When this site was first created, and for many years before, the question of altering human behaviour by selective breeding or technology was a fringe issue. We predicted that, just as it began as a fringe issue in the 19th century and gradually entered into the mainstream, so it would become increasingly important in the 21st century. It seems that this prediction is beginning to come true. I recently wrote a letter in response to an article I read (cited near the beginning of the letter):

Dear Prof. Savulescu
I have recently read the following article in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9480372/Genetically-engineering-ethical-babies-is-a-moral-obligation-says-Oxford-professor.html

and although I too believe that the human race is in desperate need of improvement, I could not disagree more strongly that parents are the most appropriate people to select the characteristics of their child!

Firstly, consider how most parents define a ‘good’ child. For most, a good child is simply an obedient child. An obedient, docile person is not the same as an ethical person. True ethics are heroic - they stand in defiance to popular opinion and the threat of aggression rather than submit to it. At present, and indeed throughout history, the powerful are able to treat everyone else more or less like cattle because they have been too obedient and docile to rise up against them. In the last ten years alone, the government has been able to lie their way into several wars and stay in power even after these lies were exposed. They have been able to take away many of our civil liberties in the knowledge that they would not be challenged with any considerable force if successful. The common man has been robbed in broad daylight in the ‘recession’, and yet, far from the perpetrators being brought to justice, a government has been elected in America whose highest campaign donor was Goldman Sachs. I read a comment on an article when the SOPA was first proposed that said something like ‘as long as you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about’. Perhaps that is your idea of an ethical person, but it is the opposite of my idea. Before we talk about breeding better, more ethical people, I think we need to define what kind of values and ethics we recognise as superior. The Nazis, by the way, who were criticised in the article I linked you to for the sake of scoring some easy points, would agree with me about what it really means to be an ethical person, so I consider them to have the moral high ground on this issue, partcularly when contrasted with a culture that increasingly sees children as a kind of fashion statement or lifestyle choice rather than beings with their own mind and feelings.

Secondly, most parents, despite also demanding docility from their children, want their children to be successful. At the moment, I consider many of the most successful people to be a den of snakes. I would prefer genetic engineering not to be used to create a world of Lloyd Blankfeins and George W. Bushes. The only way a parent’s choice to make their child more successful could co-incide with them being ethical is if society were reformed so that the most ethical, positive people ended up being the most successful, rather than thieves and liars becoming the most successful, and I think that such reform is not something we will achieve overnight, if at all. I eagerly await your reply.

At first I thought that the author of the article was sincere, being genuinely interested in improving human beings and creating a better world, but the fact that he failed to reply to me suggests that this is part of a deliberate plot to move towards a world of slaves. Or it may be that he does want to create a ‘better’ world, but that he values servility and cannot understand my point of view. In any case, the fact that the question of improving human beings has been neglected for almost a century, even though it is an important question, means that anyone who raises this question now can portray themselves as positive, innovative thinkers even with a poor definition of ‘improvement’. We must not allow people with only one point of view to gain a monopoly on this issue, and must continue to stress that there are many possible views on how the human being should be changed, rather than allow a false dichotomy to be constructed between one of these views and the view that we should do nothing. We must promote our well-formulated definition of what kind of human we would like to create:

http://aryanism.net/philosophy/what-is-nobility/

http://aryanism.net/philosophy/arya/

and deconstruct the false dichotomy by insisting that Aryanisation is not the same as eugenics, or any of the other possibilities.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Anthony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.