Eugenics - the betterment of the human race through selective sterilization, abortions, and/or euthanasia.

What is with the concept of eugenics anyway?
Scientists look at the human gene pool, they see and determine which genes are defects - such as insane, idiocy, feebleminded etc., and they determine which are good traits, e.g. elegance, incorrupt, etc.
Many people we know practiced eugenics throughout history, the most prominent example I can think of; Hitler.

Hitler had the desire to make Germany racially pure, to get rid of non-Aryans, e.g., the Jews.
He started of with selective sterilization, abortions, and encouragement of reproduction between racially pure Aryan women and men.
Then he went to the extreme - the Holocaust.

But who has the say; who has the right to play God, and determine which character traits are defects and which are good?
Which society gets to set the standard for the 'best breed' of humans?
This is where conflicting ideology sets me off.

Just because one culture deems another as racially unpure, doesn't mean it is.
Why in the first place get the idea that that particular race is unpure?
I think it is clearly born from xenophobia.
Just because another person looks different from you, has different habits, or speak differently, doesn't mean that he is beneath you.
You may never have thought that he, from his perspective, may view you as the lower class.

Just because their culture and practices are different from yours, doesn't mean that his moral values aren't there, it just means that he has different ways of expressing it.
Just because they do not express it the same way as you do, and just because you, cannot comprehend nor interpret these signs and shows of concern, thus conclude that they are beneath you, and you only reach this conclusion because of you inability to comprehend and think flexibly.

Men are full of their ego; what they think is right, stays right.
And that is how they mould their minds into thinking that their culture is the best.
I'm not pinpointing any race, culture, or what-you-have.
I'm just pointing out examples from the past - like Vermont.
The whites were predominant there, though they were not the settlers.
They were bent on eliminating the Gypsies, Indians, and other inapt races from the pure Vermonts.
But to me, it was just their own xenophobia that drove that desire to rid their town of the unknown.

Just because one Gypsy may have committed murder, doesn't mean that he is not human.
Yes, murder is inhumane, but have they ever looked at the cause for it, and not the action?
No doubt, there were Gypsies and Indians held at camps and institutions - because they were deemed of having 'defects' in their genetics - just like concentration camps in Germany.
What if that Gypsy committed murder, because one of the Vermonts had killed someone in the camp, someone supposedly, a beloved family member of the accused?
Would you do the same?
Would you demand justice be done to whoever had killed your, let's say, father?
And would you, knowing that if you, a genetically defect person, brought the case to court, it would be dismissed just because of the previous fact, take justice into your own hands, just because you know it is a human right?
Would you?

Eugenics still exist in our modern world.
But now we most closely associate it with designer babies - babies that are genetically modified when they are just sperm and egg, so that 'undesirable' traits may be removed before the baby is even put into the womb.
In my opinion, this is much more humane, because most people do this to remove illnesses from their babies, and not modify them so that they may be 'good' or 'better'.
They remove heritable illness to protect their child - so that he may not need to bear the brunt of the illness when he grows up, ill and frail.
I guess it's just the parent's love for their unborn child.

But yet, some people purposely make a designer baby, to use it's body, to save another child they have.
They purposely modify their baby so that he may have all the traits to save the other.
Maybe it's commendable that the parents love their child so much that they'd sacrifice another to save the former.
But what about the other baby?
How'd it feel going in and out the hospital on a regular basis?
Where is justice to that baby, then?

Also, my di brought up the concept of 'survival of the fittest'.
What do we deem as survival of the fittest?
In this modern day context, yes, the people who have brains and are capable of handling advanced technology would be the successful ones, and would be the ones who climb up the corporate ladder.
And these will be the people who look down on others in less-advanced societies, because they cannot achieve the same.

But what if we go back to the basics?
Let's say, for example, that the world is reaching an apocalypse.
It's gonna end.
Then we won't have all these high tech gadgets to save us.
It would just be nature and us.
Now, who will survive then?
Definately not those at the top of the corporate ladder, but those who are 'backward'.

Those who live in harmony with nature, those who appreciate it.
Those who are deemed with 'defects' in their genes.
They know how to live with the land, we know how to live off it.

So really, who is the less capable now?
Who will really survive the end of the world?
Who really will be deemed as the fittest?

Just another illustration:
During the last ice age, where almost all humans were wiped out, only about 12 thousand humans survived (if I have my facts right), and these were the last few who re-populated the world.
And these last humans were Africans.

Food for thought.

All this is just my completely honest opinion about eugenics.
It should be thoroughly scraped.
We have our human rights to reproduce as we want, and to choose who we want to reproduce with.
We do not have a 'model human being' to follow.
No one has to right to decide which traits are better.
And we, certainly are not cows.
xoxo 9:32 PM