It seems the prefix Eu maybe problematic for political reasons. Holding aside the history of the term for a moment, it makes sense to have disgenics (bad) and eugenics (good). But who decides which to use with any given practice becomes the issue. I suspect back then if both words existed, those practices would still be labeled as eugenics. Too often it takes time to see the error of our ways.
I wonder if the eu prefix is used to persuade people a practice is good, when it isn't accepted as good yet.
But I agree, once a term gets a bad meaning, it sticks, so it is futile to attempt rebranding the term.
DeJarnette's poem is typical. He praises the livestock and vegetables of the farmer based on their shapes and colors, then condemns the farmer's children based on their -shapes and colors. Nothing about their intelligence, creativity, charity (in which he is sadly lacking) or anything else but appearance.
Genetic variation is valuable and necessary. Without it, a species or a society would have little chance of surviving any significant stress. No one is perceptive enough to judge these things, especially in a creature as complex as a man. Even after a man is dead and appears to have lived a pointless life, who can say that if there had been other circumstances, it might not have been different.
If any of the -good- eugenics ideas are actually of value, they should be able to be justified on other grounds.
I was aghast to learn that forced sterilization continued for so long. It's almost like hearing "slavery was practiced in some parts of Alaska and Idaho until 2009."
Also, your movie list has simplified life for me: All life is downhill from economics.
My mother, was an historical tour guide late in her life. Very smart. Very aware. When I showed her a video about eugenics in Virginia, she was aghast and asked, “Why didn’t I ever hear about this before?” I said, “Mom, you know exactly why you never heard about this before.”
Yeah, I'm sorry, but Fleischman is right here. Bans on sibling and 1st cousin marriage? Absolutely eugenics, and it's not even close. Likewise genetic counseling.
Really, you're not arguing here, you're just emoting a lot.
“Eugenics” was a sprawling, malevolent, intellectually incoherent social movement with a scientistic facade. It had bits and pieces of sense sprinkled here and there, but agreement with those occasional sprinkles does not tar one with the overall label. It also misses the point that bans on sibling or close-cousin marriage likely had non-eugenic origins—notably the fact that young girls were particularly vulnerable to rape or other abuse by those living in their own homes. I suspect much of the reason behind this powerful, widespread taboo—a learned revulsion for incest—was to minimize the incidence of opportunistic abuse. Another likely reason was that marriage outside the immediate family built alliances of mutual support—essential to survival, but having nothing to do with eugenic concerns. These taboos were incredibly widespread across time and geography, and it’s doubtful that eugenics was the common thread in these social arrangements across the ages.
I can agree with eugenicists on some scattered point without being one of them, just as I can agree on specific points with progressives, conservatives, and libertarians without belonging to any of those groups.
In the mid-1960s, a family friend was a Jewish member of the John Birch Society, and he tried now and then to lure my father in that direction. My father said he wasn’t interested in an organization that was riddled with antisemitism, paranoia, scientific quackery, etc. One day, this guy told Dad, “That kind of stuff is maybe 10% of the Society’s beliefs. I think you’d agree with 90% of what we believe.” Dad simply said, “A body that is only 10% cancerous is still not a healthy organism.” That comment pretty much ended the guy’s attempts to interest Dad. Eugenics, in contrast, was probably 80%-90% cancerous. The word “eugenics” is long-since discredited and beyond repair.
I’d recommend finding a better name and leaving “eugenics” in the wax museum. If you want to call yourself a eugenicist, that’s your right—just as our family friend was free to call himself a John Bircher. But most of us do not wish to be tattooed—by someone else—with an odious, atavistic appellation that was intellectually bereft, intolerant, authoritarian, and dishonest from its earliest days till it vanished from polite conversation.
I don't particularly want to call myself a eugenicist, but I'm not fond of pretending that we've totally abandoned all traces of eugenics in our policies, or that eugenics was some kind of unique horror. It was of a piece with the era, and it was not a pretty era.
I agree with most of what you say here. I will differ a bit in that, even in an age of horrors, eugenics was especially pernicious and pervasive. Part of my difference with Fleischman boils down to whether using one uses the word “eugenics” to indicate “Danger! Thin ice!” or “Come on in! The water’s fine!” I tend to use the word to mean the former. I think she uses more in the second sense—though perhaps she would disagree.
I use it just to mean, as I indicated, the idea that humanity should be improved by some degree of selective breeding, akin to the way we do with livestock.
This end could be pursued with a wide range of means, from completely voluntary efforts like the former "Repository for Germinal Choice", a sperm bank specializing in providing sperm from donors with high IQs, to, at the opposite extreme, feeding people into gas chambers. In the middle, Planned Parenthood was established for eugenics purposes.
I distinguish the end from the means, because this end IS amenable to perfectly unobjectionable means. You might as well object to highway systems just because of the Autobahn being built with slave labor.
Eventually we're going to be capable of reliably doing germ line genetic engineering, and I think at that point eugenics as a positive thing will really take off, because it will no longer require particular people to not reproduce. (Whether forcibly or as a result of bribes.) Probably under another name, though, due to the historical associations.
