The founder of eugenics, Galton, had high hopes for the future of the eugenic social project, but after the Second World War, egalitarian political ideology prevailed among European nations. And the eugenics project had all the characteristics of an achievable and science-based secular religion, which could offer the individual a higher meaning of existence.
DYSGENIC TRENDS IN THE XX. CENTURY – EUROPEAN PEOPLE
Author: Miroslav Goluža
ABSTRACT
In the struggle for supremacy in the first half of the 20th century, the European nations used up their best genetic resources. Immediately after 1945, it became clear that the centers of political, military, and economic power had shifted to the East and West. Eugenicists noticed negative trends as early as the 19th century, but after World War II, the ideological reckoning with the eugenics project gained great momentum. Eugenics began to be attributed responsibility for mass killings, concentration camps, the attempt to create a superman, and the spread of racial hatred. Instead of becoming a kind of secular religion, as the founder of eugenics Galton expected, an egalitarian political ideology won out. And, the eugenics project had all the characteristics of a realizable secular religion, which could offer the individual a higher meaning of existence. Today, there is not a single movement aspiring to power among European nations that would include the principles of eugenics in its program, and academic institutions are completely passive on the matter. This lack of interest is an indication that European nations are tired of life and are in the terminal stage of decadence. It is a state when senility begins to be understood as a desirable state, a way of life that others envy, and overblown individualism as a civilizational achievement. The prevailing belief is that human society is an insurance company with unlimited guarantees that will never go bankrupt. Negative eugenic trends and insufficient growth are rapidly leading to general genetic bankruptcy, and we have beautiful examples of this in history.
Key words: eugenics, dysgenics, degeneration, egalitarianism.
“We used to think our fate was in the stars. Now we know, in large measure, our fate is in our genes.”
James D. Watson[1] (Watson, 1989.)
INTRODUCTION
Thanks to the application of scientific achievements in the XIX. and the 20th century, European nations disrupted natural selection in human society in two ways – in peace and in war. In peace, it became possible for more newborns to survive, reach fertile age and pass on their bad genes to future generations. From the point of view of the individual, this was a great success, but for future (individual) generations, it is often a great misfortune. Since the natural rules of the game cannot be circumvented in the long run, the need arose to protect society and prevent negative procreation. Unlike the rest of the animal world, man is capable of intervening in biological flows. These interventions can be for the benefit of the community, but also to its detriment. Therefore, eugenics can be defined as a social project based on scientific knowledge, which seeks to replace the lack of natural selection with artificial selection. Even more briefly, eugenics can also be described as applied genetics. (Glad, 2008) The fact is that Darwin[2] had to stop in his explanation of evolution when he reached homo sapiens, he was aware that his contemporaries would not have enough strength to face the fact that man, biologically speaking, is only a part of the animal world and that nature did not create any new rules in his case.
Nietzsche would say that man is only the most powerful animal.[3] Where Darwin left off, Galton[4] continued and tried to fill some of the void when it comes to human society. For this purpose, he created a new scientific discipline called eugenics.[5] In the first half of the 20th century, the eugenics movement had many supporters who enthusiastically accepted the idea that it is better to prevent than to cure problems in society that arose through inheritance. At the same time, the movement faced a lot of resistance in different parts of society. The end of the Second World War was not only a military and political upheaval in Europe, but also brought with it a significant change of forces on the ideological and political stage to the detriment of the eugenics movement.
WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
Wars between European nations in the first half of the 20th century are thoroughly described when it comes to human losses. Human victims can be approximately quantified,[6] and the winners are not a matter of dispute. When it comes to the negative eugenic trends that are a consequence of those wars, very little is said about them. The reasons for this are twofold: eugenics as a scientific discipline was suppressed or completely banished as a subject of study and practical application after the Second World War, and secondly, eugenic trends are not as noticeable in the short term as direct and indirect demographic losses. It is interesting that Charles Darwin already in the XIX. century noticed the dysgenic character of war. “In every country that has a large standing army, the best young people are included in it. They are thus most exposed to premature death in the event of war, a vicious life and are prevented from starting a family at their best age. On the other hand, physically less fit men stay at home and have more opportunities to start a family and have offspring” (Darwin, 1981) What catches the eye of a careful observer is the fact that the victorious Western European nations, the French and the British as the winners and the Germans as the losers, stepped off the political stage as great powers immediately after 1945. They simply no longer had people to set high and long-term goals for themselves.[7] Perhaps one of the main actors in the First and Second World Wars, Winston Churchill[8], inadvertently gave a partial answer to the above-mentioned change when he observed that modern mass armies have become disastrous for entire nations: “War, which was cruel and glorious, has now become cruel and dirty. It is all the fault of democracy and science. From the moment these interlopers and troublemakers were allowed to take part in the fight, the fate of war was sealed. Instead of a small number well-trained professionals who fought for their national interests with old weapons with all the complexity of archaic movements, we now have entire nations, including even women and children pitted against each other in brutal extermination, only for a group of stupid officials to be left to settle the results of the slaughter. From the moment democracy was allowed, or rather from the moment it imposed itself on the battlefield, war lost its gentlemanly character.” (Churchill, 1930) In the first half of the 20th century, the dysgenic character of war became more pronounced than ever before in the history of warfare. This was contributed to by the massive use of automatic infantry weapons, as well as the increase in artillery firepower and the introduction of aviation as a new branch of the armed forces. In the past, in close combat with cold weapons, it was mostly the soldier who was physically and mentally tougher who survived. During the 20th century, combat became largely depersonalized, and it became possible for a mediocre soldier to destroy superior opponents at a distance, whom he would probably not be able to cope with in close combat with cold weapons. Dysgenic selection was clearly at work here. British soldiers who died in the Battle of the Somme[9] could no longer pass on their genes to future generations. Since the best genetic stock of any people is limited, mass losses of the best human beings are a powerful dysgenic blow to the societies of both the victor and the vanquished. Seen from a eugenics point of view, in the wars between European nations in the first half of the 20th century, the real winner was King Pyrrhus[10]. Sport, as a limited competition, is also an important indicator of the genetic impoverishment or degeneration of European nations – the sports teams of individual nations can no longer assemble the best team without borrowing from the side. In certain athletic disciplines, Europeans are extremely inferior in relation to African competitors. (Entine, 2001) By the end of World War II, the Germans were at the pinnacle of technological achievements, such as the construction of the first rocket capable of leaving the atmosphere into outer space or the operationally used jet and rocket engines on fighter planes[11]. The struggle of the Bolsheviks for power in Russia certainly had dysgenic consequences for the European nations of that great state. A large part of the citizens and landowners were labeled as hostile. This means that he was physically liquidated or had to spend most of his life in labor camps, so their procreation was limited. The merciless reckoning with the enemies of the communists was repeated on the territory of Yugoslavia after 1945. The liquidation and emigration of tens of thousands of young people of fertile age in a short period is not only a demographic but also a strong dysgenic blow for small nations such as the Croats. It is a historical irony that similar negative trends continued in Croatia after the country joined the EU, this time in peacetime conditions[12]. The field of art is also a sure indicator of decadence and lack of creativity. Never in the history of the art of European nations has there been anything similar to contemporary painting and sculpture.[13] (Wolfe,1975) Similar trends are present in architecture, the international style. (Volfe, 2009) The decadence of European nations in the 20th century was also strongly emphasized by Oswald Spengler. (Spengler, 1988) The philosophical question is whether a decadent society can produce true art anyway? Art is not a random phenomenon and something beautiful in itself, something that floats like an ideal above the people. It is the most refined expression of the deepest trends in life and, if these trends are deeply in a downward trajectory, it is difficult to expect something big and memorable.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS EUGENICS AFTER WORLD WAR II
After the Second World War, a view of the world begins to prevail in the West, which does not correspond to the scientific achievements of Darwin, Mendel and Watson when it comes to human society. Eugenics came under attack along with the theory of the existence of different original human races. The fact is that the National Socialists in Germany tried to arrange a society in which one of the greatest values was race, and racial theory and eugenics are based on genetic inheritance. This is the main reason why eugenics came under attack in a package with racial theory. Simply, the acceptance of genetic heritage as a basic determinant in human society is incompatible with the political conception of egalitarians. It is important to note that these are two different social projects, regardless of the common starting point. The Germans were the first to implement the principles of negative eugenics through a program of forced sterilization, and positive eugenics through the health control of future spouses, in an organized manner at the state level, simultaneously with racial legislation.