A Geek History of Time - Episode 232 - Why Eugenics Should Make Us Feel Bad About Liking Idiocracy Part I

Episode Date: October 7, 2023

Okay, so there's there there are two possibilities going on here. One, you're you're bringing up a term that I have never heard before. The the other possibility is that this is a term I've heard before, but it involves a language that uses pronunciation that's different from Latin it, and so you have no idea how to say it properly. And intensely 80s post apocalyptic schlock film. Oh, and schlong film. You know, it's been over 20 years, but spoilers. Oh, okay.

So, so the resident Catholic thinking about that we're going for low earth orbit there is no rational here. Leave it on me after and you know I will. They mean it is two o'clock in the fucking morning. I don't think you can get very much more homosexual panic than that. No which I don't know if that's better. I mean you guys are Catholics you tell me. I'm just kind of excited that like you and producer George will have something to talk about that Basically just means that I can show up and get fed 1.5-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1- This is a geeky, real world. Where we connect, in order to the real world. My name is Ed Blahk.

I'm a world history and English teacher here in Northern California working at the sixth grade level or not right now, I'm on contractual unemployment at the moment, but you get the idea. And just earlier today, as a matter of fact, I had the opportunity, my wife and I took our son to the home of one of his best friends from preschool, from pre-K, and the kids, the three of them, my son, the host's son, and a third kid, spent, I want to say it was about four hours basically running at Absolute Max Throttle. I had a great time playing running around, playing in sandbox at these folks house playing with bubble guns. Like, I mean, yeah, just running at Max Hertz. And my wife and I had the opportunity to sit down with a couple of other couples and kind of, you know, talk to adults

a couple of other couples and kind of, you know, talk to adults for a little while, which was wonderful. And we're all getting to know each other as a trio of couples. And it's nice. Making parent friends has been, I don't want to say difficult, but because Leoni became parents as late as we did, we have not, it has not always been easy to, you know, mesh with other parents of kids the same age. And so it's really nice with these two particular couples, we get along real well. And the funny thing is, Leigh and I are in our mid to late 40s. The next couple are just about to enter their 40s. And then the youngest couple are in their early 30ies. And so we have this interesting kind of diversity of age within the group, but we all still have enough stuff in common, not just from being parents,

but like all three of the dads were nerds. You know, I found out like when we went to One Kids birthday party, figured out that his dad has been a magic player for, you know, 20 years. And, you know, from there, I was able to go like, oh, yeah, no, you know, fuck Wizards of the Coast. He was like, yes, fuck Wizards of the Coast. And we were able to, you know, have that kind of conversation. And the third dad, you know, knows about the Warhammer 40K universe, but he's a video game guy and not a tabletop guy.

We found out that we have enough stuff in common that we can actually carry on a conversation. It's nice to be able to do that and to be making these friends with this, you know, similar common kind of experience. So that's that's what I had going on. How about you, sir? Well, my name is Damien Harmony. I'm a US history teacher up here in Northern California at the high school level when such thing occurs. Actually by the time this recording hits, we're probably back in school. Yeah, that's true. actually by the time this recording hits, we're probably back in school. Yeah, that's true. But let's see, what I've got going on, pretty simple actually.

I, as you know, I have been game mastering for my children since my neighbor could do simple arithmetic and read, highly recommended once your child is at that level. And then my partner has two children who have never de-indeed And we have not yet introduced our children And we've been together for two and a half years and I will say this when you are dating This late in life

You know because we met again two and a half years ago, give or take, you know, we sort of talked for a while's friends. But more pertinently, when you're dating this, this late, you're way patient about things. Because neither of us are moving into each other's houses. Neither of us are looking to sell our houses. Neither of us are particularly keen to take on raising two more children. Um, we're good where we're at and where we can walk together we do and where we can't it's we have standing orders go be a parent right now like yeah, we've canceled so many dates because the kids need us. on either side of this river, because she lives one-tan over. And same with like, oh, you're just too tired to hang out because you're a single parent, totally understand. Enjoy your evening, sweetheart. I'll talk to you later.

We've done that, right? So we're insanely patient when it comes to that. And that means we're insanely patient when it comes to introducing our kids. So my thing was let's introduce them through D&D. Okay. I'd set it up where there are these two brothers. One is a ranger, one is a fighter. The ranger is very religiously based, but he is a monster hunter. The fighter has a really big spear that he uses and he goes in and kicks the shit out of monsters. And sometimes they separate and recently they've separated and they've each taken on a couple other adventures.