But I do wonder why the historical associations stick to eugenics, and not to, say, central planning of economies, which probably has caused more misery in total over the last century.
All interesting. I suspect, again, that the difference with eugenics lies in its extraordinarily high ratio of bullshit over legitimate content. And the pervasive, shapeshifting, and metastatic nature of its prescriptions. In the Autobahn is just a road, and its existence does not seem to lead to further slavery. Eugenics was different in that expect. And yes, I’ll agree that central planning deserves a much harsher evaluation that it normally gets. And I believe that eugenics and central planning were highly codependent.
Perhaps it is time to drop calling it Eugenics and simply refer to it as Wilsonian Genetics ? We could call it Democrat Genetics, but that is possibly a bit harsh ...
All three types of Down syndrome are genetic conditions (relating to the genes), but only 1% of all cases of Down syndrome have a hereditary component (passed from parent to child through the genes). Heredity is not a factor in trisomy 21 (nondisjunction) and mosaicism. It is a failure of cell division, that's all. Parents don't pass it on to the children in a hereditary way, nor do Down's Syndrome victims pass it on to their own children.
Thus, if you support Iceland's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, or America's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, you are absolutely a eugenicist. Period.
Fascinating! Assuming what you say is true (and I’m guessing it is), then it really is representative of eugenics, in that it purports to be about heredity but in fact based on conformation-bias rather than scientific logic. I am writing a piece on Alexander Graham Bell, who appears to have been truly compassionate toward Deaf people—but whose social prescriptions were based on awful misunderstanding of genetics—even genetics that was already understood in his time.
(By the way — for anyone reading my response, I am neither endorsing nor rejecting Cardano’s use of the word “murder” in this context. That usage is a worthy topic for an ethical/theological debate, but not one in which I tend to engage. I note, for example, alternative systems, such as that expounded by Maimonides 1,000 years ago, which held that a fetus was a “potential life”—sacred, not to be frivolously discarded, but not quite on par with one who has been born. But again, that’s a discussion I generally address in private conversation.)
Invoking someone who lived a millennium before the discovery of the human egg in order to affirm/deny the existence of a human person in the womb is, perhaps, not an optimal strategy.
Now, I grant that "personhood" is a strictly Christian concept. The word "person" originally was a Greek word referring to the actor's mask worn on stage. It was repurposed from the theater to theology by Tertullian, who used the word to refer to the three "persons" in the Christian Godhead. Subsequently, Christianity redefined "person" to refer to rationality, i.e., "an individual substance of a rational nature", in other words 'that which possesses a will and an intellect."
The late 20th century (post-1980) attempt to redefine "person" yet again, but this time in strictly biological terms has led to the current impasse in understanding. According to theology, "personhood", being a quality of the soul, cannot be determined by experimental science. According to experimental science, there is no agreement on exactly what criteria constitutes "personhood." However, embryologists have consistently defined human life as beginning at conception. If we assume the beginning of human life is coterminous with the beginning of personhood (infusion of the human soul), then referring to deliberate abortion as murder is not beyond the pale.
Indeed, we must assume the act of sex itself creates responsibility in the actors towards any life which may result, for if we assume anything else, it becomes impossible to hold the man responsible for the creation of human life. If the act does not create responsibility, then only the woman can ever be held responsible for the creation of a child. In that view, the man only provides one-half of a set of blueprints. The woman provides the other half, the building site, all the raw materials, and herself alone constructs the resulting child. The man can never be responsible.
Thanks. And again, I neither accepted nor rejected your terminology—nor that of Maimonides. I merely mentioned that different ethical systems have different views. Maimonides is a relative newcomer in the field of ethics when compared with Moses, Christ, Buddha, and others whose thoughts are central to contemporary ethics. I’m comfortable debating many topics. Just not this one, though I listen to people (including you) with great interest and respect.
It is worthwhile to note that Maimonides perspective is enshrined in US law. According to the Jews, the soul is not infused until first breath. According to US law, a woman or abortionist cannot be tried for murder unless the baby can be demonstrated to have taken first breath, i.e., there is air in the lungs.
It is interesting that a purportedly Christian nation, such as the US, has so lovingly embraced both Progressive eugenics (every American president from Teddy Roosevelt to the current occupant has been a eugenicist, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, and the possible exception of GW Bush), and also embraced the Jewish definition of when human life begins. Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists all accept that human life begins at conception, Muslims consider ensoulment to happen 120 days after conception, but only Judaism says human life begins at first breath.
Perhaps you do not accept or reject any specific terminology, but the only name you invoked was that of a Jewish philosopher 1000 years dead, a name relatively obscure except to philosophers and theologians. It was an oddly specific invocation, but, as you say, I'm sure it doesn't reflect any predilection on your part.
