Eugenics For The Modern
Age
For those who read my
blog (all three of you), this post won't come as much of a surprise
(other than the fact it's been a while since I posted ANYTHING).
I hate stupidity.
Now, before people
start ragging on me about how some people are born stupid and can't
help it, or how it's not politically correct to beat up on the
mentally challenged, let me define stupid. Stupidity, in my book,
isn't about IQ, although there's some correlation to it in my
definition. I define stupidity as "willful ignorance".
Willful ignorance is having the facts right in front of a person, but
refusing to believe them. Not that because the facts are
unbelievable. But because they don't want to or because these
inconvenient facts will upset their applecart of life and they'd
rather not deal with them or because they go against everything they
were taught or (and this is especially stupid) because not believing
in them takes advantage of other people who don't either and that
person benefits from the other's continued ignorance. Those who
spread disinformation to foster or support willful ignorance aren't
necessarily "stupid", but they are evil and should be put
down if they refuse to change their ways.
Facts are facts and
"intelligent" people will accept them – eventually.
Hey, people are human. Some facts are hard to believe, but if one is
at least open to that belief, then one has at least SOME modicum of
intelligence. And it's not like I'm telling people they have to
believe down is up. Facts speak for themselves.
Global climate change,
evolution, man walking on the moon, Lee Harvey Oswald was the only
shooter of JFK; these are all examples of facts that many people
refuse to believe. And many more go out of their way to foster that
disbelief with speculation and disinformation disguised as "fact".
Now, I'm not going to argue with anyone pea-brained enough to try to
dispute proven facts. The conspiracies didn't happen. Things are
happening you say aren't happening. End of story. The point is
you're disputing them (if you are) instead of researching them to see
if it's possible that people who are a lot smarter and more
knowledgeable about such things than you are might be on to something
you didn't understand in the first place.
Yes, the implications
are shattering to some. Christians have to find a religion that
hasn't been proven to be unfounded by evolution (and genetics, too,
by the way). Oil company magnates have to find better reasons for
continuing to use fossil fuels than simply saying that climate change
isn't man's fault or "If China won't stop polluting, why should
we?" while raking in trillions of dollars (Yes, trillions, with
a T) in profits over the years. But those rants are for different
posts.
The subject is what you
do with those facts. Do you eventually accept them or do you refuse
to look into them, educate yourself about them and instead
"disbelieve" them because of an unwillingness to explore
reality outside of the narrow limits you have placed on it (or, more
typically, someone ELSE has defined for you because they cater to
your prejudices, hatreds, intolerances and fears)? Or are you
personally profiting from promoting disinformation about facts you
know exist, but it's more lucrative for you to deny them? If you
have an open mind, even if your opinions are misinformed,
congratulations, you are not stupid. It may take you a while to get
there, but understanding of facts is always better than reflexive
denial of them. You'll live longer that way.
If you are among those
who reflexively deny them or actively promote that denial in others
for personal profit, you win the stupidity kewpie doll and get to
have your picture next to the hyphenate "dumb-ass" in the
dictionary for a while. I believe that this adequately describes who
is stupid in my book. The question now moves on to, "What to do
about them?"
While lining them up
against the wall and shooting them has its appeal, it's not terribly
humane and it was tried (though not necessarily based on stupidity)
to get the human race to be better overall with no success and much
condemnation. I propose something somewhat more humane, and not
necessarily quite so hard on people.
Since not being stupid
is based on whether people are willing to entertain the notion that
they may be wrong about things and are willing to check it out and
then accept it regardless of the preconceptions, that seems to me to
be a good litmus test for implementing my idea. This is called
"sensibility". It used to be called "common sense",
but sensibility is based on reason and fact, not tradition, hearsay
and rumor, as it so often used for these days. For example, stopping
at a red light while driving a regular vehicle is sensible. Running
the red light in a regular car because your spouse is having a baby
is stupid. Babies have been born outside of hospitals for most of
human history and while that did tend to be hard on women and babies
more often than today, chances are pretty good that your family will
successfully grow by one whether the hand spanking it has a glove on
it or not, unless, of course, you run red lights and get all of you
killed in which case it will be moot and you've done the world a
favor by taking your stupid ass and your out of the gene pool.
My idea about how to
fix stupidity sort of runs along the same line. And I base this idea
on the notion that humanity is growing more stupid as time goes on.
There is some foundation to that notion. A recent small survey
indicated the likelihood that westerners
have lost 14 IQ points on average since the
late 1800's. To put this in perspective, back then, there were
politically incorrect psychological terms for sub-average IQ types.
0 Coma
10-19 Idiot
20-49 Imbecile
50-69 Moron
70-80 Deficient
80-90 Dull
At 86 for the AVERAGE
today, and assuming a standard bell curve based, that places average
at 86 which means that most people fall below the dull level instead
of most people being ABOVE it. Change the numbers in the chart above
by the average 14 point loss in IQ and you'll see:
>145
= >131 = 0.1%
130-145
= 116-131 = 2 %
115-130
= 101-116 = 14%
100-115
= 86-101 = 34%
85-100
= 71-86 = 34%
70-85
= 56-71 = 14%
55-70
= 41-56 = 2%
<55
% = < 41% = 0.1%
This means instead of
half of the people (50%) being 100 IQ or above today, only about 20%
are (possibly as low as 18%). The rest are at or below 100 and the
MAJORITY are at Dull to below average.
"How could this
be?" you wonder. The answer is pretty simple. We let morons
breed. And morons (and those below them) tend to breed more than
people who aren't morons. Now, again, this is merely a trend. IQ
and sensibility have some correlation, but I've met some pretty
moronic geniuses and some pretty sensible morons, so it's not a
direct one. What someone DOES is far more important in how they
impact society (and by extension, the rest of humanity) than what
their actual IQ is. If people's actions are mostly sensible, then
they're not stupid. If their actions aren't, then they are. It's
pretty cut and dried.
