Eugenics

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Bullied make it very tempting, but I suspect that we can live with most kinds of bad genes if they even are bad.

I agree. But that is what they are using as the reason.

LadySmokeEater. This is an example of corporate evil that I have been going on about in various threads for the past month, but everyone seems to ignore me and make out that the corporations are our friends.

They are not our friends - they only care about their money. They would do anything to get more profits, even if it meant the deaths of many people.

If people as a group were smart, they'd all get together, decide which traits they want in people, and which traits need to be removed, and procede to breed humanity into a happier healthier species. If people were smart they could even take this further, they could tailor themselves in many kinds of ways. But people are not smart. Humans as a group have the intelligence of less than an ameoba. And people at this rate are never gonna come to any agreement about the direction of the human species muchless breeding out certain traits and popularizing others.

RobertN,

I never said that the "corprate evil" wasnt happening. I see it every day. As with most evils, some are more tolerable than others. I just dont have the strength to fight all of them at once....

*hoping not to sound like a consperacy nut* I agree that the drug companies are out for profit, not for the betterment of humanity. Its true that "herbal" or "natural" remedys are not FDA approved because they can not be pattened by the drug manufactures. A synthetic replication of a working natural compound, however, can be. The pattens allow a single maker to reap the profits and set any price the wish. The only way they can extend a patten is if they find another "approved" use. Or, as with many drugs, one form goes generic, and a "better" form (time release, resin compounded, etc) is given a new patten. Then the drug reps push the "new" pills on the doctors. The Doctors have NO idea that the pills cost as much as they do, because they have insurance and the drug reps give them all the samples they want. The pharmisists, however, are a WONDERFUL resource for info on meds, and many know way more about interactions than doctors do....
So we are given drugs that "treat" the sypmtoms. Not CURE the problem. Sure, some drugs can CURE, but many are "Maintance" drugs that are to keep our bodies functioning so long as they are supplied with that drug. *sigh*
back to natural remedies.... Not everything is gonna "fix" whats wrong, but they are a good place to begin. Our foods are mostly processed, (again the FDA) and we lack some of the trace minerals in our diets that provide for proper function. Or the yucky crap they fill our foods with (proplene glycol is antifreeze Dexacool is the name brand, see how much stuff you use and eat that has that in it) and those chemicals, preservitives and such prevent our bodies from being as healthy as they can be.... But I digress......
One has to wonder though, if all the stuff we eat isnt already messing with our offspring in some negitive way. Maybe not a planned alteration....
And, no , I dont htink "diet" and "Herbs" can cure Autism. some things are hardwired, and I think thats one of them. God help us if tests are made to preescreen fetuses for that. Imagine all the important folks we might never have......

I tend to not take such cynical view on human intelligence.
This is getting into a nature vs nurture discussion.
It is more about what people learn then how they are. Unless people have a sever cognitive disability, if they are given a good education, they will sound even slightly intelligent.

The idea of breeding humanity sounds like some people can not choose who their partners are because governments will them not to. What about love?

I worry that the belief in a genetic predisposition to autism is a lot like the belief that the gene that causes polydactylism (extra fingers) caused early death for women who lived in the 17th century. My own experience is that I had a genetic predisposition to a higher intelligence, as does my sister. This higher intelligence inspired a bunch of nit-nats to bully me and my sister, and now we bear the personality traits that are scars of bullying. And any accusations that she and I "lack empathy" are out of whole cloth. We both have great empathy for animals and for people who act like human beings. We don't have empathy for hysterics, psychopaths, bullies, or camp followers of same. Guess who would have written in their reports that we lacked empathy?

A sensitive mind, one that is blueprint normal for a human, would collapse if confronted with the abuse that is standard in human society. No animal would tolerate what I went through without attempting to kill its abuser. It wouldn't tolerate a week of it. For what my opinion is worth, I believe that a healthy mind should not also expect to take abuse day in and day out without cracking. There are also all kinds of cracking.

