At some point someone on our side was maintaining that it's silly to claim Nazis were leftist, because their approach to governance was more traditional and not at all like the Communists.
Me? I say it's stupid to call something derived from Marxism, and that called itself socialism "right wing" -- in the American sense -- though the terms right and left are both inadequate for the battles taking place now. I also say that there is nothing more "traditional" than the end result of communism, which ends in a kakistocracy akin to capricious and not very smart tribal leaders, but with power over a much vaster land than most tribes. Which in turn causes a lot more deaths.
Leaving that aside, the "national socialists" -- though the Nazis were a special and extreme case -- did take a more traditional approach to improving humans.
Okay, first, let's establish that most people who didn't leave inside Marx's head -- that is all of humanity -- understood and understands that utopia is impossible with humans as they are and have always been.
It is built into both philosophies derived from Marxism, the national socialists and the international socialists (but really secretly Russian Nationalists) the idea that humans must be improved.
The traditional form of this, appealing more to the national socialists, I guess because they tend to idolize farmers and pastoral idyll -- as opposed to the international socialists who idolize factory workers. Note neither real farmers nor real factory workers are listened to by the so called "leaders", these are just a philosophical ideal -- is the approach taken by farmers from time immemorial, to improve the stock in farms.
The eugenics movement that was all the rage across Europe in the early 20th century, before the smoke from the death camps showed what a very bad idea it was, and which keeps rearing its ugly head was a manifestation of this. And it never really went away.
Early on it was brutal and clear. "Defectives" would be sterilized or killed, to put them out of general society's misery. This would be done incrementally, till at the end of it, there would be, standing tall, an ideal humanity, which could be trusted to live in utopia, and-- Bah. go read science fiction from before World War I. They don't even try to disguise it.
The fact that they had the current lefties (who actually have a lot of happy fun eugenics ideas still, just buried) misunderstanding of culture for race, and looked at the end result of cultures as meaning some races are "defective" just made this all the more bizarre.
I don't think I'm giving away any secrets when I say that Margaret Sanger formed planned parenthood to discourage the "inferior races" from reproducing. At the time, of course, this included not just black people, but everyone who could tan, and probably a lot of the Irish. And that part has now a definite "off" whiff in America. You see, it included the Jews too. And the GIs returned from WWII knowing exactly where that led.
But--
But it's not the end of the eugenics project.
A lot of it in the mutated national socialism, like, say, in Portugal, the softer, gentler -- spits -- "will not feed you in batch lots to the ovens, but will make you very poor" version, which was also tried here by FDR (for the record, having read mom's school books, not only did Salazar crib FDRs programs, he probably plagiarized FDR's speeches. Bah.) still goes on.
Part of it is to discourage breeding. This crosses with the crazy insane bits of the sixties and seventies -- from the left, psychology -- which thought a society without sexual frustration would be utopia. Because it was repression that made you angry and mean, or whatever.
Okay, so, there is (still) a strong cultural push to screw a lot, but not reproduce. Both because this is supposed to keep the welfare classes (and if you've never found yourself in trouble, you don't know how hard Welfare is to refuse -- we did -- or to come out of -- some friends did) from reproducing (it's not working, but that's for other reasons) and because of our new idea of what makes ideal people. Ideal people, you see, are WANTED babies, and then coddled, watched, guided within an inch of their lives.
The number of times I've had someone explain to me that yeah, abortion to the day of birth is needed because not everyone is wanted, and therefore they'll be born to a life of misery and be unhappy and probably criminals their entire life.
I'm here to tell you that I haven't -- yet -- taken one of these "helpful" beings heart out through their mouths. Yet. But there's always tomorrow.
You see, neither Dan nor I were wanted. Oh, he was. Until it was discovered -- fortunately at the time this was impossible to do pre-birth -- he was a boy. I just wasn't. Mom had determined the way to wealth was to have only one child and lavish all resources on him. Don't blame her too hard. After all the UN was making posters pushing that idea about that time.
And yet, shockingly, surprisingly, we're both here, and even more shockingly, we're both productive, happy, and the only type of criminal I am is "thought criminal" which should not exist in the US.
Further, anyone who looks at craigslist or other place where people list animals for re-adoption knows that no matter how wanted you are at birth, circumstances change. The number of breed dogs and cats being given up because the owners found out the having isn't as much fun as the wanting. Or because an adopter died, got sick, or has to move to a place that won't accept pets.
For children, let me assure you both the inconvenience and the changing circumstances, over 18 to 20 or 22 years (which seems to be as long as it takes -- minimally -- to launch them these days) are much, much higher.