[14] These laws were binding only for members of the German nation. It should be clarified that the German synonym for eugenics, Rassenhygiene, has been in use since the beginning of the 20th century. Likewise, the word race was much more widely used until the Second World War than it is today, when it is used affirmatively only for domestic animals, for example dogs and horses, and in a negative sense when it comes to people (racism). The German expression could also be loosely translated as national (collective) hygiene as opposed to individual hygiene[15]. According to Glad, since the 1960s there has been a powerful intellectual and political pressure on the eugenics movement. Glad even claims that an ideological coup d’etat was carried out on eugenics, which affected academic circles, the media and spread to the entire society, and political ideology began to dictate answers to scientific questions. (Glad, 2011) Opponents has begun to equate the eugenics project with genocide. For example, Montagu[16] titled his voluminous work Race, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth – The Race Delusion. He claims: “geneticists should be clear that their discoveries are going in the wrong direction when they try to apply them to peoples and groups”. (Montagu, 1997) In the title of his book, Edwin Black[17] defines eugenics as a war against the weak, the goal of which is to create a master race. According to him, “in the end, the German eugenic madness led to the Holocaust, the destruction of the Gypsies, the destruction of Poland and the decimation of the population of Europe”. (Black.: 34) Kevles[18] thinks in a similar way when he connects the German Sterilization Law with concentration camps and mass murder. (Kevles, 1985:119) Such claims are more reminiscent of a political manifesto than a position based on arguments. If we accept the claim that genetic laws do not apply to human groups, then we enter the zone of politically desirable belief. Eugenics cannot be a war against the weak and undesirable, but an effort to prevent their procreation, and these are fundamentally different things. No normal parent wants offspring with psychophysical deficiencies, moreover they wish their offspring to be physically and intellectually above average. It follows from this that the same principle must be in the interest of the social group. It is not clear how it can be aimed at the destruction of individual nations. If something is useful for members of European nations, then the same should be true for members of other races. The sterilization program[19] that was carried out before and after the Second World War in certain institutions in most states of the USA was not selective in relation to race, but the fact remains that the non-white population dominated in prisons and sanatoriums. The attitude of Jewish intellectuals when it comes to eugenics is interesting. In the West, they dominate this intellectual counter-movement, but in Israel, their compatriots have been paying maximum attention to eugenics since the founding of the state in 1948. (John Glad, 2011) It has become common to attribute to eugenicists the euthanasia program that Hitler’s government began to implement at the beginning of the war, as well as the sterilization of several hundred people who were born to parents who were French occupation soldiers from Africa after the First World War. The authors of such claims do not explain what the mentioned measures have to do with eugenics[20]. In order to explain this worldview reversal, it is necessary to know its background. In this case, we are talking about the central old and new myth about human equality. Favorable political and social opportunities for the victory of egalitarians arose after the Second World War. On the one hand, it was the conquest of power by the Bolsheviks in Russia and the victory of the USSR in the war in the east, and on the other hand, the defeat of Germany in the west. For this political myth to become operational, it was necessary to challenge the principles of Darwinism and genetics. Thus, one can understand the motives of Montagu’s statement that genetic principles cannot apply to human groups, which is in direct contrast which is in direct contrast to the modern understanding of evolution as a process that occurs exclusively at that level.[21] (Dawkins, 2016) The Marxist variant of that myth found its realization in the USSR and China, and among Western European nations, that political myth prevailed after the Second World War, with the reduction of one-party dictatorship and collective ownership. It is striking that European egalitarians, unlike Marxists, are not bothered by enormous inequalities in private property. The idea of equality is unsustainable for two reasons: first, the claim that people are equal in character and creativity is obvious nonsense. Furthermore, it contradicts the scientific knowledge of molecular biology. And molecular biology tells us that there are no two equal men within one nation. Diversification or unplanned genetic roulette is at work everywhere, these are the foundations on which Darwin’s theory rests. Now the question is necessarily raised, how is it possible to question the scientific achievements of genetics in a century of all kinds of scientific progress[22]. Are we facing a modern-day version of supernatural phenomena or miracles, Richard Dawkins rightly asks?[23] (Dawkins, 2015) Modern miracles are even stranger than those in antiquity and the Middle Ages because before people were asked to believe in something they did not see and that was a mystery, and now they are asked not to believe in something they see and what is no longer a mystery. The answer to these questions should not be sought in the realm of the rational but the irrational. If we set ourselves as a political goal the thesis of universal equality and the struggle against the privileged, then there is no such scientific proposition, if found on the way, that could not be denied or bypassed. If we accept the thesis that genetic inheritance and race are the main social problem, then how can we explain the historically unprecedented eruption of violence that accompanied the realization of egalitarian attempts in the 20th century in the USSR, Europe, China and Cambodia? If these movements were international and opposed to eugenic principles, why were they accompanied by so much violence? It seems that Nietzsche was right when he marked the struggle for equality as only the first step in the struggle for power or supremacy. All historical experiences from the first Christians to Marxist practice in the 20th century show that Nietzsche’s assessment was correct. (Nietzsche.: 120, 184-186) Living scientific legend J.D. Watson found himself in the path of egalitarians because he dared to claim that intelligence was hereditary and that he himself belonged to the eugenicists. Scientific moral euthanasia was carried out on him, among other things, by forcing him to leave his position as the head of the Institute of Molecular Biology in Cold Spring Harbor, and in 2019 he was stripped of his honorary titles. The reason for this attack on Watson was that he persisted in his views on the heredity of intelligence and on race. (Watson, British Encyclopedia) English psychologist Richard Fynn suffered a similar fate. It is obvious that after the Second World War, eugenics in the USA and in Europe was defeated on the worldview stage, where the understanding that genetic inheritance is not the dominant determinant of human groups completely prevailed. More precisely, genetic inheritance is accepted up to the level of phenotype, and when it comes to character traits and intelligence, it miraculously ceases to be valid there?