My kids and her kids plus her. Okay. The fighter's name is Dean and the rangers name is Sammy. I see what you did there. Yes. Okay. Great, right? Yeah.

And, and I need to find a way to steal that. Absolutely. Oh my God. Okay. All right. So, and, and what you could do is have them be the insert that guides you through, you know, gets you through the levels You need to to then go into okay, well, you know

Sammy looks like our dad needs us. We have to go but can you guys handle this dungeon? Boom done So you took them to like level three or four and then you took them off. Yeah, that's what other dungeon so easy but Dean has been guiding my kids. Sammy has been guiding my partner and her kids. All is great. Motherfucker. Sammy died in the last adventure. What? I did not think that would happen either. Um, but because one of the kids, the CR, uh, I didn't, I didn't, what happened was one of the kids, again, you know, they're, they're brand new at it. Yeah.

So I'm not going to say he sub optimized, but he played a skirmisher who essentially ran in and didn't skirmish and they were attacking a wear-bore. The wear-bore charges and they're all level one. And the wear-bore charges and so on. And unfortunately he failed his death saves and then he got brought back up because Sammy healed him, right? Oh, no, no, no. My partner's character healed him. Okay.

Back up. Okay, cool. Well, the wearer bore, like, is attacking other people and then charges him again and just crumples. And then I rolled really high on the hit and just crumpled him. Meanwhile, Sam needs downstairs because by the way, our wear board needs silver and nobody had any silver on them because everybody had like 10 gold starting. So, you know, DM magic to the fact that you could

you could melt down a silver coin and you know pour it very poorly over this rapier and it'll be harder to hit but like you know once you do it goes in like butter right. So Sammy tries to get past the whereboard to run back upstairs because he does the math of realizing oh god there's somebody upstairs still because he was the last he was the last one to come down and thought that the the monk was right behind him. The monk wasn't right behind him because he'd been smashed by El Tuscany. And so Sammy goes to run upstairs to heal him and he failed his death save, succeeded once, failed the second time, succeeded the second time. And so I was like, okay, here's the round.

And Sammy gets killed on the, yeah, because of the attack of opportunity. And I was like, okay, it's no big deal. My partner is a druid. She's got healing magic, right? No, that was her second spell. Oh, shit. And I miscalculated that. Yeah. And so what happened was we had a half party TPK. So the NPC died and for youngest son's

child character died, which I think is probably going to be a blessing in disguise anyway, because I think he prefers barbarian types. Okay. Well, Sammy's fucking dead. And so I'm sending them to an inn run by a woman named Helen. Yeah. Yeah. So as if I'm going to say, as if being dead ever kept either of the Winchester brothers down, right, for very long. Right. I know. So, but yeah, I I know. So, but yeah, I killed Sammy for good. So, well, you know, at least you didn't just, you know, impale him on a, you know, spike in a barn somewhere. No, no, that's something I'm saving.

Because that would have sucked. That would have been stupid. You know, like, we absolutely need to do a supernatural series of episodes. I'm perfectly okay with dying in a mundane way on a hunt. It's a way to end a series and it's something that they had hinted at a long time. Like I'm cool with that. That's how hunters go. That never bothered me to be honest. There are other things that bothered me, but that did not.

So, yeah. Anyway, so that's fun. Speaking of shows and movies, did you ever watch Idiocracy? Yes. Okay, and now that it's 2023, I'm going to date this recording. Yeah. Now that it's 2023, have you heard the phrase, I didn't think idiocracy was supposed to be a documentary. I have. I have heard that. I may have even said it a few times. I think you have. I really just rewatched that movie. I really just rewatched that movie. Okay. And tonight we're going to talk about idiocracy.

Okay. Now to get to idiocracy, of course, I have to set the clock back quite a bit. Um, you know what a portmanteau is? Okay. Uh, portmanteau is when, uh, two words get mashed up together in order to create a new word. Good. Good. So for instance, if you were going to create a portman toe, that means good creation, but using ancient Greek. Do you know what word you come up with? Oh, no. Eugenics. Oh, no. And in the 1800s, people loved those kinds of portmanteaus.

