Idiots breed Idiots: Why men no longer are created equal

By Niklas Hageback

With a highly provocative title the author presents a book of utmost importance for understanding current developments, primarily in the Western World. In Idiots breed Idiots Niklas Hageback describes the history of Eugenics, and how events that after the Second World War “should never happen again” in reality are happening ever more

• Language: English
• Publisher: Logik
• Release date: Jun 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9789188667540

Book preview

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Idiots breed Idiots

- why men no longer are created equal -

Idiots breed

Idiots

Why men no longer

are created equal

Niklas Hageback

Cover Design: Andreas Nilsson

ISBN: 978-91-88667-54-0

©2018 Logik Förlag

Box 22120, 250 23 Helsingborg, Sweden

www.logik.se | www.logikpub.com

[e-mail]

Contents

Introduction

The History of Eugenics

After World War 2

The Current View

The Strictly Economic Perspective

Why Do Civilisations Collapse - A Demographic Perspective

Conclusions

Introduction

Idiots breed idiots (白痴孕育白痴bai chi yun yu bai chi)

- Peasant Daily 1991, Li Peng (李鹏),

former Prime Minister, People’s Republic of China.

The knowledge-based economy and the ongoing automation of workplaces are rendering low skilled workers permanently unemployed, and as their numbers are expanding into a sizable part of the population, their meagre tax contributions, or rather lack thereof, make them over a lifetime a net financial burden. Upon such economics, the maintenance of the societal and welfare edifice cannot be sustained and risks social unrest and ultimately collapse. It is the unsolvable equation where the too few are having to subsidise the too many.

The objective of most governments, whilst rarely explicitly stated, is to improve the quality of their populations, in such areas as health and well-being, but also including their economic value. Spending on education serves as the conduit for such aspirations; however the hard-learned lessons in many countries are that the effort to upgrade the workforce does not mean throwing more money on education; many of their low skilled citizens are simply not receptive to intellectually demanding work. The economic return on educational investments fails to materialise, and this scenario is being realised in many developed economies in Europe and the US. The ongoing regression in educational standards is manifested, and statistically highlighted, through faltering PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores. And why is this? Is it because the genetic limits to our cognitive endeavours have been reached?

Yet, governments continue to spend seemingly indiscriminately on education, indifferent to the poor results, or maybe because of them. The reason for this is that most educational policies rest on the long-reigning assumption of a ‘tabula rasa’: with the right environment and training, anyone can become anything, as the genetic component that regulates the foundation for cognitive abilities is identical for all at the onset of life. In essence, humans are seen as pieces of Lego; one easily replaceable by another. This lofty but idealistic political ideal stems from an erroneous interpretation of United Nation’s declaration of man’s equal value. Whereas the ideal of equality holds true in a philosophical sense, the knowledge-based economies’ demand for advanced skillsets has only accentuated the insight that human cognitive abilities differ greatly. This notion of equality has been thoroughly rebuked by the latest science; it is just simply the case that we are all born with differing inherited capabilities, whether in an intellectual or physical capacity, and that sets limits on what our realistic future aspirations might be. If the falling educational trends are based on genetics rather than mediocre pedagogy, such a society is at risk to become mired in less fortunate circumstances as the lack of economic development and lapse into poverty, due to the low economic value of its human capital, underpins its downfall.

Facing such dire circumstances, the only realistic economic transition governments can expect is the replacement of low-paying manufacturing work with low-paying service work. The prospect of finding employment requiring the abstract analytical and creative capabilities not likely to be replaced by computers will only be an option for the relatively few. Moreover, ample statistics show that with low cognitive abilities come other detrimental manifestations, all burdensome for any society: higher rates of crime, in particular violent crimes, higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse, and a higher incidence of illness, both physical and mental.

But what can be done to rectify an increasingly gloomy outlook for the future, with mass unemployment in the cards? Improving the cognitive ranks of a country’s’ population can be done through various means, carefully selected immigration being one of them — by only welcoming and encouraging immigrants with documented high abilities — however, the competition for these is global, and attracting them difficult. Boosting waves of emigration by its own unskilled is no longer a viable option, as borders are to an increasing degree closed to such; thus many OECD countries are stuck with this growing underclass, and are in fact adding to it through allowing for Third World immigration, under the pretext of claims to refugee status. Another proposition is to facilitate and endorse couples who have detailed desirable genetic traits to breed more offspring, but that is a generation-long plan, with the potential pay-offs decades away. And then there is the reverse, reducing the number of future children with low-performing or malfunctioning cognitive features. However, attempts to improve the ‘quality’ of the human stock come with a dark and sinister history.

