Sorry about the delay, but I’ve been very busy over the past few days. A few points:
1) Eugenics is an attempt to change the frequency of alleles in the population, which does not require killing anyone at all. A eugenics program could be as benign as many policies to limit pollution are. It’s a regrettable thing that “eugenics” conjures up images of a death squad(usually a Nazi one) executing those deemed undesirable, while their relatives weep in the background. This woeful caricature has been propagated by neo-Marxist academics and it has unfortunately taken its toll on people unfamiliar with the subject.
2) You seem concerned, Speed, with creativity. Which combination of traits it is that makes one creative is poorly understood, but it does appear correlated with intelligence. The man who “creates his own myth” will not have an IQ of 80; no, he will be an intelligent person. The people to the far left of the Gaussian curve are burdens to society, socially and economically, and they are not going to make their contributions philosophically, either.
3) I disagree that the only way to institute eugenics is through an authoritarian government. There were eugenics programs in many US states and the US was not authoritarian at the time. The programs were more stringent than ones I have proposed even, as there was forced sterilization. I realize that one could say “a-ha, forced sterilization. Its supporters may say that it need not be so harsh, but look at how it was instituted in the past.” Well, one can easily invalidate chemistry by pointing out the failures of alchemy, but would that really be a meaningful argument against it? Most certainly not.
4) Justin S., I agree that they are still needed, but less so, and they wouldn’t be needed hardly at all if we altered our economic system and stopped relying on superfluous markets to keep us afloat. That is how our machine works. After one market is exhausted, we make another and another, ad infinitum. It is woefully inefficient to have people producing commodities that nobody needs, when there are so many problems needing correction. Furthermore, I would argue that they are needed less. After all, technology has allowed fewer workers to perform the same amount of work, and with all of our ridiculous expansion, we just can’t keep up with the population. Moreover, life itself has become more complicated. To function as an autonomous individual in our society is more taxing upon a person's intellect than in past times.
5) If it is true that the fall cannot be averted, it is still not cause for the abandonment of eugenics. After the collapse of western civilization, there will be people remaining and they will begin to rebuild. At some point, a eugenics program should be instituted because dysgenics has been a historical problem for humanity. It leads to the fall of civilizations. Once they stratify, the upper will lag behind the lower in breeding and the civilization will weaken and become more vulnerable to invasion. Eventually, it will collapse upon itself, anyway. There needs to be a rigorous upkeep of the population’s quality, which will not allow it to last forever, but give it some degree of preservation. Furthermore, a civilization preserved in this way will be successful philosophically, scientifically, and otherwise. It will be a towering monument to human excellence, which will be looked upon with awe for as long as there are men to do so.
Understand that I am not attempting to create a science of history, whereby the cycles happen in only one way. It is rather, that certain threats always hang over the heads of civilizations, to which they risk succumbing.