And so to get to a deocracy, we're going to have to talk about the Eugenics movement in the United States and the 1800s. So I hope you're drinking. I am. I am. I was happy drinking up until about 30 seconds ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So this particular episode led me to taking a depression nap. And I've never done that before. Um, wow. It's, it's awful. You'll get there. All right. So anybody who's listening, uh, find a drive through Dacry place, um, load up, uh,

get to Louisiana, and keep driving. Get to Louisiana. Get to Louisiana now. Find a drive-through-dackery place. Yeah. So eugenics means from a Greek term called good creation, or that means good creation. It is a portmanteau that they loved in the 1800s, and it's essentially how to arrange reproduction with any human population to select for the characteristics

regarded as desirable via genetic inheritance. Okay, so to get to you, Gen X, we actually have to go all the way back to ancient Greece, which this might be the furthest back that I've had to reach for something. I think it is. I, yeah, especially for especially for this distance, because I've talked about ancient shit. So, yeah, but, but that, that is been when you've been, you know, talking about specific texts or, yeah, I know for, for, yeah, as a, as a, we're going to have to roll the way back when she in order for you to understand this concept. Bring your quarters, Sherman. Yeah, this, this is your quarters, Sherman. Yeah, this is a new record for sure. Yeah, okay.

So specifically, we gotta go to Plato, the philosopher and professional wrestler. In his promo, the Republic, Plato advocating killing children and infants, which still sounds like a wrestling promo quote. I kind of want to do this as much as I was expecting it. I can't considering what a awful is about pop out. Plato in one translation Plato says, the offspring of the inferior and any of those of the other sort who are born defective,

they will properly dispose of in secret so that no one will know what has become of them. That is the condition of preserving the purity of the Guardian's breed. End quote. So he's talking about there are going to be people who are who are bred to guard and safeguard the Republic. And there are people who are going to specialize jobs and he says, all right, you're going to have to kill off the defective children. Because according to Plato, there are gold sold people, right? So you have a golden soul and the problem with that is that gold-sold people could still produce bronze-sold children. And that is bad for the purity of the ruling class.

Okay, so now a couple of questions I want to ask here in regards to this. Yeah. Because context is important, I have not read that part of Plato. So when he is talking about guardians, first of all, is he, is that a term for a, because I do know that in the Republic, he kind of advocates for something similar to kind of a caste system that, you know, there's going to be the ruling class, there's going to be, you know, in the ideal society, there's going to be rulers and workers and soldiers and, you know, when he says the guardians, is he specifically talking about like the physical guardians of his republic or is he talking about the ruling class who are

safeguarding the, yeah, traditions and the values and the whatever all. Option B, this is the cast from which you will select your philosopher, Kings. Okay. Okay, so that's that's question number one. Yeah. And now question number two, within the context of the ancient world, this was not, this would not have sounded as horrifically barbaric and inhumane to ancient ears as it does to us, because I know, for example, one of the 12, one of the laws off of the 12 tables of the Romans was, you know, if a child was born with a birth defect, it shall

be killed. And you know, when I talked to my kids about, you know, the ancient Romans and emphasizing they were not nice people, that's not a, well, you know, you as the head of the family, if you wind up, you know, having a child who has a birth defect, you may you as the head of the family if you if you wind up, you know having a child who has a birthday Fact you may do this it was no no no you have a responsibility to roam Mm-hmm to do this Yeah, that was it that was from table four if I recall correctly because that one's dealing with the the rights of familial heads Yeah, that implies responsibilities as well. Yeah, yeah so heads in that implies responsibilities as well. Yeah.

So since the Romans came chronologically. Since the rest of it was mostly about debt. And that one specifically spoke to a fire call correctly, the term dreadfully deformed. So Claudius was fine. He famously was known for having a club foot, although that could have been later, whatever, but dreadfully deformed. So, and leave the drinking wine was good for everything. So.

There you go. Yeah, all right, all right. So, you know, so then based on that, the, he was pushing the overt in window on something that was a thing already in ancient society. I think if you live in a society wherein in fantasie is a sometimes necessary component for families because starvation is a very real thing And because exposures sometimes I mean it's shit how much how many mythology do we have where babies abandoned right? Yeah, so where in phantasy is a viable option and sometimes considered to be a good option I think this isn't so much pushing the overton window as it is

The logical extension of this practice. So naturally you would want to hold sold people to only raise gold-sold children. And yes, gold-sold people will make the occasional bronze-sold person. Um, and so so now I have another question. Mm hmm. How when when when Plato came up with this when he's talking about gold sold, bronze sold, there's also silver sold. Yeah, I figured they probably would be, but, um, when he's talking about these distinctions, does this then tie in with the ancient Greek idea that beauty and virtue were synonymous with one another? And something that was disfavored by the gods could not be ugly.