MEDIA UMBRELLA
It has already become common for some authors to use ritual words such as fascism, racism and eugenics when they want to condemn some evil and show their indignation and worldview correctness. Such people are surprised how they could be supporters of eugenics the personalities who are significant for society in some way. For example, Nikola Tesla is credited as a scientist, but accused of embracing eugenics, a “dark foreign genius” with the extenuating claim that he was unaware of all the crimes committed in her name in California and Germany. (Novak, 2012), (Ferreira, 2014) Some authors try to defend personalities such as Andrija Stampar[24] with explanation that they have gone astray in eugenics. Thus, on World Birth Defects Day, you can read a post on the portals expressing outrage over the fact that the World Health Organization included Down’s syndrome in the group of severe birth defects. The text appeals that discrimination and abortion should be prevented and that differences should be celebrated, not eliminated. (Đuka, 2022) It is a well-known fact that very few people systematically read and critically judge a certain issue. The same is the case with the works of the authors of the ant eugenics movement. They would not have been so successful without massive financial support from other centers of power.[25] It should be emphasized that they have comprehensive media and propaganda support. The direct propaganda message is important, but incomparably more important is the indirect message that most people do not notice, but which in the long run forms the worldview of the individual so that he thinks he is completely free and unimpeded in his choice when it comes to key worldview attitudes.[26] (Ellul, 1973) Crowd psychology applies to all members of society. This means that it is possible to manipulate not only semi-educated individuals, but the same principle of behavior applies to intellectual circles and to the so-called social elites.[27] (Le Bon, 1920) That this is so is shown by the complete passivity of the institutions that gather the intellectual elites of each nation. The combination of propaganda and the practice of financial carrot and stick works very well. On the one hand, taxpayers’ money is directed towards politically correct scientific projects, and on the other hand, holders of opposing opinions have no media promotion or are publicly condemned. (Watson, 2004) Today in the West there is not a single media or entertainment production owner willing to invest in audiovisual content that would problematize eugenics in a positive way. Generations born after the Second World War do not have the opportunity to watch TV shows in which eugenics is presented as a socially important project, and for them Watson and his colleagues are not interesting for a film adaptation. There are plenty of examples in everyday life and it is not necessary to invent anything, starting with great frustrations and unfortunate life stories that are the result of neglected eugenic awareness in society. In contrast, the public is regularly reminded that the quality of life in the Great Barrier Reef[28] or the survival of certain primates is threatened, promoting a kind of global biological patriotism. It is a scientific fact that the human population has threatened certain animal and plant species with its unprecedented expansion, but no one in the media is interested in the fact that certain European nations are degenerating and apparently dying out. It turns out that European nations are concerned about the biological fate of the whole world, except for their own. Media owners and big capitalists often like to embellish their public image by presenting themselves as philanthropists, but when it comes to eugenics, they are not interested. Exceptions were Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundation in the USA before World War II. Like it or not, here we have to agree to some extent with Marx, who claimed that capitalists’ rule in Western societies and that their role is decisive in the formation of the cultural and spiritual superstructure in society. It seems that the assertion that the media-propaganda umbrella must be comprehensive and must not allow conflicting views to reach the public when it comes to key social issues such as eugenics, has come true in the West. Politically motivated propaganda (the modern euphemism is “education”) does not tolerate any pluralism because it confuses the public. (Ellul, 1973)
RADICAL FEMINISM
The central myth about the equality (sameness) of people has its branch in the form of the feminist movement. Instead of a class struggle, the current struggle is between the sexes. Radical feminism holds that women should keep up with men in everything. Since nature “imagined” that only women can give birth, then parenthood becomes a hindrance to the imagined keeping pace between the sexes, and this is the source of the dysgenic trend called delayed motherhood/parenthood. Women who want to create a career in the profession are forced to postpone their first motherhood until their late twenties to the detriment of the quality of their offspring. In addition, the media has already created an image that the life of a woman who devotes herself only to her family is somewhat less valuable, with the explanation that the woman is discriminated against and is no longer on the labor market. For this purpose, military history is also changing, so in Zagreb we watch comical scenes of women riding as members of a historical cavalry honor unit armed with sabers,[29] and in the evening TV program women kill with firearms just like men. It is also possible to manipulate this topic in the media, but demanding that women be represented everywhere in combat units so that they are equal with men there is against common sense and the entire practice of war. The well-known military historian Martin van Creveld, who does not approve of this kind of experimentation in the army, ironizes the example of the only female soldier who died on the American side during the Gulf War in 1991 by drowning while on guard duty on the pier. (Creveld, 2008:395-409) Obviously, the biological division of gender roles in society has been completely ignored. Now the European tradition of chivalry and respect for women, which has its foundation in the aforementioned division, is also becoming questionable. Margrit Kennedy observes that we live in an unusual system in which unprecedented technical aids and prerequisites are available for a much more comfortable life than was the case in the past. However, it is not like that, today both men and women have to work feverishly and everyone is burdened with loans.[30] (Kennedy, 1995) In such a society, there is little room for concern about the number and quality of offspring. All European nations that consistently apply radical principles of gender equality are degenerating and rapidly disappearing, and collective degeneration and disappearance should not be the goal to strive for.
