The jeans/genes pun is pretty cliche at this point. Almost all the ads for clothes, cars, cosmetics, etc. use conventionally attractive people to convince the rest of us that we will be more like them if we buy the advertised products. Is it just the pun that makes this casual eugenics? Or is most of the advertising we’re exposed to doing the same thing with more subtlety? It’s a real question as I think through your ideas.
Even people who should know fucking better think of eugenics as an unfortunate but valid science. Richard Dawkins said this on Twitter in 2020
“It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.”
Now I don’t think Richard Dawkins is a Nazi, despite his TERF tendencies, but he’s made similar assertions in the past. And while I saw a lot of folks cut him to pieces for being Mengele-adjacent, I was disappointed no one seemed willing to point out how unscientific he was being. “Why on earth wouldn’t it work for human beings?” Because we don’t use “Eugenics” to make better horses or dogs or roses. We use domestication and husbandry. And there are very good SCIENTIFIC reasons we don’t domesticate humans. Or monkeys, or elephants, or tunas. Because it only works when we have almost totalitarian control over the species reproduction. And you need it fast. In order to make a faster horse you need lots of baby horses to sort through. Luckily for Kentucky Derby fans everywhere, it only takes three years to see if you’ve succeeded. Imagine the running of the three year old humans… and that isn’t even considering how hard it is to keep anybody with opposable thumbs under that kind of control.
Well said! You captured the twistiness of this whole thing with the concept of “casual” eugenics. Thanks!
The jeans/genes pun is pretty cliche at this point. Almost all the ads for clothes, cars, cosmetics, etc. use conventionally attractive people to convince the rest of us that we will be more like them if we buy the advertised products. Is it just the pun that makes this casual eugenics? Or is most of the advertising we’re exposed to doing the same thing with more subtlety? It’s a real question as I think through your ideas.
Thank you for provoking thoughts.
Even people who should know fucking better think of eugenics as an unfortunate but valid science. Richard Dawkins said this on Twitter in 2020
“It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.”
Now I don’t think Richard Dawkins is a Nazi, despite his TERF tendencies, but he’s made similar assertions in the past. And while I saw a lot of folks cut him to pieces for being Mengele-adjacent, I was disappointed no one seemed willing to point out how unscientific he was being. “Why on earth wouldn’t it work for human beings?” Because we don’t use “Eugenics” to make better horses or dogs or roses. We use domestication and husbandry. And there are very good SCIENTIFIC reasons we don’t domesticate humans. Or monkeys, or elephants, or tunas. Because it only works when we have almost totalitarian control over the species reproduction. And you need it fast. In order to make a faster horse you need lots of baby horses to sort through. Luckily for Kentucky Derby fans everywhere, it only takes three years to see if you’ve succeeded. Imagine the running of the three year old humans… and that isn’t even considering how hard it is to keep anybody with opposable thumbs under that kind of control.