And so if something was not beautiful, then it was biological extension disfavored by the gods. So you could tell that you'd had a bronze-sold baby because, well, look at the size of the head on that thing. Right. Because you know, it's not it. God, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. So, okay. And in his republic, another question, you were going to be choosing your philosophies kings from among the golden sold. Right. Was there any acknowledgement that a golden sold child might be born to silver or bronze sold parents?

Oddly enough, no. Okay. It only works this way. It's only a degenerative thing. It's not a degenerative thing. It's kind of what I anticipated. But, you know, all right. You take Plato with an entire Salt Lake because while he was really good at writing, he also,

you know, said that man was a pluck chicken. I might have said diogenes, but anyway, which by the way, I still think diogenes is the perfect name for a dog. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I still think the Agony is the perfect name for a dog. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unless, unless you're Carmen communist, then your dog's name should be Carl Barks.

Yeah. I mean, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. But I get, I get the idea. I get this thing about the gold soul and the silver soul and the bronze. What tickles me about it is how fucking dumb it is because bronze is

the only one that's not an element of those three. And bronze is considered the strongest when it comes to making tools and weapons out of those three. It's the most. Yeah. Which kind of says something about this. It like to me, you're telling on yourself without realizing it because they didn't they didn't necessarily get it the way we do. But it tells on itself immediately because it's like, oh, we don't want things mixing. Well, why not? Well, because then they won't be pure. Well, then they'll literally be weaker. Like, I'm looking at you purebred dog lovers, which means that I as a former pug owner, I'm really looking at myself. Hard.

Hard. Yeah. Anyway. Well, yeah. I think there is some xenophobia involved in that. Absolutely. I mean, obviously, we also have to recognize as we say that about them, we have to recognize that the context in which you and I as, you know, westerners living

in the 21st century talk about racism is a completely alien kind of paradigm from what the Greeks would have looked at. You know, if Plato had used a term like race, he would have meant like the difference between his own people and the mass of Donians, you know, and, and, you know, different nations. If he was talking race, he would talk about the difference between his people and the Titans. That's true. You know, point. Yeah. But you're absolutely right. Like, well, and that's the thing I, you know, people say, oh, damn, you're being so presentist, you know, and I'm like, yeah, we live in the present. Like, I love studying the past. I learned a dead language for it. Like, I think my bone of feedays speak for themselves, but at the

same time, we live now and if shit from the past doesn't work anymore, let's not shoe horn it or like appeal to it. Let's say it had its day, let it move on. Yeah, I don't think we should work to, we should be careful about romance, about the tendency to romanticize. Yeah, and for every and perpetual prescription. Yeah, and funny for me is it Catholic to say that. But there's a difference, there's a great analogy when you talk about tradition, there's a great analogy. There are two ways of looking at tradition.

You can look at tradition as tending to a flame and keeping a flame alive. Sure. Or you can approach tradition as worshipping the ashes. Ooh. I like it. And shout out out because there's a great song built around that analogy by the longest john's back dad ash up. Nice.

But no, um, and I can't remember the what which part of the phrase they, I think the title of the song is just ashes. Okay. And, you know, I'll, I'll tend to the flame you can worship the ashes. Is the is the ending line of each chorus. So tradition could give you something back or could just remind you of the state that it used to be in. Yeah, or yeah, you can you can approach it as something to keep alive. What's valuable in it. And see it as a living continuity, or you can see it as like you said, see it, view it, and treat it as pro-scriptive.

And well, you know, we did this this way forever. And so this is just like, no. It served us. Yeah. Yeah, but we're not living in the Bronze Age anymore. Like, you know. Yeah, but like we're not living in the Bronze Age anymore like, you know, um, and, and so I think yeah, when we're, when we're looking at practices from as far back as the ancient world, it's important to recognize that, you know, in that society, even as, as you were

just talking about a minute ago, like in a society where everybody is, is living on the razor's edge of scarcity. In fantasy side, doesn't look like such a cruel thing. When the options are everybody's stars, or we have to do this terrible thing, that we don't want to do, but like, you know, what are our options? Charlie, probably about the trolley. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, basically. And so it's a very, it is presentest of us

to attach a moral judgment to the people to attach a moral judgment to the people that did it in those circumstances. Sure. But it is not presentest for us to say, it is abhorrent and inhumane to us. If that makes sense. I would, I would go this way with it. It is, the first part that you said absolutely.