Fascinating observations! you now have me wondering about those origins in American law. And in European laws, which are all over the board but, with the possible exception of Malta, all accord more with U.S. law than with the ethic you describe. I mentioned Maimonides because, 20+ years ago, I took a course in Jewish law. When we got to Maimonides’s rules on abortion, my thought was, “That sounds so much like contemporary Western law.” He differentiates between the first month, when there are no limits, and the remaining eight months, when it is a potential life (a variant on the trimester modalities). And one very slight correction (I think) with Maimonides, full life begins not with the first breath, but rather with the moment that the crown of the head becomes visible in the birth canal. I don’t know enough about childbirth to know how much of a practical difference that entails. And it should be noted that under his rules, abortion was mostly limited to situations where the life of the mother was at risk—though the exact meaning of that phrase was always subject to debate.
While it is true that the emergence of "the greater part" of the child is considered childbirth, the first in-breath of ruach, the wind, is seen as the ingestion of the vital aspect of the child. Still, even "the emergence of the greater part" does not impart full ontology. Childbirth holds a different place in Jewish thought than in that of other theologies.
"The newborn child is not considered fully viable until it has survived thirty days following birth, as is stated in the Talmud: Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel said: Any human being who lives 30 days is not a nephel [abortus] because it is stated: ‘And those that are to be redeemed of them from a month old shalt thou redeem (Numbers 18:16),’ since prior to thirty days it is not certain that he will survive.”
Further support for the necessity of a 30‑day postpartum viability period for adjudicating various Jewish legal matters pertaining to the newborn comes from Maimonides, who asserts:
Whether one kills an adult or a day‑old child, a male or a female, he must be put to death if he kills deliberately…provided that the child is born after a full‑term pregnancy. But, if it is born before the end of nine months, it is regarded as an abortion until it has lived for thirty days, and if one kills it during these thirty days, one is not put to death on its account."
The Hebrew word “nefesh” is usually translated in the Tanakh (Old Testament) as “soul”, but also can be translated as living being, life, creature, himself, herself, mind, desires, appetite, persons... it is more about the physicality of the individual than it is about their non-physicality (soul).
So, when abortionists, like Kermit Gosnell, strangle newborns in order to complete the abortion, a significant segment of the American population doesn't view that as murder. Even though partial-birth abortion violates the Talmudic principle of "emergence of the greater part", it doesn't necessarily violate the Talmudic principle that a newborn isn't fully ontologically present until 30 days after birth. Those who oppose a requirement for doctors to provide life-saving medical care to newborns are, whether they know it or not, supporting the latter Talmudic principle.
Your list of movies with economic themes omitted some examples which deserve mention because while fictionalized they portray actual people. "Margin Call" is supposedly about Goldman Sachs and "The Big Short" is biographical. "Wall Street" has a malevolent white collar crook who supposedly represents Ivan Boesky. "Wolf of Wall Street" is biographical but Jordan Belfort is such a compulsive liar that it is impossible to tell how accurate the movie is. ""Boiler Room", which portrays Stratton Oakmont with the names changed to protect the guilty, is a fictionalized account of Stratton Oakmont's favorite financial strategy, pump-and-dump. In one scene, the stockbrokers watch Alec Baldwin's famous monologue in "Glengarry Glen Ross." The late, unlamented Bernard Madoff has been portrayed in movies, too. "The Smartest Guys In The Room" is an accurate documentary of Enron while "The Crooked E" is fictionalized but at least the protagonist ends up happy.
Excellent additions. My list was limited by two factors—10 films only and films that I’ve seen and remember well. Yours is an excellent set of additions. I never saw Margin Call or The Big Short. I saw Wall Street and thought it was great, but my memory of it has faded—and I don’t remember it being especially didactic with respect to economics. I found the Wolf of Wall Street irritating and turned it off. Same with Glengarry Glen Ross, though my wife and I frequently refer to ABC. Never saw The Smartest Guys in the Room or The Crooked E.
"The Billionaire Boys Club" has been dramatized twice, both productions seem to portray criminals and victims with reasonable accuracy. "Atlas Shrugged" is faithful to the book. One of the best movies about economics is "Other People's Money", in which Larry the Liquidator delivers a speech to a shareholders' meeting which is much better than Gordon Gekko's speech in "Wall Street."
I was coming here to recommend "Other People's Money" as well! The speech Danny De Vito (Larry the Liquidator) gives in defense of what he and his universally despised profession does, and how it is sometimes necessary to prune inefficiency to keep an economy healthy, is actually an intelligent expression of some sound economic principles. The film refuses to embrace the lazy "wolf of wall street" cartoonish caricature. The rom-com aspect of the plot is charming as well.
Not sure I’ve seen any of these—other than Wall Street! The next time I offer such a list—and I have plenty more films to offer—I will certainly include Network, with special attention to Ned Beatty’s “The World Is a Corporation” speech: https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc
Very charitable and thoughtful rebuttal. And a delight to read. Thank you!
Four things:
1- Do you reject the idea that our aversion to sibling sex is intuitive eugenics? You seem to have done so in a comment below. Even nonhuman animals have aversion to kin mating so I don't think it has anything to do with the benefits of alliance formation of outgroup marriage.
2- Eugenics" doesn't have a negative connotation in much of the world.