ASYMMETRICAL BIRTHRATE
Asymmetric birth rate is also a significant dysgenic trend. Eugenics have been noticed since the 19th century that the more successful and creative part of society lags behind the number of offspring compared to parts of society that are less creative or cannot provide for themselves. Thus, from generation to generation, the less able prevail more and more in society. Such negative trends have been confirmed in many studies. (Court-Bean, 1985) If we add to this the political custom that each individual has the same weight when electing officials, then the circle closes at the level of political decision-making on important social issues. The significantly extended lifespan of an individual entails ever greater demands for social and health care, and then the whole society slowly sinks under its own burden. Starting from a sample of 104 British families who were recorded as perpetrators of criminal offences, Richard Lynn[31] showed that their fertility was 77% higher than the British average. Such a pronounced negative disparity in fertility must be a warning that criminal behavior should be genetically monitored and studied to some extent. For this, the author proposes the tried and tested practice of studying the behavior of identical and fraternal twins whose parents have a criminal past, and who were raised in other families under the same circumstances. Dysgenic fertility of criminals is a suitable example for studying character traits at the collective level. It is not possible to statistically monitor character traits like the level of intelligence, but it is possible to indirectly draw conclusions by studying the criminal population within a nation. Everyone will agree that positive character traits include altruistic behavior in war and peace, respect for legal provisions, honesty and living off one’s own work. If we take it for certain that all the mentioned traits are little or not at all represented in the perpetrators of certain criminal acts, then it is not difficult to conclude what a negative eugenic effect in character values their above-average procreation has in the long run. (Lynn, 1995) It is common and justified to prioritize the social significance of people with a high degree of intelligence, but no society can function if certain rules of behavior are not crystallized in it. Citizens who are ready to sacrifice property and life for the people in the event of war and those who try to seize the opportunity to get rich or desert in that war can be cited as character antipodes. The abolition of the death penalty is to some extent part of the negative eugenics trend among European nations. The death penalty is labeled as “inhumane”. Thus, it becomes possible for perpetrators of the most serious crimes to have the opportunity to pass on their genes to future generations. This false humanity is even more pronounced with overly lenient time sentences. In this case, laws are available to social parasites that allow for a reduced sentence or parole. Not only do such laws enable unhindered procreation for antisocial people, but they serve as an example that it pays to be a parasite and live at the expense of others – opiate dealers and “big thieves”. The irony is that major criminals continue to live as prisoners at the expense of the community because forced labor is also considered inhumane.