So being wanted at birth is not something that determines trajectory in life. This is however something that is almost impossible to penetrate in the modern mind, and some of you are probably cringing that I dare question it.
Then there are various issues we test for, and which you're encouraged to abort for. Look, I am not even judging those who decide to. I do understand the fears all too well, okay?
Every time I got pregnant, I compounded with fate for what defects I'd prefer. I know that sounds lunatic, but there it is. "Blind? I can take blind." Or "missing limb. We'll figure it out." Anything, anything but mentally defective, because I wasn't sure I could bridge that or live with it.
So, of course, what we were told is that older son would be mentally defective and probably never be able to live independently -- he says he's mentally defective, because of the circumstances of the pregnancy. As for living independently, he tends to forget to eat vegetables if his wife doesn't make him, but other than that he seems okay -- and were encouraged to abort. That we didn't was more that I couldn't live with that EITHER, particularly after six years of infertility and having gone through a very difficult pregnancy and being profoundly aware that he was likely to be our one and only. (We got lucky.)
However I remember the fear, the struggle, and the convincing arguments the other way. I come not to judge, nor to condemn, only to say that it is a slippery slope.
Slippery? Well -- where do you stop? Yes, a profoundly mentally deficient child will need life long care, and I know how difficult that is, and how much a parent will worry about their own mortality and leaving behind a kid who can't survive on his own. Of such things are murder-suicides made.
But then, what is an handicap too profound to survive? What justifies abortion or, probably, in forthcoming developments, simply culling certain genes out? And how much is genetic, and how much is environment? I think we're in the very infancy of genetics and much of what we think we know ain't so. And culling for genetic defects would be stupid. Even if we knew more. Yes, I can explain.
First of all, though, I'd like to point out we don't know what's survivable, what's a full life, what's happiness -- for others. You know that "Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about?" Well "Everyone has a value you know nothing about." Sometimes the value -- I often think mine -- is to be a negative example, granted.
However, I think I went to college with a Thalidomide baby. I'm not sure, because I don't even know if it was distributed in Portugal. However, he had the characteristic lack of limbs, hands emerging from shoulders and either feet from trunk or severely shortened legs. I don't know for sure, because I wasn't part of his group.
His group? Oh, yeah. He had to write tests with his feet, and his mom came in on test days, to deal with that. However, the rest of the time, he was surrounded by a coterie of girls at all times, and he was one of the top Language students in my year. (Though I think his emphasis was Latin languages, so we had very few -- and all amphitheater -- classes together.) He was one of the student leaders, running for various student-political-leadership offices. (Not a communist either, so genuinely not stupid.)
I have no idea what happened to him after college, but I'd not be surprised if he were married with half a dozen perfectly normal kids, and working somewhere in the back room of an embassy. (Though frankly, because his mom looked upper class, he's more likely to have one or two perfectly normal kids.)
The girl in my class who was educable mentally retarded was married to a boy with the same issue by her parents (and his parents) when they were in their late teens. I'm not sure what the reasoning was, but it's not an unusual arrangement in traditional societies, even though you would cringe from it because, well, eugenics ideas.
They were given a place to live, and she cleans houses, while he does simple repairs and day laborer type stuff. Unlike what would happen here (likely) they were not sterilized, and no one realized (literally) that they didn't know what caused babies until they'd had either four or five. At which point she asked and someone explained. At any rate, even though I'd have assumed that her issues were genetic (her people were welfare cases and not overbright. I don't know about his) their kids are fine and at least two -- I stopped keeping track after that. Or mom did, so I got no reports -- graduated from college.
So it's probably a good thing they weren't sterilized, but it's probably a good thing anyway.
You see, the eugenics project is based on a completely demented premise no one ever bothered to test: the idea that a very healthy body will create a very healthy mind, and a temperament such as that of the angels, knowing good from evil and choosing good every time.
It takes no more than a drunkard's walk through history to know this is poppycock.
Yes, sure, a non-idiot ruler is preferable to an idiot one. But assuming at least vaguely educable and grounded, non-geniuses are less likely to run away with an insane idea and be unable to back track when it's proven insane.
Victoria did all right as a queen, within her system, and having read a lot about her, I don't think anyone would consider her better than average.
But not everyone is a ruler. And not everyone is going to work in a profession of high abstraction.
The number of people capable of high abstraction I think -- note think, we don't really study this or the effect of culture on this -- is always a small percentage. And, mark me well, they are not inherently superior.
The number of people who score above 132 IQ in the Stanford-Binet tests is 2% of the population, give or take. And higher than that becomes increasingly rare. And above 165 is meaningless, because there aren't enough at that level to establish deviations, since IQ is a statistical measurement.