Steve Hsu says:
"In China, eugenics is a positive thing. It doesn't have the negative association that it does in the west with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. That just isn't a cultural association that in any part of Asia is made between, something like embryo selection or pre-implantation genetic testing or prenatal testing"
Would you predict that such a lack of association with the historical atrocities of the eugenics movement makes Asians more likely to perpetrate atrocities in the name of eugenics? If not... what's the harm in using the word eugenics? Also, China has begun to subsidize IVF and will probably subsidize polygenic screening, so there is a very real possibility that their lack of bad association with the word eugenics is going to have many real world ramifications.
3- I'm very much in favor of interventions like polygenic screening since, as I see it, we have come to the limits of what nutrition and educational interventions can do for e.g. affluent people in the West. How do you rhetorically combat the aversion to interventions that involve no coercion or imposition on choice when they are called eugenics? As I said in my essay, critics are using the word correctly.
4- As you said, agreeing with many of the statements I made doesn't make you a eugenicist. So, what statements would someone need to agree with to be called a eugenicist? Do you have to be in favor of sterilization or murder by the state on the basis of "bad genes"? Is there any commonly held belief that would actually make one a eugenicist?
You have no idea how pleased I am to get this comment from you. So glad you thought I handled your very fine piece fairly. Welcome to Substack. For what it's worth, I have found the denizens of this platform to be remarkably thoughtful, polite, and intelligent. Hoping you have a similar experience. I've subscribed to Dissentient and recommended it to my readers. Now, on to your questions ...
1 - It wouldn't surprise me to learn that aversion to sibling sex is hardwired into us and into animals. I read long ago that humans are less attracted to potential mates whose smell resembles their own. Given the genetic perils of consanguinity, it makes sense that those predisposed against would it would dominate the population. But that logic works just as well if the byproduct of sibling avoidance is alliance formation. In "Showing that you Care" (https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/showcare.pdf) my colleague Robin Hanson describes how disabled Neanderthals and macaque primates survive(d) to old age, likely owing to instinctive behavior designed to cement alliances. (Robin's Substack is OvercomingBias.)
2 - Indeed, eugenics may still be a viable brand in some places. But, while I'm no expert on East Asia, I think there have been widespread eugenic atrocities. Japan abolished its postwar eugenics laws in 1996 after it was revealed that c.25,000 women were sterilized without consent or (likely) under duress. Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, suggested mass suicide as a solution to Japan's large elderly population (and low young population). He got criticism, but also loads of followers. China certainly has been in the forefront of the eugenics-adjacent space with its one- and then two-child policy--including forced abortions. China jailed He Jiankui for allegedly creating gene-edited babies. Korean scientists won a measure of infamy by cloning embryos in the early 2000s. Whether the word "eugenics" has the same vibes elsewhere may be the case. We'll see.
3- Maybe think about my logic. Eugenics was a malevolent, incoherent patchwork of agendas. And it was overwhelmingly coercive. I’d say that just because some concept was favored by some eugenicists does not make it eugenics. Then, you are discussing a specific issue and not mucking up the discussion will all the baggage that the word “eugenics” carries with it.
4- if someone says, “I agree with everything that Madison Grant said,” then I suppose it would be safe to say that that person is a eugenicist. But outside of that, I’m afraid that “eugenicist” is very much like “fascist.” If it ever had a standardized meaning, that day is long past. At this point it is whatever the speaker wishes it to be. It’s an historical term that is almost useless as a contemporary descriptor.
> It’s a Wonderful Life: Terrific explanation of the principles of fractional-reserve banking.
Not really. What Jimmy Stewart described in the scene in question is a non-fractional reserve banking system; as bad as what he describes is, for the way it makes the bank vulnerable to runs, fractional reserve banking is significantly worse.
A bank running on a fractional reserve system does not simply take your money and lend it out to someone else; it takes your money, claims it as a "reserve asset," and then lends out several times that amount (which it does not actually possess!) to other people, such that its real assets are only a small *fraction* of the loans it makes. A reserve ratio of 10% means that for every $100 a bank takes in in deposits, they lend out $1,000. This makes them far, far more vulnerable to bank runs than even the Jimmy Stewart system, because their actual liquid cash reserves are more accounting trickery than they are real.
Honestly, I think that that scene does a real disservice. The film it's in is so beloved that so many people have seen it — and so many of them have seen it over and over again! — and that scene sticks in their mind and now they think they know how banking works. There have been plenty of times when I've had to explain to someone, "you know that scene in It's A Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart explains that your money isn't in the bank, it's in your neighbor's farm? Well, the truth is so much worse: what the bank *really* did is take your money and lend it out ten times over to a bunch of different neighbors. Not only does the bank not have your money, they lied and pretended they don't-have ten times as much of it as they actually don't-have!"
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -- Henry Ford
It seems the prefix Eu maybe problematic for political reasons. Holding aside the history of the term for a moment, it makes sense to have disgenics (bad) and eugenics (good). But who decides which to use with any given practice becomes the issue. I suspect back then if both words existed, those practices would still be labeled as eugenics. Too often it takes time to see the error of our ways.
I wonder if the eu prefix is used to persuade people a practice is good, when it isn't accepted as good yet.