STANDPOINT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The eugenics movement found a decisive opponent in the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XI.[32] in 1931, officially determined the position of the Church towards the eugenics project in the encyclical “Non abbiamo bisogno” (“We do not need it”). According to it, every kind of abortion, sterilization and contraception is condemned. The encyclical does not engage in the analysis of negative social trends nor does it refer to scientific achievements in the field of genetics. The Pope relies on the opinions of church theologians from antiquity onwards. As a Catholic, Chesterton[33] from the beginning of the XIX. century criticizes eugenics attempts with a lot of pathos typical of a neophyte. He even proposes banning eugenics, judging it to be more harmful than poison. For him, hereditary traits are an infinite mystery and healthy offspring cannot be determined with certainty. Chesterton is also the first author who criticizes eugenics and waves a scarecrow called superman.[34] The concept of superman was put into circulation by Nietzsche, but we do not find it anywhere in eugenics or in political literature. On the contrary, Chesterton’s contemporaries like the eugenicist Leonard Darwin talk about the project of eugenics as a gradual and slow improvement of the nation taking into account its innate qualities. Eugenic principles would certainly increase the average quality of the people, and then the number of above-average gifted individuals would increase, from which the whole community would greatly benefit in peace, and especially in war. Eugenicists do not intend to create human farms where people with superior physical characteristics and geniuses would be bred. For Leonard Darwin, such ideas were never part of the eugenics program.[35] (Darwin l., 1913) But it must be admitted that the biological principles of eugenics are very suitable for manipulation for political and interest purposes. It can be seen that the opponents of eugenics, like Chesterton, first construct a distorted image of the opposing project that will certainly cause negative emotions in people, and then they attack such a virtual target. The use of examples from the practice of animal breeders and Nietzsche’s superman are certainly good examples of ideological-political reckoning with eugenics. The same ideological pattern applies when eugenics is labeled as the sick pursuit for the perfect man. (Krpan, 2016) In short, the Catholic worldview starts from the thesis that man has no right to interfere in the biological course of things that is given by God.[36] The Pope’s encyclical does not face the fact that man has already greatly interfered with the natural course of selection that applies to the entire living world. From the point of view of believers, this natural course should be consistently treated as God’s plan because God is marked as omnipotent and omniscient. If you think like that, then man, who according to the teachings of the Church, is a reasonable and responsible creature, would have the right to intervene in the disturbed natural order. This is not about abstractions, but about the fact that European societies are clearly collapsing quantitatively and qualitatively. Caring for the weak is a great achievement of Christianity, but it is reduced only to treatment, not prevention, to remedying the consequences, not to removing the cause. An individual cannot be artificially separated from society as an individual who makes unlimited demands and demands his rights, because social solidarity has its price. (L. Darwin, 1913) Perhaps the best response to the attitude of Chesterton and the Catholic Church towards eugenics came from feminist circles through the words: “Let us show love and humanity to those who are born with defects, but let us not accept that they multiply indefinitely! Let’s protect future generations!… Judging by everything, sterilization is important or at least desirable from the point of view of responsible eugenics. We don’t have to depend on geniuses. The foundations of national development are in the broad masses… and from there emerge extraordinary individuals.”[37] (Glad, 2011) A social composition is like a train and cannot be increased indefinitely with new wagons. With the same traction, it will slowly slow down and eventually stop completely. In addition, the principles proclaimed in the New Testament do not rule between social groups and states.
CONCLUSION
Eugenics relied on the initiative from below and never gained support as a government program in the long run, which would involve the organizational and material capabilities of the state. An exception is the short period in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Apart from Germany, the eugenics project went the furthest between the two wars in the USA, but it never had the comprehensive support of the federal state there. Opposition to eugenics became a kind of secular religion, instead of the other way around, as the founder of eugenics Galton, had expected. After the Second World War, remnants of eugenics can be found hidden under the name of genetic research, provided the researchers are “politically correct”. And the eugenics project had all the characteristics of a realizable secular religion, which could offer the individual a higher meaning of existence, something that goes beyond his short-lived and egoistic needs and serves the welfare of future generations. If Schopenhauer marked the will to live as the basic driving force, eugenicists would add that it is the will for a better quality of life for future generations. By rejecting the eugenics project, which is basically the highest altruism, the individual is left with only the struggle for bare existence and the painful knowledge of the brevity of existence, and a better life after death is less and less likely. Instead of becoming an educational component of high school education, eugenics is today in a situation where students in formative age are not familiar with the positive content of such a project. On the contrary, they grow up in a media greenhouse where the project is portrayed as a war against the weak and the pursuit of creating a Nordic race of masters. It is indisputable that the eugenics project has its biological foundation and its relevance on a scientific basis. At the same time, it entails a number of limitations and moral questions, especially when it comes to the part of the project where a real revolution was made in the field of molecular genetics. Everyone accepts the benefits of molecular genetics when it comes to plants and the rest of the animal world, justifiable doubts arise when the same is tried to be applied indefinitely to humans. But eugenics should not be seen as a ready-made recipe to be applied in its entirety to all peoples, something similar to the dogma of “realistic socialism” in the last century. Today, there is not a single movement aspiring to power among European nations that would include eugenic principles in its program, and academic institutions are completely passive when it comes to this issue. Such lack of interest is an indication that European nations are tired of life and are in the terminal stage of decadence. It is a state when senility begins to be understood as a desirable state, a way of life that others envy, and overblown individualism as a civilizational achievement. The prevailing belief is that human society is an insurance company with unlimited guarantees that will never go bankrupt. Negative eugenic trends and insufficient growth are rapidly leading to general genetic bankruptcy, and we have beautiful examples of this in history.
