Eugenics For The Modern Age

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.