But I agree, once a term gets a bad meaning, it sticks, so it is futile to attempt rebranding the term.
I’d say it was problematic from the start. The Eucharist works fine. Eugenics was one big consortium of cognitive biases.
DeJarnette's poem is typical. He praises the livestock and vegetables of the farmer based on their shapes and colors, then condemns the farmer's children based on their -shapes and colors. Nothing about their intelligence, creativity, charity (in which he is sadly lacking) or anything else but appearance.
Genetic variation is valuable and necessary. Without it, a species or a society would have little chance of surviving any significant stress. No one is perceptive enough to judge these things, especially in a creature as complex as a man. Even after a man is dead and appears to have lived a pointless life, who can say that if there had been other circumstances, it might not have been different.
If any of the -good- eugenics ideas are actually of value, they should be able to be justified on other grounds.
Yup. And I'm guessing the livestock could write better poetry--maybe the vegetables, too.
Agree with all you say.
I was aghast to learn that forced sterilization continued for so long. It's almost like hearing "slavery was practiced in some parts of Alaska and Idaho until 2009."
Also, your movie list has simplified life for me: All life is downhill from economics.
Great post!
My mother, was an historical tour guide late in her life. Very smart. Very aware. When I showed her a video about eugenics in Virginia, she was aghast and asked, “Why didn’t I ever hear about this before?” I said, “Mom, you know exactly why you never heard about this before.”
As depressing as this is...forget it. Nothing redeeming here except maybe that we are rid of it forever? Are we?
We're never rid of it.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but Fleischman is right here. Bans on sibling and 1st cousin marriage? Absolutely eugenics, and it's not even close. Likewise genetic counseling.
Really, you're not arguing here, you're just emoting a lot.
Thanks. We’ll have to agree to disagree.
“Eugenics” was a sprawling, malevolent, intellectually incoherent social movement with a scientistic facade. It had bits and pieces of sense sprinkled here and there, but agreement with those occasional sprinkles does not tar one with the overall label. It also misses the point that bans on sibling or close-cousin marriage likely had non-eugenic origins—notably the fact that young girls were particularly vulnerable to rape or other abuse by those living in their own homes. I suspect much of the reason behind this powerful, widespread taboo—a learned revulsion for incest—was to minimize the incidence of opportunistic abuse. Another likely reason was that marriage outside the immediate family built alliances of mutual support—essential to survival, but having nothing to do with eugenic concerns. These taboos were incredibly widespread across time and geography, and it’s doubtful that eugenics was the common thread in these social arrangements across the ages.
I can agree with eugenicists on some scattered point without being one of them, just as I can agree on specific points with progressives, conservatives, and libertarians without belonging to any of those groups.
In the mid-1960s, a family friend was a Jewish member of the John Birch Society, and he tried now and then to lure my father in that direction. My father said he wasn’t interested in an organization that was riddled with antisemitism, paranoia, scientific quackery, etc. One day, this guy told Dad, “That kind of stuff is maybe 10% of the Society’s beliefs. I think you’d agree with 90% of what we believe.” Dad simply said, “A body that is only 10% cancerous is still not a healthy organism.” That comment pretty much ended the guy’s attempts to interest Dad. Eugenics, in contrast, was probably 80%-90% cancerous. The word “eugenics” is long-since discredited and beyond repair.
I’d recommend finding a better name and leaving “eugenics” in the wax museum. If you want to call yourself a eugenicist, that’s your right—just as our family friend was free to call himself a John Bircher. But most of us do not wish to be tattooed—by someone else—with an odious, atavistic appellation that was intellectually bereft, intolerant, authoritarian, and dishonest from its earliest days till it vanished from polite conversation.
I don't particularly want to call myself a eugenicist, but I'm not fond of pretending that we've totally abandoned all traces of eugenics in our policies, or that eugenics was some kind of unique horror. It was of a piece with the era, and it was not a pretty era.
I agree with most of what you say here. I will differ a bit in that, even in an age of horrors, eugenics was especially pernicious and pervasive. Part of my difference with Fleischman boils down to whether using one uses the word “eugenics” to indicate “Danger! Thin ice!” or “Come on in! The water’s fine!” I tend to use the word to mean the former. I think she uses more in the second sense—though perhaps she would disagree.
I use it just to mean, as I indicated, the idea that humanity should be improved by some degree of selective breeding, akin to the way we do with livestock.
This end could be pursued with a wide range of means, from completely voluntary efforts like the former "Repository for Germinal Choice", a sperm bank specializing in providing sperm from donors with high IQs, to, at the opposite extreme, feeding people into gas chambers. In the middle, Planned Parenthood was established for eugenics purposes.
I distinguish the end from the means, because this end IS amenable to perfectly unobjectionable means. You might as well object to highway systems just because of the Autobahn being built with slave labor.
Eventually we're going to be capable of reliably doing germ line genetic engineering, and I think at that point eugenics as a positive thing will really take off, because it will no longer require particular people to not reproduce. (Whether forcibly or as a result of bribes.) Probably under another name, though, due to the historical associations.
