{"id":43300,"date":"2011-08-24T12:12:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T20:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=13618"},"modified":"2011-08-24T12:12:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T20:12:37","slug":"eugenics-as-a-luxury-of-the-affluent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2011\/08\/24\/eugenics-as-a-luxury-of-the-affluent\/","title":{"rendered":"Eugenics as a luxury of the affluent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the comments below Jason says in regards to the connection between eugenics and genocide and the &#8220;slippery slope&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>In your current comfortable first world circumstances<\/strong>, you are right the slope is perhaps not that slippery. I hope you are never tested in a less comfortable setting as then I think you might find it can be pretty slippery after all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A reference to the interlocutor&#8217;s status as a citizen of the comfortable First World (which itself is a somewhat archaic term by now I think) seems<em> de rigueur<\/em> in many arguments. And I think many people will find it plausible that someone in an affluent consumer society would be blind to the &#8220;dark side&#8221; of eugenics, and how it could lead to genocide. But I think this plausibility is entirely superficial, and collapses upon closer inspection. <strong>Rather, it is I believe in &#8220;First World&#8221; and advanced nations where the likelihood of the ubiquity of eugenics and possible genocide predicated on systematic eugenics is going to be the most probable outcome.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\nThere is a large general issue at the root of this confusion, the implicit progressive &#8220;Whiggishness&#8221; in our sensibilities, which derives in part from the power of science to advance in &#8230;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/GeneExpressionBlog\/~4\/TVBC9lmlvQE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the comments below Jason says in regards to the connection between eugenics and genocide and the &#8220;slippery slope&#8221;:<br \/>\nIn your current comfortable first world circumstances, you are right the slope is perhaps not that slippery. I hope you ar&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1695,365,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eugenics","category-futurism","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43300"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43328,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43300\/revisions\/43328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}