It is also a measurement of being able to perform a certain number of tasks that correlate well with doing well in academic circumstances.
Because of the way the rewards were stacked in the last century, we -- in the West, but really worldwide, as long as there's some kind of technological civilization, however weak -- have a strong prejudice for high IQ as being superior and the mark of the better human, and the one capable of implementing the best policies, to bring about "utopia".
This is sometimes taken to the point that regions and people who test consistently badly are spoken of, on the right, as being inferior and should be discouraged from reproducing. And on the left as "needing help" to reap the benefits of society.
First, besides the point that a group-IQ tells you nothing about an individual in that group, because the true avis rara, those with IQ above 132 can appear in any APPEARANCE group (because appearance is very bad at following IQ, and we're all mixed.) Second, counterproductive, because IQ is not a measure of worth, or even of fitting well/doing well in society.
In the comments blow-up here sometime ago, someone threw a hissy fit that perhaps the reason people with higher IQs who are in Mensa don't do well in life as a hole, because they are "the type of people who join Mensa" not just high IQ.
That is a big silly, because the reasons to join Mensa are as varied as members. Yes, if go to certain chapters, you'll think the purpose of the organization is to get together and talk about how smart one is, which would seem to encourage people of little accomplishment beyond IQ.
But-- But that's not the only reason people join. I belonged for years -- till we moved, and for various reasons we dropped it -- to a chapter that devoted itself whole heartedly to beer and bad puns. Because we were in what was then still fairly insular South and were most of us outsiders. Which meant, we had trouble making friends with locals. We didn't speak the social language. And therefore the group was just a social group.
I've also known a lot of people along the years who join but never attend, because it's useful for their resume/impressive for their bosses. In their defense, I got two jobs by putting in the line that I'd edited the Mensa newsletter. A boss who belonged, and one who knew what it was, were willing to take a chance on the girl with the accent and the foreign degree on the strength of that. So it's a reason to take it.
Also, within Mensa, there's a lot of variation of IQs. So even given "they're all the type of people who join Mensa" if IQ had anything to do with success in life in general, you'd think the higher the IQ the higher the success. Note I always refer to my kids being "diagnosed" with high IQ. To the extent that people were successful in life in general, it seemed to be the ones who'd come in with the bare minimum to qualify. After that, results got worse.
The very successful ones (eh. We count. LOL) were also in professions of high abstraction.
Here's the thing, there is a reason for the stereotype of the mathematical, or engineering, or physics genius who has to be told when a shirt is too small a size, or that they shouldn't wear a wool pullover in high summer. High abstraction intelligence doesn't correlate well with .... life. Because life isn't abstract. It's immediate, it's small, it's petty, it's irritating. I can't be the only person who sometimes wishes she could fast forward from waking up to being fully dressed and working. Or who lets dishes accumulate because they're not interesting enough. Or who forgets to do the needful to lubricate social links, from answering emails from friends, to sending thank you notes, to-- if you're my friend and I seem to ignore you for months on end, I probably think of you daily, but am pursuing something that is taking all my mental resources and I forget to call or write. It's truly nothing to do with you.
Or of course, I'm down in the depths of depression again.
Now, I'm not using myself as an example, though I've confessed above I test okay. But I've also looked around. I have eyes to see with. And I can see the obvious when it's written in letters twenty feet high and made of fire.
Most of the highly successful people, in just about any field that doesn't require high abstraction -- including managing the people who work with high abstraction -- are people who fall just short of that top 2%. In fact, most of the students identified as "gifted" by their teachers are not those in the top 2% let alone above, who are usually identified as "there's something wrong with him/her" or "He/she is oppositional-defiant" are in the top 10% or so of intelligence. Smart enough that they look "really smart" to normal human beings, but still can read all the social signals, etc. And ping as "normal, just better."
I always laugh when I read something about how China (It's usually China) is going to increase IQs of every child born to 148 -- it's always 148 -- because that would be the end of their regime, and probably not because the geniuses would question everything, though they might, but because the kids wouldn't be able to do anything else but high abstraction successfully.
And on top of that, geniuses aren't more compliant, more altruistic, and definitely not more agreeable or objective than the average human being. Again, mostly they just can make all the human mistakes, only faster and harder.
However, because of the bias in the culture, we do have eugenics ideas that cause real trouble in the real world. From trying to prevent the reproduction of those who aren't geniuses, to welfare that amounts to hamstringing people we think can't survive because of "low IQ". And thereby the creation of a dependent class (a lot of them government workers, because the left thinks we need make work jobs for the unfit. The others just welfare) of one sort or the other. Oh, and the favoring of these people for promotion, etc, because the poor dears supposedly can't make it on their own.
