Conrad: Clearly, those consequences cannot be anticipated without fear or horror in the notion that society's social ills have a genetic basis in the humans living today. The very idea sends the message that no human life is worth living unless it is favorable to certain human-created standards.

Intelligence, or the potential for intelligence, may indeed have genetic bases.  But society must not disregard the multitude of other kinds of intelligence that people throughout the centuries have contributed to humankind.  Music, art, literature, science, any body of knowledge can be just as important as (if not, in some cases, more important than) the intelligence that many pro-eugenics followers advocate to solely exist.

Innate intelligence may indeed have been shown to exist in thriving societies, but that is not to say that those with "less inherited intelligence" cannot learn or use their other genetically granted abilities to thrive in their own societies.

In addition, society cannot control, as human beings, the fate of the lands into which many unfortunate populations have been born.  People in "less civilized" nations seek refuge in more civilized areas for opportunity.  It should not be forgotten that many of America's ancestors, of any ethnicity, came to America as strangers, seeking refuge from oppression.  Why were those people, who may very well have as their progeny supporters of eugenics, not able to survive in their environments, supposedly armed with genetic qualities of such intelligence?

Evolution has nothing to do with the increasing numbers in populations where inherited intelligence is particularly low.  Those conditions to which people owe such growth and subsequent socio-economic problems is a societal problem.  Here, people try to tie genetically inherited intelligence to the social problems that the establishments of civilization have created.

Finally, attackers of eugenics refuse to believe that lower IQ s mean more social problems.  Where did Herrnstein and Murray find the people whose IQ s were low--or high for that matter?  What are IQ tests, anyway?  Human creations, yet again.  How can one judge the intelligence of a society and tie that to socio-economic problems based on the standards created by those who had been afforded opportunities for higher education and experience? 

Creating a society where eugenic methods rule is a mere criticism of the human being.  Each person has been given gifts and a purpose, some more relatively magnanimous to our culture than others, but no more important.  Each person owes it to himself to fight this battle against human dignity and human creation.  Society does not hold the fates of descendants and the world itself in its hands more than it actually has the ability to hold.  Individuals must not play God in such challenging times of political and social unrest.  They must encourage human life to thrive on human abilities, doing what they must in the capacity that they have been given.

 

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