What was Dr. Asperger to do? Defining those children as potential intellectual giants would have gotten them killed quickly, or abused to death. Better to label them as study subjects and hope to pass their genes on to the next generation. I flat do not believe that such people would become less than human in any way. If anything a more complex mind has more capacity for feeling and for compassion if not burned out by abuse. The gene should not be seen as negative any more than the gene for an extra finger.

We could eliminate some of the more pesky genetic diseases in only 1 generation if everyone cooperated and then they could be free to replicate until some more pesky genetic diseases pop up. The only problem really is where to draw the line on what should be removed from the gene pool.

Yes. That's pretty much what I meant, too. Things such as Tay Sachs and other very lethal diseases could be bred out, but it'd have to be voluntary. There is a lot of talk about cures, but I think that for some of these things, it'd be a lot easier for the people who carry the gene to adopt instead of perpetuating the disease in hopes of a cure.

There is one thing that we need to harp on. That's generosity of spirit. Yes, bad genes cause problems. However, instead of forcing people to our will and spending the money making life rougher for everyone, which defeats the purpose, it has to cost less in time, effort, and in becoming mean-spirited so and soes if we just consider it part of the price of freedom. We pay for our freedoms by being generous with others and by staying out of ther lives and decisions when they are not wanted. Not coincidentally, we pay less this way.

To the best of my knlowledge, the Nazis got the idea for their form of eugeics in the ealy-min '30s from the people that would later found Planned Parenthood. They found each other's philosophies so compaitble that a few ranking Nazi officials helped provide some financial and logistical support to form Planned Parenthood.

I'm not at all suprised that the Nazi eugenics program was started in California. Hell, I wouldn't be suprised if this state had a large gas chamber hidden away somewhere. The mental health laws are called "progressive but they are nothing more than a smoke screen. There is no real oversight for legal or even human rights violations, if you are labeled ret*d or unable to understand anything going on, then about the only right you have is the right to live, but nobody will even protect that for you. Also, single floor mental health facilities are exempt from all seismic requirements of the building safety code...in California. I guess they couldn't find a way to exempt all other faciities from seismic, fire, or health codes.

The sad part is that I have never even been to a mental health facility. I know all of this just from reading the laws posted on the state's website and people's personal accounts match.

Every legal measure that is supposedly in place to protect humans seems to hide something bad right behind it. I will certainly fail to sound cheerily optimistic if I run down a short list. One of my long-standing gripes is about the continuing attempts to criminalize pornography. In my opinion, bans on the viewing of pornography are of zero benefit to society and are a huge detriment. The object of the exercise is not to protect people, that's an outright lie. It is to help make their minds a little more controllable, more specifically, it helps create a set of phobic personalities who can easily be threatened into compliance using stimuli that they don't normally have to deal with. They get juries to convict pornographers by threatening them with more pornography and the public in general to go along with bans because they are "grossed out" and afraid.

A lot of other legal measures seem to be along similar lines, to make people afraid to make them easier to take advantage of. This philosophy damages the quality of life more than badly enough to compensate for any benefits that might exist. They would tell us that giving up a significant portion of the quality of our lives if it "saves just one life." These are the same people who say we have to invade a much smaller country that has never harmed us. They tear down the quality of our lives by using the excuse that "someone died" so "there must be a law" when the chances that someone will die are extremely slim, where there is no clear and present danger because of an activity, and, really, it isn't worth it. I'm sick and tired of campaigns that say that we have to give up rights because we can't tell some father that his daughter's life isn't worth more than our civil rights. It's even more sickening because it works.

And if I had a son (hypothetically) whose life I considered to be too valuable to waste in Iraq, what then? The issues of Viet Nam are a little old, but that was when they forced us to send our children out to be killed, and called us dirty names if we wanted to protect them. They will physically abuse us for it, too, when they get the chance. These people aren't protecting us from anything except our own rights. These same people will try to outlaw the keeping of all sorts of animals on the pretext of protecting human lives. I guess those animals must be a bad example because they won't put up with that kind of garbage.