Which in turn is breaking every single field. Because every field needs competence of some sort. And choosing for any reason other than competence IN THAT FIELD AND JOB ultimately ends up in choosing people who can't do it. (Looks at Harvard and clears throat. And do, please, realize that your medschool works exactly like Harvard. Sweet dreams.)
The point I'm trying to make is that despite our strong bias for abstract intelligence as being "superior" and despite our trying to encourage "superior" people in the understanding this makes the world better or reduces the burden on society (the only reasons for it to be a burden on society boil down to socialism) it's not necessarily so.
By reducing the number of average or lower IQ people, even, who are allowed to find their place naturally, without "help" from rules, regulations and various forms of welfare, we are in fact destroying society.
Part of this is that humans can't really be bred like sheep. We are more complex than sheep (or even cats.) Highly desirable characteristics come paired with highly undesirable ones. Or are negated in expression (something we'll get into on the next post on this, probably Monday) because of nurture. Because they're culturally discouraged. Or because there's some defect that runs with it.
It's a joke that extreme ADD is a diagnosis of high IQ. It's not always true, but it often runs together. Is that due to poor training? Quite possibly, but training is highly individual and probably can't be completely got around.
More importantly, I've noted among my fellow creatives (I hate the word, but it's the best term) that innovative creation is often paired with neuroticism and the resultant type of history you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Oh, also with auto-immune issues way above statistical likelihood.
What does this mean? Search me. It's entirely possible that creativity in humans is like a pearl in an oyster. It looks very pretty, but it's formed through pain and irritation.
I think if we tried to breed out, say, ADD, we'd find ourselves breeding out something we're desperately in need of. (Or think we are.)
Also, because sometimes a desirable characteristic shows up as a throw back in an otherwise unexceptional or even completely moronic family. Leonardo DaVinci had a lot of siblings by each of his parents (separately so far as we know) and neither is known to history. And speaking of the illegitimate son of Ser Pero DaVinci, let's agree the man had major issues which impaired his functioning and make it a miracle he accomplished as much as he did.
Human generations are too long for a sane breeding program anyway, or to realize that by doing it on the slow "convince them not to have kids" program we not only eliminated mentally slow people, but also creatives. Or people who are really good at plumbing. Or--
None of which stops the soft form of eugenics from going on. Which often turns into reverse eugenics, since welfare does pay per baby. And then keeps that baby ignorant, feral, and trapped in the soft mitts of the eugenicists, making everything worse for everyone.
Let's not forget too that this form of soft eugenics can suddenly go weird and hard. Particularly now that the international left has adopted a lot of the ideas of the national left.
You have only to look at Canada to see a program of soft eugenics "with the best intentions" go feral. You start by offering and more or less pushing (hard pushing, trust me) abortions for defective babies (which includes, of course, unwanted ones, because "everyone knows" they'll be criminals) and euthanasia for the hopelessly ill who are "just suffering uselessly." Next thing you know you're offering euthanasia for people who are depressed. And people who are just not that smart. And, soon enough, with a little advance of the forecasting ability of genetics for unborn babies, for kids who are just not that athletic, or will be prone to colds, or aren't that smart, or by the by "just won't be very pretty." You know it, and I know it.
And then all of a sudden the smell of the death camps is upon us, and you'll be shocked Pikachu about "how could we have got here? We had the best intentions."
But a society built for humans needs to hold the individual human being, always flawed, always imperfect, as the center and measure of itself. It has, by definition, to accept non perfect humans, not to kill them or otherwise destroy them in the name of perfection which everyone assumes would be a) achievable. b) better for everyone.
Otherwise, it's the unmaking of all that the West has achieved, and a return to famine and barbarism. Oh, slowly, by the scenic route, and perhaps with a drastically changed humanity that can never climb back up.
But an unmaking, anyway.
As much as in our intellectual pride we value the abstract "intelligence" of the "experts" the last three years should be a sound warning not to give them leeway, and to prize instead the battles no one sees, and the triumphs, too: the not particularly intellectual woman who is good at cooking and cleaning and keeping a nice home. Or who is good at looking after people. Or the not highly abstract-thinking-man who is an excellent brick layer or plumber, or anything else.
We don't know what humanity will need in the future. The future is notable for not being here and not being known.
Let's keep the vast variety of humans. We might need them later.
[Next up, probably Monday, Killing Me Softly on rebuilding humans from the inside out. (With understanding that as already shown in this post, both methods blend and socialists of both stripes end up adopting both, just sometimes one before the other.)]
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