LITERATURE
Black, Edwin (2003) War against weak – Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. Dialog Press, Washington, DC. Str. 34. Available online at: file:///D:/Users/user/Downloads/War%20Against%20The%20Weak%20-%20Black,%20Edwin.pdf
Creveld, Martin (2008) The Culture of War. Balantine Books, New York. Page 395–409.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (2011) Eugenika i druga zla. Partenon, Zagreb.
Churchill, Winston (1930) „Democracy and war”, The Journal of Historical Review, Volume 17, November 4, VII./VIII. 1998.
Court, Marian Van, Bean, Frank D. (1985) „Intelligence and fertility in the U.S.: 1912. – 1982.“ Intelligence, Volume 9, Issue 1, January–March, Page 23–32.
Darwin, Charles (1981) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, SAD. Chapter V, Page 88.
Darwin, Leonard (1913) „The cost of degeneracy“, The eugenics Review, VII, 5 (2). Page 93–100.
Dawkins, Richard (2015) The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, W. W. Northon & Company, Kindle edition.
Dawkins, Richard, (2016) The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York 10016, US. Loc 823. Available online at: http://library.lol/main/FC7FE49ED8E65DF74179B3C725D7F85F.
Đuka, Matijana (2022) Sramotna objava SZO-a: Naveli Downov sindrom kao urođenu manu koju treba spriječiti. Portal Narod.hr. Available online at: https://narod.hr/svijet/sramotna-objava-szo-a-naveli-downov-sindrom-kao-urodenu-manu-koju-treba-sprijeciti.
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[1] James Dewey Watson, born in 1928, an American molecular biologist, together with two colleagues received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the discovery of the molecular structure of nucleic acids. It is one of the greatest scientific discoveries in the field of biology.
[2] Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882, English naturalist, author of the theory of evolution of living beings by natural selection.
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900, prominent German philosopher. Throughout his entire philosophical and literary work, he passionately opposes egalitarian trends in European society. Since he was also an artist of the written word, he left room for his philosophical views to be often interpreted differently, so it happens that authors who are in different worldview positions shape Nietzsche in their own image and likeness.
[4] Francis Galton, 1822 – 1911, a distant cousin of Charles Darwin, an exceptional erudite of a wide spectrum.
[5] The word eugenics is Galton’s coinage from the Greek words, eugenes – noble birth.
[6] When political interests get involved, then quantifying the losses becomes difficult or impossible.
[7] In the struggle for hegemony in Europe, France and Great Britain had the strength to go to war with Germany twice in the first half of the 20th century. In 1956, these two countries, together with Israel, and without the USA, tried to act independently militarily in Egypt in the so-called Suez crisis. It is significant that both countries had to soon withdraw from the Suez Canal zone under the pressure of US President Eisenhower. And the wars that followed the disintegration of the SFRY are the freshest example of the complete impotence of European states. The struggle of European nations for hegemony in the first half of the 20th century (1914 – 1945) is irresistibly reminiscent of the Peloponnesian Wars in ancient Greece between Sparta and Athens (431 – 404 BC). In this case too, the main actors used up their quality human resources to get off the political stage forever.
[8] Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965, prominent British politician.
[9] The Battle of the Somme River in the second half of 1916. The British and the French jointly attack the German positions, over 600,000 dead, and about 500,000 on the German side.
[10] King of Epirus Pyrrhus, 319 BC. Kr. – 272 BC Kr., a prominent ancient military leader, defeated the Romans in the Battle of Asculi in southern Italy in 279. Since he had great losses as a winner, it was customary to label any victory that cost a lot as a Pyrrhic victory.
[11] German rocket Vergeltuingswaffe – V2, powered by liquid fuel, 22. VI. 1944, 176 km flight height, the first object outside the atmosphere. The same group of constructors continued to work for the Americans after the war. They built the Saturn V launch vehicle, which made it possible to land a man on the moon in 1969. without a single incident.
[12] It is necessary to distinguish between the terms “negative eugenic trends” and “negative eugenics”.
[13] Tom Wolfe, 1930 – 2018, American journalist and writer.
