteria to behavior which we will soon be able to explain scientifically.
h) While our social conduct, like that of all other animal species, is necessarily centered around the mating ritual, our perception of this process is governed by a myriad of camouflaging taboos and fetishes. The gap between reality and fantasy could not be more crass.
i) We have created a genetic caste society that co-opts talent born into the less privileged castes, efficiently exploiting and manipulating these castes, while at the same time proclaiming equality of opportunity as our slogan.
j) We refuse to recognize that we are a species that perfectly fits the definition of a disease, freeing itself (very temporarily) from the constraints of natural selection and the limitations of natural resources only to wreak havoc on ourselves and our fellow species in a massive assault on the host that we parasitize – the planet.
k) We have created an unsustainable economy dependent on resource exhaustion. At the same time, we proclaim still greater levels of consumption as the goal of society. l) We proclaim freedom of speech, all the while ruthlessly excoriating any opinion in the area of human genetics which is found offensive by any significant segment of society. Thus, the revolution in technology has been accompanied, not by the elimination of myth, but by its modification into a denial of biology. The give and take of any political processes is necessarily determined by the relative power of the participants, so that future generations are not taken into consideration during decision-making.
Despite popular opinion and prejudice, the facts of science are inescapable. In the time you take to read this sentence, humankind will have evolved genetically. There are species such as the coelacanth fish, which – incredibly – has survived more than 400 million years, but they are the rare exception. Homo sapiens is a recent link in the evolutionary chain, and over the past century the conditions governing selection in that population have unchanges.
Ultimately, we have to decide how pleased we are with ourselves as a species. This is the great watershed dividing those who favor genetic intervention and those who oppose it. Regardless of our personal attitudes, however, there is no denying the fact that while the genetic lottery has indeed produced many winners, there are many others who have been less fortunate. [more]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glad
