Darwin argues that those characteristics we might think to be specifically human — physical strength and health, morality, and intelligence — were actually achieved by natural selection. From this, he infers two related eugenic conclusions.
First, if the desirable results of strength, health, morality, and intelligence are caused by natural selection, then we can improve them by artificial selection. We can breed better human beings, even rise above the human to the superhuman. Since human beings have been raised above the other animals by the struggle to survive, they may be raised even higher, transcending human nature to something—who knows?—as much above men as men are now above the apes.
Second, if good breeding gives us better results, pushing us up the evolutionary slope, then bad or indiscriminate breeding drags us back down. "If…various checks…do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men," Darwin groaned, "the nation will retrograde, as has occurred too often in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule."
What about the link to Hitler? The first, most important thing to understand is that the link between Darwin and Hitler was not immediate. Darwin's eugenic ideas were spread all over Europe and America, until they were common intellectual coin by Hitler's time. Secondly, we misunderstand Hitler's evil if we reduce it to anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism had, of course, multiple causes, including his own warped character. That having been said, Nazism was at heart a racial, that is, a biological political program based up evolutionary theory. It was "applied biology," in the words of deputy party leader of the Nazis, Rudolph Hess, and done for the sake of a perceived greater good, racial purity, that is, for the sake of a race purified of physical and mental defects, imperfections, and racial inferiority.
The proposed ruthlessness of his solution was in direct imitation of nature conceived according to Darwinism. "Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation—which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development."
How do we secure a better road for future development? By ensuring that only the best of the best race, the Aryan race, breed, and pruning away all the unfit and racially inferior. That isn't just a theory; it's eugenic Darwinism as a political program. As Hitler made clear, "the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind." Jews have to be pruned away, but also Gypsies, Slavs, the retarded, handicapped, and anyone else that is biologically unfit.
Information gathered from:
Wiker, B. Dr (2008) Darwin’s Dystopia, Retrieved 7th October 2008 from http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2020937/posts
Question:
• If you could have tried to prevent Hitler from going through with his enforced selective breeding what arguments would you have put forward?
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10 comments:
Well, to stop Hitler's selective breeding, aguments would have to be strong enough to change a mad-mans vision.
The way to prevent Hitler would be to suggest that natural selection is a slow process, and it's effects would be inconcistent. And recesive genes may change your vision. But this is only the start.
Even if you raise someone to believe something, there experiences change how they think. This means that even if everyone is similar, the way they think would change as they grow. This means that even if the race is how you want, the way they think will not be, and they may try for equality for all people.
Ben P
10R
Theories, just like this one work in just that, theory. The practicality of this theory is questionable. For think of this situation, if you did try to descriminate (which is already morally wrong) to create a 'greater' race (ignoring moral issues) it would probably die out, if you look at statistics, your average couple of 2 lets say 'greater' people only have 2 maybe 3 children on average, while the 'lower' race has more then 3-4 children on average, so taking diseases, war, accidents etc into it probably an average of 1-1.5 children of the 'greater' race would survive, also taking in the nurture of it and so being seen as a 'lesser' race means that possibly only 1 child of the 2 parents would survive, so the population would plummet. Also in the 'greater' race no one would want to do the manual labour, and so no basic work would be done, resources would be cut off etc. Also it depends on what you classify as 'greater' you could mean physically strong, emotionaly adept or accademically capable or many other things. Also that means that over time, in-breeding would begin, genetic diseases would appear and some would be un-curable so the population would drop even more. Also if Hitler stopped his 'culling' of the 'scum' of the earth, it would stop WW2 which means that technology wouldnt be as high as it would be today, many of us would not exist from the timeline being effected and so i would not be having this discussion right now.
Mark Campbell
I believe that it is impossible to breed a perfect race, as seen by the results of what hitler did. And to add more, who determines what the perfect is. The perfect for a proffesional sports person will be much different to an average joe.
There are morals to consider to and you can't just kill of somebody because they dont run 10 secs at 16 yrs of age.
And at what age would it be acceptable to decide if the person is human or super human. As determined before, nurture has a big part to play in the development of a person.
Life is the way it is and this diversity is what makes up the world.
James M 10L
Hitlers enforced breeding was unnatural. Humans were not made to be one sheath, one of a kind and only be similar. Humans were madre to have things that divide but join us, to conqure but connect us. The fact that Hitler tried to change the natural flow of the earth is illogical and almost impossible. One cannot force a human race to have blonde hair and blue eyes, and to initiate that could take half a centuary to a centurary to be compleated, if not more.
ashleigh 10c
Why would we want to dissuade him from going through with it? Certainly, killing people is morally wrong, and there are ethical concerns with controlling who is able to procreate, but if you could determine (non-racially discriminately) which people are the highest exemplars of human ability, why not create a breeding program out of that. The benefits are numerous, including controlling overpopulation (similar to China's one child policy), getting the 'best' genes into the gene pool, preventing the continuation of genetic debilitating diseases such as Trisomy-23 and Multiple Sclerosis.