But I do wonder why the historical associations stick to eugenics, and not to, say, central planning of economies, which probably has caused more misery in total over the last century.
All interesting. I suspect, again, that the difference with eugenics lies in its extraordinarily high ratio of bullshit over legitimate content. And the pervasive, shapeshifting, and metastatic nature of its prescriptions. In the Autobahn is just a road, and its existence does not seem to lead to further slavery. Eugenics was different in that expect. And yes, I’ll agree that central planning deserves a much harsher evaluation that it normally gets. And I believe that eugenics and central planning were highly codependent.
Perhaps it is time to drop calling it Eugenics and simply refer to it as Wilsonian Genetics ? We could call it Democrat Genetics, but that is possibly a bit harsh ...
Wilsonian Genetics? Interesting. I might prefer being called a eugenicist. https://insidesources.com/harding-wilson-and-the-perils-of-expertise/
All three types of Down syndrome are genetic conditions (relating to the genes), but only 1% of all cases of Down syndrome have a hereditary component (passed from parent to child through the genes). Heredity is not a factor in trisomy 21 (nondisjunction) and mosaicism. It is a failure of cell division, that's all. Parents don't pass it on to the children in a hereditary way, nor do Down's Syndrome victims pass it on to their own children.
Thus, if you support Iceland's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, or America's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, you are absolutely a eugenicist. Period.
Fascinating! Assuming what you say is true (and I’m guessing it is), then it really is representative of eugenics, in that it purports to be about heredity but in fact based on conformation-bias rather than scientific logic. I am writing a piece on Alexander Graham Bell, who appears to have been truly compassionate toward Deaf people—but whose social prescriptions were based on awful misunderstanding of genetics—even genetics that was already understood in his time.
(By the way — for anyone reading my response, I am neither endorsing nor rejecting Cardano’s use of the word “murder” in this context. That usage is a worthy topic for an ethical/theological debate, but not one in which I tend to engage. I note, for example, alternative systems, such as that expounded by Maimonides 1,000 years ago, which held that a fetus was a “potential life”—sacred, not to be frivolously discarded, but not quite on par with one who has been born. But again, that’s a discussion I generally address in private conversation.)
Invoking someone who lived a millennium before the discovery of the human egg in order to affirm/deny the existence of a human person in the womb is, perhaps, not an optimal strategy.
Now, I grant that "personhood" is a strictly Christian concept. The word "person" originally was a Greek word referring to the actor's mask worn on stage. It was repurposed from the theater to theology by Tertullian, who used the word to refer to the three "persons" in the Christian Godhead. Subsequently, Christianity redefined "person" to refer to rationality, i.e., "an individual substance of a rational nature", in other words 'that which possesses a will and an intellect."
The late 20th century (post-1980) attempt to redefine "person" yet again, but this time in strictly biological terms has led to the current impasse in understanding. According to theology, "personhood", being a quality of the soul, cannot be determined by experimental science. According to experimental science, there is no agreement on exactly what criteria constitutes "personhood." However, embryologists have consistently defined human life as beginning at conception. If we assume the beginning of human life is coterminous with the beginning of personhood (infusion of the human soul), then referring to deliberate abortion as murder is not beyond the pale.
Indeed, we must assume the act of sex itself creates responsibility in the actors towards any life which may result, for if we assume anything else, it becomes impossible to hold the man responsible for the creation of human life. If the act does not create responsibility, then only the woman can ever be held responsible for the creation of a child. In that view, the man only provides one-half of a set of blueprints. The woman provides the other half, the building site, all the raw materials, and herself alone constructs the resulting child. The man can never be responsible.
Thanks. And again, I neither accepted nor rejected your terminology—nor that of Maimonides. I merely mentioned that different ethical systems have different views. Maimonides is a relative newcomer in the field of ethics when compared with Moses, Christ, Buddha, and others whose thoughts are central to contemporary ethics. I’m comfortable debating many topics. Just not this one, though I listen to people (including you) with great interest and respect.
It is worthwhile to note that Maimonides perspective is enshrined in US law. According to the Jews, the soul is not infused until first breath. According to US law, a woman or abortionist cannot be tried for murder unless the baby can be demonstrated to have taken first breath, i.e., there is air in the lungs.
It is interesting that a purportedly Christian nation, such as the US, has so lovingly embraced both Progressive eugenics (every American president from Teddy Roosevelt to the current occupant has been a eugenicist, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, and the possible exception of GW Bush), and also embraced the Jewish definition of when human life begins. Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists all accept that human life begins at conception, Muslims consider ensoulment to happen 120 days after conception, but only Judaism says human life begins at first breath.
Perhaps you do not accept or reject any specific terminology, but the only name you invoked was that of a Jewish philosopher 1000 years dead, a name relatively obscure except to philosophers and theologians. It was an oddly specific invocation, but, as you say, I'm sure it doesn't reflect any predilection on your part.