Im not sure what Porn has to do with eugenics. But I will say this about it: it dehumanises both genders, and it objectifies both genders, especally women (as most of that stuff is directed towards herto males).... I would hope that you would still draw the line at the stuff involving children.....
But on the IRAQ thing....

There isnt a draft today. All of our troops knew that by siging up, they might have to go to war. no one made them do it, and they are all adults. That said....

Would you rather have the war here where your hypothetical son that didnt go to Iraq is in danger of carbombs and sucide bombers as he goes to his peaceful job? Because had we just sat back and taken the attacks on 9/11, there would have been more. you can take that to the bank. By not reacting we would have said we were willing let extremeists get away with terror tactics, and would have thus invited more attacks on our soil.

"Objectifies" I'll grant you, although I disagree that women are objectified more than men...whose face are you more likely to see in porn? Who is more likely to have more lines? The men behave essentially like robots. But I'm not sure what you mean by "dehumanizes" in this context.



Afghanistan was a perfectly sensible response to 9/11, and it had pretty much unanimous support from the whole world. But Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism until after we invaded. Saddam was a crazy murderer, but there is no shortage of those in the world, and he posed no significant threat to the U.S. Even Bush said there was absolutely no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

There is now, of course.

Jeremy

Dehumanizes was not a great word choice. the point was that it makes sex into something more "animal" like as opposed to what many in society view as "to be within the bonds of marrage" But that is mearly a thought on the viewpoints. As far as objectifying women. It makes women seem like objects for the purpose of a mans pleasure, and although no one watches the stuff for plot, the intlegenct of the female isnt exactly a factor.... its her chest size, her figure, her make-up, etc. But again, mearly an opinion.

As far as Iraq goes, if the Intel was faluty or not, we are still there, and we are still committed to following through. The fact that Saddam Hussaine had used chemical weapons on his own people does not make him an endearing character. The fact that he was a known supporter of terrorism, well, that isnt exactly the mark of a person we want to take home for dinner. It may very well be that the intel that drove the powers that be to make the attacks have not been released for reasons that we can only begin to imagine. And it could be in the intrest of the public, that we not know what really happened to those WMDs. Perhaps saying they couldnt find them was easier than saying "we think they are in the US now and we are in the process of getting them" and thus risking their not being found at all, the public panicing and the economy nosediving, or even worse: the use of said weapons on civilian populations before we can stop it. You have no idea what just a few ounces of some of that stuff can do to an entire city! Makes taking a nuke look like a quick way out.... but Im just tossing a theroy out there on that. I just dont think that if some intel was there, that the others, beyond the president, would have let the invasion happen. Not to meantion the other countries getting involved.....

Are there really that many people who think that sex should be restricted to married couples? Nothing wrong with people who do, I just don't think it's really all that common in America (and definitely not in Europe ).



I dunno, who seems to be having more fun in porn ("seems" being the key word)? Women tend to do most of the vocalizing. The men are generally silent until the, uh, final moments. Honestly, men in porn don't usually look like they're having much fun.

I can see how some porn can be considered degrading to women in particular, but I think men are objectified more.



And men are chosen based largely on penis size.



Sure. I fully agree that we can't cut the Iraqi people loose now that we're there. We have a responsibility to them to leave their country in as stable a position as we can.



No argument there, but, like I said, there are dozens of such dictators in the world. Saddam didn't pose any threat to the U.S. He supported terrorism against Israel, but not against us. He was effectively contained by our air superiority and the no-fly zone.

Bush's invasion of Iraq distracted us from the real threat and, worse, turned Iraq into a rallying point for terrorists that wouldn't have existed otherwise. No one cared too much about Afghanistan; the Taliban were too extreme even for relatively conservative Islamic states. But Iraq was a little close to home. The accusations of American imperialism seemed a little more reasonable after that, and more potential terrorists signed up.



Some others were in favor of the war, of course, but a lot of Congress (including Kerry) voted to allow Bush to use military force so that he could use that as leverage against Saddam, not because they thought he'd actually do it. Kinda stupid of them, but hindsight is 20/20.

Jeremy