[14] The Law on the Prevention of Hereditarily Sick Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhuetung erbkranken Nachwuchses), July 14, 1933, mandates the compulsory sterilization of any person who, according to medical science, can be expected with high probability to have offspring with serious psychophysical disorders. These include: congenital mental retardation, schizophrenia, occasional manic-depressive disorders, congenital epilepsy, congenital Sydenham’s disease (Dance of the Holy Sight), Huntington’s disease, congenital blindness, congenital deafness, severe congenital physical deformities and heavy alcoholics. The Law on the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People (Gesetz zum Schutze der Erbgesundheit des deutschen Volkes), October 18, 1935, stipulates that marriage cannot be concluded by persons suffering from communicable diseases, who are unable to organize their own life without guardians, who have mental problems that are undesirable for the community and that have congenital diseases formulated in the aforementioned Law. It was possible to enter into marriage only with a written certificate issued by a doctor, and couples who could not obtain one could enter into marriage with prior consent to sterilization. The Marriage Support Act (1934) provided for loans to young couples of up to 1,000 marks in the event that their financial situation was such that they would not be able to start a family without this assistance. The loan condition (until 1937) for future wives was that they leave paid work, free up job vacancies and devote themselves to the family. The loan was gradually liquidated with the fourth child (for the sake of orientation, a worker’s monthly salary was slightly above 200 marks, and for 1000 marks you could buy a car before the start of the war).
[15] Alfred Ploetz (1860 – 1940), a German physician, biologist and eugenicist, used the term in 1895. in the work Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene.
[16] Ashley Montagu (Israel Ehrenberg), 1905 – 1999, British-American anthropologist, co-author of the UNESCO declaration on the racial issue in 1950.
[17] Edwin Black, (1950) American journalist and historian of Jewish origin.
[18] Kevles, Daniel J., 1939, American intellectual, author of written works on the subject of physics and eugenics.
[19] The sterilization procedure was a simple surgical procedure aimed at preventing only procreation, while sexual life remained unextinguished. Sterilization carried out in this way cannot be equated with castration
[20] After the First World War, in 1923-1925, the French and Belgians occupied part of German territory, the Ruhr.
[21] Montagu and other opponents of eugenics start from the unscientific theory formulated by Lamarck, 1744-1829, a French naturalist. He put forward the thesis that evolution occurs at the individual level by transferring acquired traits during life to offspring. Thanks to the achievements of molecular biology, we know exactly that Lamarck was not right.
[22] Lysenko, 1898 – 1976, prominent agronomist and biologist in the USSR, supporter of Lamarck and opponent of Mendel.
[23] Richard Dawkins, 1941, university professor, evolutionary biologist and promoter of Darwinism.
[24] Andrija Štampar, Croatian physician (Brodski Drenovac, 1. IX. 1888 – Zagreb, 26. VI. 1958). He laid the foundations of the public health service in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and founded a number of social-medical institutions. During his lifetime, he performed many duties and actively advocated social medicine and dedication to the medical needs of little people.
[25] Withholding financial support for “politically incorrect” scientific projects is a common practice, according to Watson. Such negative scientific selection has stifled the freedom of scientific research, anthropological and social science has become an ancilla of political ideology.
[26] Jacques Ellul, 1912 – 1994, French philosopher, sociologist and university professor.
[27] The power of the media today is best shown by the example of manipulation with the claim that humans are the cause of climate change on earth. The portion of scientists who express disagreement is simply ignored. According to Fred Goldberg, the rest “see where the wind blows” and dare to speak their mind only when they retire.
[28] The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system, Australia.
[29] It is a staging of Croatian soldiers from the 17th century, Kravat regiment. For the soldiers of that time, it would have been a kind of humiliation to have women as opponents in combat with cold weapons or in their unit.
[30] Margrit Kennedy, 1939 – 2013, German architect, university teacher.
[31] Richard Lynn, 1930, English university professor, psychologist.
[32] Pius XI, pontificate 1922 – 1939.
[33] Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 – 1936, English writer, Catholic revival.
[34] Nietzsche actualized the superman in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which could be called poetry in prose. It is easiest to understand him as a man who, as a politician, philosopher and artist, was opposed to the main leveling trends in the 19th century. Nietzsche pathetically says that it is better to die than to live in a society where mediocrity and herd psychology prevail.
[35] Darwin Leonard, 1850-1943, son of Charles Darwin, president of the Eugenics Society 1911-1928.
[36] “God’s plan” – when we look at what happens on the example of the sexual division of cells (meiosis) and the process of fertilization, then there is little room left for someone’s supernatural plan. Random recombination and gene mutations are a kind of roulette in which the lucky winner (the emergence of new life) is left to chance within the genetic possibilities of the community. Such facts do not sound pleasant to our ears, but a consistent believer can rationalize and conclude that the roulette itself was conceived by Providence.
[37] Henriette Fuerth (1861 – 1938), German-Jewish feminist.
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