Fascinating observations! you now have me wondering about those origins in American law. And in European laws, which are all over the board but, with the possible exception of Malta, all accord more with U.S. law than with the ethic you describe. I mentioned Maimonides because, 20+ years ago, I took a course in Jewish law. When we got to Maimonides’s rules on abortion, my thought was, “That sounds so much like contemporary Western law.” He differentiates between the first month, when there are no limits, and the remaining eight months, when it is a potential life (a variant on the trimester modalities). And one very slight correction (I think) with Maimonides, full life begins not with the first breath, but rather with the moment that the crown of the head becomes visible in the birth canal. I don’t know enough about childbirth to know how much of a practical difference that entails. And it should be noted that under his rules, abortion was mostly limited to situations where the life of the mother was at risk—though the exact meaning of that phrase was always subject to debate.
While it is true that the emergence of "the greater part" of the child is considered childbirth, the first in-breath of ruach, the wind, is seen as the ingestion of the vital aspect of the child. Still, even "the emergence of the greater part" does not impart full ontology. Childbirth holds a different place in Jewish thought than in that of other theologies.
"The newborn child is not considered fully viable until it has survived thirty days following birth, as is stated in the Talmud: Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel said: Any human being who lives 30 days is not a nephel [abortus] because it is stated: ‘And those that are to be redeemed of them from a month old shalt thou redeem (Numbers 18:16),’ since prior to thirty days it is not certain that he will survive.”
Further support for the necessity of a 30‑day postpartum viability period for adjudicating various Jewish legal matters pertaining to the newborn comes from Maimonides, who asserts:
Whether one kills an adult or a day‑old child, a male or a female, he must be put to death if he kills deliberately…provided that the child is born after a full‑term pregnancy. But, if it is born before the end of nine months, it is regarded as an abortion until it has lived for thirty days, and if one kills it during these thirty days, one is not put to death on its account."
The Hebrew word “nefesh” is usually translated in the Tanakh (Old Testament) as “soul”, but also can be translated as living being, life, creature, himself, herself, mind, desires, appetite, persons... it is more about the physicality of the individual than it is about their non-physicality (soul).
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-beginning-of-life-in-judaism/
So, when abortionists, like Kermit Gosnell, strangle newborns in order to complete the abortion, a significant segment of the American population doesn't view that as murder. Even though partial-birth abortion violates the Talmudic principle of "emergence of the greater part", it doesn't necessarily violate the Talmudic principle that a newborn isn't fully ontologically present until 30 days after birth. Those who oppose a requirement for doctors to provide life-saving medical care to newborns are, whether they know it or not, supporting the latter Talmudic principle.
Your list of movies with economic themes omitted some examples which deserve mention because while fictionalized they portray actual people. "Margin Call" is supposedly about Goldman Sachs and "The Big Short" is biographical. "Wall Street" has a malevolent white collar crook who supposedly represents Ivan Boesky. "Wolf of Wall Street" is biographical but Jordan Belfort is such a compulsive liar that it is impossible to tell how accurate the movie is. ""Boiler Room", which portrays Stratton Oakmont with the names changed to protect the guilty, is a fictionalized account of Stratton Oakmont's favorite financial strategy, pump-and-dump. In one scene, the stockbrokers watch Alec Baldwin's famous monologue in "Glengarry Glen Ross." The late, unlamented Bernard Madoff has been portrayed in movies, too. "The Smartest Guys In The Room" is an accurate documentary of Enron while "The Crooked E" is fictionalized but at least the protagonist ends up happy.
Excellent additions. My list was limited by two factors—10 films only and films that I’ve seen and remember well. Yours is an excellent set of additions. I never saw Margin Call or The Big Short. I saw Wall Street and thought it was great, but my memory of it has faded—and I don’t remember it being especially didactic with respect to economics. I found the Wolf of Wall Street irritating and turned it off. Same with Glengarry Glen Ross, though my wife and I frequently refer to ABC. Never saw The Smartest Guys in the Room or The Crooked E.
"The Billionaire Boys Club" has been dramatized twice, both productions seem to portray criminals and victims with reasonable accuracy. "Atlas Shrugged" is faithful to the book. One of the best movies about economics is "Other People's Money", in which Larry the Liquidator delivers a speech to a shareholders' meeting which is much better than Gordon Gekko's speech in "Wall Street."
I was coming here to recommend "Other People's Money" as well! The speech Danny De Vito (Larry the Liquidator) gives in defense of what he and his universally despised profession does, and how it is sometimes necessary to prune inefficiency to keep an economy healthy, is actually an intelligent expression of some sound economic principles. The film refuses to embrace the lazy "wolf of wall street" cartoonish caricature. The rom-com aspect of the plot is charming as well.
You film-savvy commenters are going to fill quite a few of my coming evenings!
Not sure I’ve seen any of these—other than Wall Street! The next time I offer such a list—and I have plenty more films to offer—I will certainly include Network, with special attention to Ned Beatty’s “The World Is a Corporation” speech: https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc
Very charitable and thoughtful rebuttal. And a delight to read. Thank you!
Four things:
1- Do you reject the idea that our aversion to sibling sex is intuitive eugenics? You seem to have done so in a comment below. Even nonhuman animals have aversion to kin mating so I don't think it has anything to do with the benefits of alliance formation of outgroup marriage.
