NationStates Jolt Archive

I know that various government efforts to create a certain kind of citizen with the right skin color, religion or right handedness have rightly come under fire. But I think that more passive efforts ought to be considered. I disagree with many of those who call themselves liberals when they think that government's job is to save us from ourselves as well as eachother.

Take a look at the garage jumpers. (http://www.local6.com/station/4239256/detail.html) . I would guess that there are laws against this sport, or there very soon will be. I don't see why, and if you can show me why I'll still think that we shouldn't have them because the reason why not is so much more compeling.

If anyone who wanted to was allowed to go garage jumping we'd be breeding for some fairly important abilities.

a) Not being such an idiot that you think you can jump from one building to another.
b) Being athletic enough to jump from one building to another.
c) Being resilient enough that if you aren't 'a' or 'b' you can survive an 80 fucking foot drop :eek:

Think of the military we'd have in a few generations if this behavior went on all over.

Clean out the gene pool people! Encourage self-destructive behavior!

Bring back baby walkers, bring back lawn darts, bring back those little toy plastic people that kids kept trying to eat but choked on and were perfectly save up until the mid 80's and then all this genetic mollycoddling gave us such a wealth of rejects that they suffocated on them. LET MERIT BREED TRUE. Passive Social Darwinism for the a brighter, or at least tougher, tomorrow.

Lets face it: we are breeding for an un-intelligent, un-thinking herd of consumers, obsessed with popular culture, who are un-able and unwilling to take any form of personal responsibility.

Its possible that the glut of lawyers had something to do with it. The Age of "Its somebody elses fault and they must pay"

That's not social Darwinism. That's eugenics. Just so you have your terms straight.

The city and the owners of one of the garages should sue the boy and his family, or try to press charges against the boy and his friends.

That's not social Darwinism. That's eugenics. Just so you have your terms straight.

I don't know about that. I had meant to play loosly with the terms, hence the "what it means to me" title. But if I understand it right Social Darwinism means trying to understand why some groups gain an advantage over others as a result of their genetics whereas eugenics means an active effort to create a certain kind of person through selective breeding.

To simply allow people to do all sorts of stupid stuff in the hopes that those who don't get killed will turn out to be worth more than the cost of trying to save the casualties from themselves would have been doesn't really seem to entail the sort of control implicit in eugenics.

The city and the owners of one of the garages should sue the boy and his family, or try to press charges against the boy and his friends.

Sue for what? The cost of cleaning up the bloodstains?

That'd be a fun episode of Law and Order.

If Darwin was right, which I dont believe to be the case. Then it would still take hundreds of thousands of years for those things to start making a difference.

You know, I've often thought about that, but not quite in the depth you have...

I thought more along the lines of - if they want to jump off buildings, if they're crap they'll die, but all the good ones will go on breeding and... that sounded a bit crude. But you get my drift.

I disagree. We are not animals, we are not beasts. If we followed your logic, people should die if they make a stupid mistake. But people can learn, and punishing them like that for a moment of carelessness is ridiculous.

What "Social Darwinism" means to me, is that any idiot who thinks "Social Darwinism" is a valid or good concept needs either to learn a little history or to be neutered.

I disagree. We are not animals, we are not beasts. If we followed your logic, people should die if they make a stupid mistake. But people can learn, and punishing them like that for a moment of carelessness is ridiculous.

People can make stupid mistakes, like messing up some DIY and putting a hole in their hand, or acidentally glueing their palms together. People don't make stupid mistakes like jumping between two 80-foot-tall buildings, people make really goddamned stupid mistakes doing that, and if by the time someone is a teenager they can't figure out that long drop = dead moron, they deserve to BE a dead moron.

What "Social Darwinism" means to me, is that any idiot who thinks "Social Darwinism" is a valid or good concept needs either to learn a little history or to be neutered.
The irony is so thick I have to swim to get through it...
I'm hoping you did that on purpose? Cause it was funny.

With stuff like garage jumpers, everything stupid that is deadly to one's self that doesn't harm others should be legalized and all lawsuits pertaining to said things should be barred. That way, we kill off all the idiots, or at least weak, impressionable dipshits

With stuff like garage jumpers, everything stupid that is deadly to one's self that doesn't harm others should be legalized and all lawsuits pertaining to said things should be barred. That way, we kill off all the idiots, or at least weak, impressionable dipshits

Fully agreed. Anything which does not harm anyone other than the individual involved should be legal.

I agree as well.

People can make stupid mistakes, like messing up some DIY and putting a hole in their hand, or acidentally glueing their palms together. People don't make stupid mistakes like jumping between two 80-foot-tall buildings, people make really goddamned stupid mistakes doing that, and if by the time someone is a teenager they can't figure out that long drop = dead moron, they deserve to BE a dead moron.

On the other hand this kid survived. That's worth breeding for too.