Krysia and Cameron
10S and 10H
The idea that all those characteristics are achieved through natural selection could well be a valid point. But I think a lot of it comes from the way you're brought up as well.
Taking everything into account, I would argue that every person is different and has their own strengths and weaknesses. To cast away people who are "biologically unfit" seems ethically incorrect. Hitler himself wasn't part of the Aryan race and would have to be killed. The Aryan race may not be the ideal race and such a population drop would have severe effects on the economy and other such industries. With such a small population, disease would be easier to spread; there would interbreeding, which could result in genetic mutations. Any disease could be very harmful and spread through the community at a fast rate due to low genetic variation.
What was it that Mr. Hitler saw in Germans that were not in Jews. His anti-Semitic behaviour is unrelated to the argument on artificial selection as he was simply killing Jews because he was anti-Semitic. To further this argument, although Jews were seen as an inferior race; they were not in any way physically, mentally, morally, intellectually or otherwise handicapped.
Is the perfect race even possible? In Plato's The Republic, he argues that the perfect society is not possible. Flaws in human nature, apparent in -all- humans, prevent us from achieving this so called utopia. This argument can be related to our topic as breeding an Aryan race is redundant if a perfect society is not even possible.
What would be intersting would be to see Hitler's family tree. We're strongly inclined to think that he had some sort of mental illness. But does that count as a mental handicap through natural selection?
Rohit & Heidi... and Elisheba, a little bit, a smidge. 10B.
Hitler failed to understand the very heart of Darwin's Theory; and that was that evolution occurs and proceeds by the differential survival of the fittest. The higher class individuals were the fittest and in order to advance this theory of the 'survival of the fittest' there must be a difference in species. This implies that these 'under -dog' species become greater so that the superior individuals (the fittest) are more apt to survive.
If Hitler's warped, psychotic character had realised this then it would have saved millions of lives. The nature of Hitler was to progress at all costs (even the inhumane ones) and this caused the hollocaust, yet what he failed to see that in order for a species to progress as the fittest, it needs comparison to be classified at
the fittest.' This would have enabled the superior race to increase their 'fitness' and superiority.
Alka 10J
One of Hitler's beliefs was that "the Aryan race was genetically superior and destined to rule over others." (CLARE, JOHN D, 2002-2008) Therefore he felt that he had the right to invade other countries and make the Slavic people to be Germany slaves. However, his belief is that ONLY the Germans are the superior human, there was no scientific prove that they are actually better. By killing the other races, he may have killed the intelligent. As history order proves that Hitler had no idea about DNA as he died in 1945 and DNA was only discovered in 1953. On top of that everyone is special in different ways, for example, one may be more intelligent in music, but other may be better at literature. Therefore by only keeping the pure German, there is no prove that they are going to be the superior human race, as it was only his belief.
To produce to superior human race, by artificial selection (e.g. what Hitler has done) is nearly impossible. One way is by natural selection. The other way I believe is by genetic engineering in the future as we can chose what kind of genes we want our children to have. But that will always come with an ethics cost.
Bibliography
CLARE, JOHN D (2002-2008) What Were Hitler's Aims? (Internet) Available from: http://www.johndclare.net/RoadtoWWII2.htm (accessed: 29/10)
Flora 10R
In something I read recently, evolution was discussed - the idea that natural selection is no longer playing a part in our life - eg. because of a lot of medical breakthroughs, people who may have died in other times, now live. So this could be affecting our gene pool, but does that mean that we have the right to refuse these people from continuing their line, following Hitler's idea of artificial selection?
But maybe natural selection isn't necessary anymore because technological developments are today's form of evolution? In which case we can tell Hitler to give scientists lots of government funding to create today's Aryan race.
Krysia, 10S
The most important arguement when trying to stop Hilter from going through with his enforced selective breading, was that he could not possibly kill an entire race. Even when he tried to, there would still be people in different countries that would bread and continue the birth line of the "inferior" races.
We also agree with Alka's statement about "sruvival of the fittest"
In repsonse to Kryisa's comment about medical breakthoughs affecting natural selection, there are still other impacts that effect selection, not just medical problems. Also, according to the "survival of the fittest" theory, wouldn't the ability to prevent these disoders be apart of survival?
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