2- Eugenics" doesn't have a negative connotation in much of the world.
Steve Hsu says:
"In China, eugenics is a positive thing. It doesn't have the negative association that it does in the west with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. That just isn't a cultural association that in any part of Asia is made between, something like embryo selection or pre-implantation genetic testing or prenatal testing"
Would you predict that such a lack of association with the historical atrocities of the eugenics movement makes Asians more likely to perpetrate atrocities in the name of eugenics? If not... what's the harm in using the word eugenics? Also, China has begun to subsidize IVF and will probably subsidize polygenic screening, so there is a very real possibility that their lack of bad association with the word eugenics is going to have many real world ramifications.
3- I'm very much in favor of interventions like polygenic screening since, as I see it, we have come to the limits of what nutrition and educational interventions can do for e.g. affluent people in the West. How do you rhetorically combat the aversion to interventions that involve no coercion or imposition on choice when they are called eugenics? As I said in my essay, critics are using the word correctly.
4- As you said, agreeing with many of the statements I made doesn't make you a eugenicist. So, what statements would someone need to agree with to be called a eugenicist? Do you have to be in favor of sterilization or murder by the state on the basis of "bad genes"? Is there any commonly held belief that would actually make one a eugenicist?
You have no idea how pleased I am to get this comment from you. So glad you thought I handled your very fine piece fairly. Welcome to Substack. For what it's worth, I have found the denizens of this platform to be remarkably thoughtful, polite, and intelligent. Hoping you have a similar experience. I've subscribed to Dissentient and recommended it to my readers. Now, on to your questions ...
1 - It wouldn't surprise me to learn that aversion to sibling sex is hardwired into us and into animals. I read long ago that humans are less attracted to potential mates whose smell resembles their own. Given the genetic perils of consanguinity, it makes sense that those predisposed against would it would dominate the population. But that logic works just as well if the byproduct of sibling avoidance is alliance formation. In "Showing that you Care" (https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/showcare.pdf) my colleague Robin Hanson describes how disabled Neanderthals and macaque primates survive(d) to old age, likely owing to instinctive behavior designed to cement alliances. (Robin's Substack is OvercomingBias.)
2 - Indeed, eugenics may still be a viable brand in some places. But, while I'm no expert on East Asia, I think there have been widespread eugenic atrocities. Japan abolished its postwar eugenics laws in 1996 after it was revealed that c.25,000 women were sterilized without consent or (likely) under duress. Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, suggested mass suicide as a solution to Japan's large elderly population (and low young population). He got criticism, but also loads of followers. China certainly has been in the forefront of the eugenics-adjacent space with its one- and then two-child policy--including forced abortions. China jailed He Jiankui for allegedly creating gene-edited babies. Korean scientists won a measure of infamy by cloning embryos in the early 2000s. Whether the word "eugenics" has the same vibes elsewhere may be the case. We'll see.
3- Maybe think about my logic. Eugenics was a malevolent, incoherent patchwork of agendas. And it was overwhelmingly coercive. I’d say that just because some concept was favored by some eugenicists does not make it eugenics. Then, you are discussing a specific issue and not mucking up the discussion will all the baggage that the word “eugenics” carries with it.
4- if someone says, “I agree with everything that Madison Grant said,” then I suppose it would be safe to say that that person is a eugenicist. But outside of that, I’m afraid that “eugenicist” is very much like “fascist.” If it ever had a standardized meaning, that day is long past. At this point it is whatever the speaker wishes it to be. It’s an historical term that is almost useless as a contemporary descriptor.
> It’s a Wonderful Life: Terrific explanation of the principles of fractional-reserve banking.
Not really. What Jimmy Stewart described in the scene in question is a non-fractional reserve banking system; as bad as what he describes is, for the way it makes the bank vulnerable to runs, fractional reserve banking is significantly worse.
A bank running on a fractional reserve system does not simply take your money and lend it out to someone else; it takes your money, claims it as a "reserve asset," and then lends out several times that amount (which it does not actually possess!) to other people, such that its real assets are only a small *fraction* of the loans it makes. A reserve ratio of 10% means that for every $100 a bank takes in in deposits, they lend out $1,000. This makes them far, far more vulnerable to bank runs than even the Jimmy Stewart system, because their actual liquid cash reserves are more accounting trickery than they are real.
Honestly, I think that that scene does a real disservice. The film it's in is so beloved that so many people have seen it — and so many of them have seen it over and over again! — and that scene sticks in their mind and now they think they know how banking works. There have been plenty of times when I've had to explain to someone, "you know that scene in It's A Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart explains that your money isn't in the bank, it's in your neighbor's farm? Well, the truth is so much worse: what the bank *really* did is take your money and lend it out ten times over to a bunch of different neighbors. Not only does the bank not have your money, they lied and pretended they don't-have ten times as much of it as they actually don't-have!"
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -- Henry Ford
Yeah, I was in commercial banking for 5 years and then worked at the Fed for 12 years. I still love the movie and the scene, though. :)