The elimination of unwanted human traits, whether targeting perceived physical or intellectual characteristics, has a long history. By the early 20th century, when science had advanced far enough to allow for more systematic efforts, it culminated with the Nazi’s Aktion T4 crafted to apply euthanasia to exterminate from its population the disabled and others considered inferior. Already criticised by the contemporary German population, and hence prevented from full scale roll-out, it was prosecuted in the war-crime trials and branded as genocide. Whilst at one time declared outright murder, once improved prenatal diagnosis over the coming decades after World War 2 became possible, the efforts to remove the unwanted — albeit this time in the form of abortions, and under the pretext of more altruistic considerations — did reach new heights.

As abortion rates are on the increase for a widening array of identified disabilities, does this mark the beginning of a slippery slope, where the end goal is to perfect the human being, this time not out of ethnic, gender or other preferences, but from the perspective of economically viable societies? As maps of genetic profiles of preferred cognitive abilities are, to an extent, already a reality, will it come to serve as a decision-making tool to prevent the birth of humans that are unlikely to be productive in the knowledge-based economy? But given the topic’s contentious nature, the public debate has been conspicuously absent.

Idiots breed Idiots - or why men no longer are created equal is the first book that discusses in detail the emerging trend of perfecting the human being, where any foetus considered ‘defective’ has become a legitimate target for abortion. Where other books tip-toe around this silent revolution now underway that is dramatically changing society in ways we yet have to fully comprehend, Idiots breed Idiots will take the economist’s view on the preferred composition of the ideal demographics in the changing economic landscape, leaving aside the philosophical pondering on efforts to improve the human stock. As the pressure on welfare systems in developed countries is mounting, leading to unsustainable demands on fewer and fewer to bear a greater financial burden, societal norms are quickly changing. In many countries, the ‘voluntary’ rates of abortions of foetus with diagnosed mental retardation are now approaching 100 percent, this despite better means and resources to look after disabled individuals. The rationale to do so, whether only indirectly endorsed and as such coated in philanthropic terms, it is in the best interest of the child, it still seems that economic realities are pushing parents-to-be towards these hard choices with marked impacts on the entire society.

Idiots breed Idiots is a book for anyone with an interest in contemporary eugenics and genetics, and also the impacts of a rapidly-changing economy which no longer provides outlet for unskilled workers, and for whom it is not possible to make ends meet without financial aid in one form or another. It presents a picture of an emerging society where genetics decides who is born and who is not, based on the perceived ability to be a value-adding citizen in the knowledge-based economy.

Idiots breed Idiots is divided into six chapters:

Chapter 1: History of Eugenics

Provides the background to eugenics from its first known occurrences in human history, including a discussion of the various methods, and later developments from Francis Galton and the widespread and popular Eugenics Movement in the 20th century to the Nazis in Germany, leading up to the Aktion T4 euthanasia program, used as a tool to remove ‘undesirables’ from its population.

Chapter 2: After World War 2 - changing and unchanging views

This chapter details the way eugenics has officially been abhorred since World War 2 with the Nazi atrocities fresh in mind, but at the same time advances in technology allowed for it to flourish through prenatal scanning and diagnosis to determine hereditary diseases in foetuses, manifested in drastic increases in abortion rates, with certain countries already at the stage where the level of newborns with identified disabilities is approaching zero. The chapter further discusses role eugenics plays in population control, and in particular the one-child policy in China.

Chapter 3: The Current View

Highlights where science stands today, with the progression of the Human Genome Project, gene therapy and other initiatives. It describes what the near-term future might hold with regards to designer babies and efforts to improve the gene pool, especially relating to cognitive abilities, and also how far screening has advanced in the prenatal stage in the identification of defects. It also covers the long-standing debate of the hereditary aspects of intelligence, measured as IQ. The chapter ends with a review on current trends in abortion and birth rates.

Chapter 4: The Strictly Economic Perspective

This chapter reviews the current structural economic trends that are increasingly pushing out work that was previously available for low-skilled workers. By taking a stab at establishing the breaking points for a developed economy, if too large a portion