new start

OK, everybody, calm down.

The WORD "eugenics" does not mean sterilization and/or killing. It
really doesn't.

However, the PRACTICE of eugenics has a powerful tendency to lead to
exactly that, for reasons that should be obvious. To see what those
reasons are, let's look at the 20th Century's most notorious example:
Nazi Germany.

The Nazis wanted to produce a superior group of people. The example
of superiority was the "Aryan," noted for such attributes as height,
fair skin, slenderness, blond hair and blue eyes.(*) To increase the
number of Aryans in their society (as well as increasing the "purity"
of the so-called Aryans), they turned to a state-run eugenics
program. So government types ran around measuring peoples height,
checking eye color against charts, pouring over family trees, and
proclaiming those they considered fit to be good and true Aryans
indeed. They then encouraged these "Aryans" to marry and produce
lots of baby Aryans.

And had it ended with that, Nazi eugenics would be merely an amusing
example of how very silly human beings can be. As we all know, it
did not end with that.

Why? If they were encouraging tall, slender, fair-skinned guys and
gals with blond hair and blue eyes to f**k like minks and make lotsa
lotsa babies, then why kill Jews, Gypsies, etc.?

Part of the reason was that Germany was in deep doggy-doo, and Hitler
could endear himself to the people if he found somebody to blame.
With there already being a centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism
in Europe, the Jews were just too easy a choice of scapegoat. So in
effect, by persecuting Jews, Hitler could say, "See? I'm doing
something about our problems."

But there is another reason, a reason that goes to the heart of the
problems with eugenics. These problems are:

a) it takes so long. Yes, you could, if you could control who has
sex with whom, and do so over several generations, get a lot of tall,
slender people with fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. But it
would be many generations before you could "weed out" the genes for
brown hair, green eyes, etc. A "Thousand Year Reich" would hardly
seem long enough.(**)

b) the attempt to "improve" one section of the population tends to
take place in an area where other groups are also found. For
instance, not everybody in Germany fit the profile of an Aryan. All
those non-Aryans around, and such a stress on "breeding pure."
Controlling the sexual behavior of human beings is an exercise in
frustration for any religion, nation, etc. that has ever tried it.
Just ask any parent of a teenager. And so you breed your Aryans for
five generations, and then Eva loves Albert. WHOOPS! The Nazis were
obsessed with this issue of "contamination," and it seems to have
occurred to them that things would be a lot easier if Albert simply
wasn't around.

c) if a society has blonds, brunettes and redheads, and it is decided
by the powers that be that blonds are better, getting rid of the
brunettes and redheads gives you a society that is 100% blond, and a
lot faster than breeding blonds would. It would also solve that
nasty little contamination problem.

Such "culling" is not a nessesary part of eugenics(**), but it will
be a persistent temptation.

Having said all of this, I do not believe that Orion will resort to
sterilization and/or genecide, for a few reasons. One of these
reasons is that I suspect that OrionNauts are revolted by such
practices, and have no desire to practice them. The other reasons
involve having one's own habitat. Can you guess what these reasons
are?

So no, I do not think that Orion will go down in history as yet
another repugnant example of man;s inhumanity to man. Rather, I
expect them to be merely an amusing example of how very silly human
beings can be.

(*) "Aryan," of course, is a linguistic group (now called Indo-
European), and has nothing to do with hair, skin, eyes or any of that
other nonsense the Nazis were willing to kill and die for.

(**) this does not address the question of whether or not that
actually constitutes "improvement." Take blond hair, tallness, etc.
and replace them with whatever traits you like. The forces moving
towards atrocity are the same, even if the improvement is real.

(**) if ones simply defines the word to mean selective breeding
applied to human beings; it IS a part of eugenics if the word
means "improving" the population by various means, not limited to
selective breeding.