"Isn't "sensible"
a value judgement?" you ask. Of course it is. But there has to
be something seriously wrong with a society that enjoys the Jackass
movies, that gives a damn about Honey Boo Boo (let alone wants to
watch that mental sewage) or that tunes into any of the "Bachelor"
or Bachelorette" series with even remotely enough numbers to let
it go beyond one damn show, let alone multiple seasons.
Entertainment caters to the LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR. And based on
what's considered "popular" (or at least what's reported as
being so), the lowest common denominator is pretty damn low already.
It isn't sensible to watch that tripe, and yet people do – in
droves. They give a shit about things that affect them not at all
and will never impact them in any significant way. They've lost all
sense of perspective and, at the heart of it, that's what sensibility
is really all about – perspective.
So, again what to do
about it? If someone acts phenomenally stupid due to a lack of
perspective, there should be consequences, major consequences, for
acting stupidly. Among those consequences should be mandatory,
non-reversible sterilization.
This may seem inhumane,
but let's consider the facts (subject to interpretation, of course).
1. You don't get a silk
purse from a sow's ear.
If someone does
something phenomenally stupid, they have ALREADY demonstrated
unfitness for propagation of their genes. Humanity rose to dominance
on this planet because we were smart and could adapt. Stupidity
lowers that ability, leading to major mistakes that, with today's
technology, could kill billions, if not all life on this planet. The
person’s genes aren't capable of making silk purses. Let's
keep them from trying.
2. They've ALREADY
demonstrated their stupidity.
This isn't randomly
going around, testing people for sensibility or perspective and then
cutting their balls off if they don't measure up. The person has to
pretty much demonstrate on their own that they aren't deserving of
contributing their dead-end genetic traits to the future of humanity.
There's no test, no exam, no one with a clipboard and a disapproving
expression standing over them. They do it to themselves (and
frequently others) all on their own.
3. Evolution says we
have to.
As I mentioned,
Humanity managed to take the planet because we were smarter than
anything else and we adapted better than anything else. We were
SENSIBLE. And back then, the egregiously stupid DIED OFF. The weak
died off. The unfit died off. Now, I'm not saying let's kill off
the weak (or sterilize them) because today, physical strength isn't
as important as it was when we were slugging it out with mastodons.
Nor should we put the unfit down. It ain't fittin'. But stupidity
gets us killed just as dead today as then, there are a hell of a lot
more stupid people today than then, and the potential consequences
for that stupidity are far greater today than then. If mankind is
going to survive in a technological world, being SMARTER is the only
way. Certainly, being stupider isn't going to help anyhow.
But today, we let the
stupid breed. That is a major mistake, a major impediment to
long-term human survival and the demonstrably stupid should be
prevented from doing so.
Alright, we've
established why we need to do this, and what we need to do. So how
do we go about it and who gets the Lorena
Bobbitt treatment?
First of all, what
constitutes stupid enough to merit mandatory non-reversible
sterilization? This is also a judgement call, really. And for
judgement calls, let's look at our judicial system. A jury of your
peers will decide the issue. They'll be presented with what you did
and decide if your genes are still worth adding to the human race.
There's no hard and fast rule here. What may be egregiously stupid
to some may not be to others. But the jury will be selected and
screened to contain only sensible people. That means if you're a
moron who runs around with a bunch of other morons acting stupid and
you act stupider than others, none of your moronic friends will sit
in judgement of you. Likely, it will be the people you pissed off,
injured and/or killed because of your stupidity.
There will be no
appeals from this. And if you are put on stupidity trial a second
time (after being exonerated the first), it's pretty much a slam dunk
that you're being exceptionally stupid so don't expect lightning to
strike twice.
The next thing to
address will be how one is "charged" with egregious
stupidity. That's actually simple and self-regulating. Anyone can
charge anyone else with egregious stupidity, but keep in mind that
any act done in malice can be construed as egregious stupidity as
well. So the accuser has the burden of proof. That accuser can be
the state or any other person. It's kind of like a lawsuit. Anyone
can file, but unlike a lawsuit if it goes against you, you can be put
on the spot to face the same charges. That's not necessarily going
to happen ALL the time. But it's possible. The jury will decide if
you, or them, or both are dumb-asses and hand down that judgement.
Then it's off to the clinic for a shave and a snip-snip and no chance
at parenthood.
You can still adopt,
but if you've been found to be egregiously stupid, you're going to
have to prove that you're still fit enough to RAISE a child, if not
be their biological parent. After all, stupidity doesn't NECESSARILY
extend to a spouse and he or she may actually be sensible enough to
raise a kid. But anyone stupid enough to have sex with (let alone
marry) an egregiously stupid person probably shouldn't have kids (and
definitely not with their spouse) in the first place.
So that pretty much
covers it. It's not QUITE a judicial process in that laws don't have
to be broken to face a jury of sensible people who will decide if
what you did was spectactularly stupid enough to merit the loss of
the ability to have progeny. And, yes, the brighter among us may
actually stop to think before acting spectacularly stupid, which is
part of that correlation. And as Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is
as stupid does" and if someone is stupid enough to "do"
enough to piss off a jury, they don't get to have anyone biologically
related to them to call them a parent. It's not a perfect solution.
It does nothing about kids ALREADY born to a stupid person. But it's
based more or less on behaviors, which is really all that counts when
it comes to survival. It doesn't matter what a person thinks,
as long as what they do doesn't grossly violate the boundaries
of sensibility.
We have to do something
to start smartening up the human race, or we'll end up killing all
life on this planet because we bred ourselves into a level of
stupidity where we can no longer survive as a species.
