BY DR. AGONSON
I saw the question of eugenics raised on twitter early this morning when I should have been asleep in bed, and was delighted to notice that, like inviting a vampire into your house, there was an open invitation for me to argue.
It’s a subject I actually feel rather strongly about, and I gave my two-cents worth. But on reflection this afternoon, I realized that, though my response explained my own side, I had not really taken the trouble to delve into the original four “gotcha” questions that were presented.
You see, the original post had four “yes or no” polls that supposedly demonstrated that, since most people would say “yes” to at least one of the questions, we are all eugenicists at bottom, only differing by degree.
Now, before we really get into those questions, I think there is a flaw with the general presumption that if you agree with a eugenicist on a certain point, you are a eugenicist. This is of course taken to its utmost extreme (not in the original post, but I saw the point at least twice in the comments below) where the nearly universal sexual desire for a good looking wench is taken as proof that we are all, at bottom, eugenicists. I feel the ever-quotable Chesterton’s reply is apt:
You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back; you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire; but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved, there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no such thing as this book.
One more aside before we tackle these four questions: I actually agree that most people at bottom really are eugenicists even when they condemn the nomenclature. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like 70% of Americans would (and do) accept eugenic principles and laws as long as no one shocks them by using the poisoned word. Eugenics, as a word, is a failed euphemism; in fact, it has become the opposite of a euphemism, for it is a word we do not say aloud lest the very whisper of it stop its continued progress.
And I answered no because I’m against sterilization whether or not money is involved.
This one was a bit more complex, but I ultimately answered no. It’s complex because, if I were a lawmaker, I’d be in favor of general incentives for procreation. I say no when it becomes specific; in this case, when you say to some, “be fruitful,” you are necessarily, whether its spoken aloud or not, saying to others, “wither and die.”
No, and I find this wording odd. The final clause, “on a daily basis” seems unhinged. Does anyone think that speaking to kids about sex every day of their youth will make them sexually healthy? Will make them wise? Will have any effect more likely than making them degenerates? What does this clause mean in this argument?
If I were to rephrase this and get to what I think the author meant, I’d ask something like: “Should adolescents be given ‘the talk’?” I might shock my generation by saying no here, by saying that adolescents should perhaps be treated as adolescents. I do not want sex hidden away as a dirty thing, but it is always a dirty thing to take away someone’s childhood.
I answered no, and now that I come to think of it, I did eventually answer this question in my general response which I will reprint below (my original thread).
Even if we agree on some ideal, that doesn’t mean we agree on the method. I might want money, but I condemn robbery; if I agreed on the ideal of eugenics, I have yet to hear a morally acceptable method of obtaining it.
Furthermore, I am strongly agnostic about the ideals eugenics wants to obtain. We certainly know what is bad (say, a kid with asthma from a line of asthmatics), but we don’t know what is the actual good we ought to pursue.
Then, as regards the kid with asthma, that is me, and my father before me; and if I ever have kids, they’ll probably be asthmatic too. I wish there was a cure for asthma, but eugenics isn’t a cure for the individual.
At its most mild, eugenics says I shouldn’t have kids. One step up, the government handicaps me financially. The next step, what, a forced vasectomy? Go up far enough, just kill me off to keep the bloodlines pure.
What level do I accept? None. Not even the barest level. Life is a gift of terrible responsibility that always leads to suffering and death. It’s worth cannot be judged by you or me.
The Original Tweet:
Tale Told 