An interesting article by Peter Quinn on early 20th Century Eugenics, which had suggest an influence on the Nazis, the US and Scandinavia.The enthusiasm Nietzsche expresses in this passage is for eugenics, a theory of biological determinism invented by Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s
first cousin. However extreme Nietzsche’s recommendation might sound today, by the first part of the twentieth century eugenics came to be widely practiced. In 1933, little more than thirty years after Nietzsche’s death, the Hereditary Health Courts set up in Nazi Germany were enforcing a rigorous policy of enforced sterilization; to a lesser degree, similar policies were carried out in societies from the United States to Scandinavia.
In 1912, in his presidential address to the First International Congress of Eugenics, a landmark
gathering in London of racial biologists from Germany, the United States, and other parts of the world, Major Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin’s son, trumpeted the spread of eugenics and evolution. As described by Nicholas Wright Gillham in his A Life of Francis Galton, Major Darwin foresaw the day when “eugenics would become not only a grail, a substitute for religion, as Galton had hoped, but a ‘paramount duty’ whose tenets would presumably become enforceable.” The major repeated his father’s admonition that, though the crudest workings of natural selection must be mitigated by “the spirit of civilization,” society must encourage breeding among the best stock and prevent it among the worst “without further delay.”Read the whole article at Commonweal
3 comments:
Quite right too, the majority of the human race should be discouraged from reproducing themselves, especially the lower classes. Well posted mon pere.
Please refrain from using "anonymous" in future.
I DO not think this is what the article is about.
The nineteenth century idea that the lower classes are responsible for their own poverty and should be prevented from reproducing was, and is, very convenient for those who are holding them down, as it has absolved them of responsibility for examining the causes and doing something about them.
These causes were identified and solutions proposed over a century ago, but they were consistently blocked, not least by opposition from church spokeman at the highest levels. So nothing was done.
We in Britain held back from the eugenic path, so now we have a generation of chavs and other unpleasant people, failing schools, failing parents, sink estates and third generation unemployed. The response, a panic one, is to put CCTV cameras all over the place, hand out ASBOs and build more jails to contain the problem which we still refuse to examine, even those who claim to be concerned about the state of affairs. This is particularly the case with Christian groups such as Church Action on Poverty and the Catholic Housing Aid Society, which just make concerned noises and argue for palliatives which will not solve the problem. The same goes for those who argue for policies which support the family without examining why more and more families are in poverty. All are conniving at maintaining the present disgraceful state of affairs.
The trouble is we are now in a state of low-level civil war with society in a state of disintegration. What next?
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