Imagine it. Several generations down the road we could have cliff diving, without the water :eek:

I've never been terribly interested in sports, but that's one I'd pay to watch. If I could live to be 490 that is.

On the other hand this kid survived. That's worth breeding for too.

Imagine it. Several generations down the road we could have cliff diving, without the water :eek:

I've never been terribly interested in sports, but that's one I'd pay to watch. If I could live to be 490 that is.

Well, yeah, if they're tough enough to actually survive I'm sure we've got plenty of uses for them.

If Darwin was right, which I dont believe to be the case. Then it would still take hundreds of thousands of years for those things to start making a difference.

I can't believe how many Darwin disbelievers (aka. "writer offerers") are out there. Either way:

Darwinism = Evolution (in this case, natural selection)

Eugenics = Getting rid of "crapper" elements of a species on purpose (or passively as may be the case) in order to ensure absolutely that the "strongest and best" will live on and reproduce (in this case, unnatural/human selection)

The irony is so thick I have to swim to get through it...
I'm hoping you did that on purpose? Cause it was funny.

Thank you. Definitely on purpose and I'm glad someone else appreciated it.

Seriously, however. Social Darwinism:

(a) has little or nothing to do with evolution;

(b) is an out-moded and discredited notion;

(c) is inherently repulsive; and

(d) appeals primarily to bigots and ignorant white teenage boys (which are not mutually exclusive categories).

And, yes, this is deliberately harsh. Some ideas should be dealt with harshly.

The more I look into "Social Darwinism", the more I dislike it.

I don't know about that. I had meant to play loosly with the terms, hence the "what it means to me" title. But if I understand it right Social Darwinism means trying to understand why some groups gain an advantage over others as a result of their genetics whereas eugenics means an active effort to create a certain kind of person through selective breeding.
Social Darwinism is the belief that evolutionary biology may be extended to sociocultural entites, i.e. the upper classes are inherently biologically superior to the lower classes. It's a bunch of bullshit. Eugenics is basically natural selection with a human slant. Same mechanism for evolution, but different than Darwinism. It's kind of like Darwinism on steroids.

If Darwin was right, which I dont believe to be the case. Then it would still take hundreds of thousands of years for those things to start making a difference.
I would correct you, but you obviously have a tenuous grasp on evolution, and don't "believe" in it anyways, so nevermind.

Social Darwinism is the belief that evolutionary biology may be extended to sociocultural entites, i.e. the upper classes are inherently biologically superior to the lower classes. It's a bunch of bullshit. Eugenics is basically natural selection with a human slant. Same mechanism for evolution, but different than Darwinism. It's kind of like Darwinism on steroids.

Well of course it is, it was based on a bunch of half understood principles that were applied by those with a political agenda rather than scientific integrity. Astronomy used to be the belief that the Earth was shaped like a flat rectangle and the sun was only a few hundred miles away with the whole universe encapsulated in a giant crystal ball.

We didn't give up on Astronomy just because a lot of it turned out to be bullshit. If you define any academic undertaking by the errors made in its infancy then you're going to have to give them all up.

When exactly does the definition of a discipline become unyielding? IQ tests today are quite good predictors of academic performance, yet when they were first developed the designers deliberatly scewed the results to make it look like all men were smarter than women and anglo whites smarter than Austro-Hungarian and Mediteranean whites. The fact that the tests were given in English to people who didn't speak any was not recognized as a sample flaw.

All of this went on as part and parcel of Social Darwinism, but we recognize some value in IQ testing today. Social Darwinism suffered from the same flaws. They assumed that everything about Anglo whites was superior and then sought to explain it from there. If the discipline were to keep pace with academic integrity, rather than its repulsive politics, it might bear as little resemblence to the Social Darwinism of the turn of the last century as our astronomy does to that of the time of Copernicus.

I would correct you, but you obviously have a tenuous grasp on evolution, and don't "believe" in it anyways, so nevermind.

Well I believe in evolution, so I'll point out that most evolutionary proceces take a very long time, but not always, and sometimes not ever. All evolution is a response to pressures of the environment. When birds have no need to fly, they don't. Take a look at the kiwi.

Also, there's a sort of breaking point at which pressure is too much for evolution. If some kiwi could fly when people brought dogs to New Zealand then pretty soon they'd all be able to fly, because the rest of them would be dead. So they either have to find some other way to get away from dogs or they go extinct. The closer that environmental pressures come to this breaking point the faster evolution occurs, and the more catastrophic the process. Like when humans encountered the black plague or small pox for the first time. If the process oversteps that breaking point then extinction occurs like when the saber-tooth tiger gets teeth too big for itself or when glacial bursts cause catastrophic floods.

Evolution is not something that happens at a steady rate. This was part of the problem with efforts to apply Darwinian evolution to humans. It assumed that all people should be responding to the environment in similar ways and that we were all in the same rat race. Since no one had previously done what the western Europeans had done then they surmised that western Europeans were in the lead.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Give. It. Up.