Like we are not judge people living in a culture at a time in which that philosophy worked for that culture. Yeah. I would also say judge the hell out of that philosophy as it would apply to yours. Yes. As it would apply to your culture. And I yes, perfectly fine with saying, no, you know what, that tradition deserves to be in the Ashbin. Yeah, so I'll actually add a little water, make that Ash doe. So in laws by Plato, he also advocated for state controlled breeding between partners to limit their number. Because of course he did quote,

the women inspectors shall enter the houses of young people and partly by threats, partly by admonition, stop them from their sin and folly. If they cannot do so, they shall go and report the case to the law wardens and they shall prevent them. If they also prove unable, they shall inform the state council. So I do like this levels of government, you know, you've got local,

then you've got municipal and then you've got state to stop people from fucking. And it's if these are people who are deemed inappropriate to make babies or if they've already made a defective baby, you know, and I'm using their concepts now. I'm like, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't just Greece that had city states that were in favor

of killing infants who exhibited what they saw as to be defects of birth. Obviously, the Spartans are the most famous of this. Yep. And that'll bring us forward to Germany in the 1800s, which is not comfortable. Wow. Yeah, that's quite a leap. It is, but I just wanted you to see, like, this is the classical literature that these

people in the 1800s are reading, and are pulling from and are justifying based out of, right? Yeah, and when we move into the 1800s, this set of ideas is coming up again in the context of nationalism. And if we're talking about Germany, we have to talk about the war of German unification. Right. And statecraft. And all of that. And the iron and soil and all of that that ties into it. Yes, and also we have in Germany, you have a high degree of very educated people and what do we know about smart people? The first thing they ever do is convince themselves that they can't be wrong. So, and then you add Germanness to that. Yeah. So you get a guy like Ernst Heinrich Philip August Heikl, who, you know the names? Yeah. Heinrich Philip August Heikl. How is the last one to spell? H-A-E-C, E, L. Okay. Not, not who I was thinking it

might be. Okay. That name I am not familiar with. But he praised the Spartans for infanticide specifically. He's like, they fucking knew what was up. He was a famous at his time zoologist from Prussia, which then turned into Germany. Okay, okay. See, you hit on something I was going to bring up. Ah. Okay, so if we're talking about all these educated people in Germany during unification, I think it's important to contextualize that like so many of these people are all Prussians. Yes. Like the proportion of them that we're going to talk about who are all Prussians. Yes. Like the proportion of them that we're going to talk about,

who are specifically Prussians? Yes. Because the thing is, for hundreds of years before this, going back four centuries, everybody else in Europe looked at the Germans, who were not a unified group of people, because the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman nor an empire and it was made up of all of these tiny little

little fiefdoms. And whether you're talking about Saxony or Bavaria or I'm trying to think of any of the other names. Yeah, Pomerania, you know, Alsace, Lorraine, you know, whichever, whichever part of the Holy Roman Empire you're talking about, everybody looked at him and went, oh yeah, well, they're the Germans as this, as this linguistic group, but not a unified nation. And they all had this reputation as being the barbarian lunatics of Europe. And they were never gonna get their shit together. Right. You know, and like the landisnacks

were some of the most respected and feared infantry on the continent, but a big part of their reputation was they were fucking crazy. They were these big tall burly German guys who just basically didn't fear anybody. And that was kind of part of the German mystique and kind of the reputation they had. And then all of a sudden you get into a later a later period, you start moving into the 1700s, into the 1800s, and successive rulers of Prussia decided, no, you know what? We're going, we're going to build a nation out of this. And in order to do that, we need to not be the crazy men of Europe anymore. No, no, we are all going to get totally anal retentive, cut the

butter square, you know, and educate the shit out of everybody we can within Prussia. And so the modern reputation that Germans have, and everybody talks about, you know, German engineering, it's Prussian, it's all Russian. If you look historically at Bavarians, that's not who they were. Anyway, sorry, rant over. Also, the Grimm we have to do this for the good of the nation. Also comes from that too. Oh, very much. Yeah. The thank goodness we have dark, sold people who can kind of throw themselves on the bonfire

that will keep the rest of us warm by massively exterminating other groups of people. That'll be important in the 1920s. But anyway, back to Heiko. All right. He was, yeah. No. Here he on. Okay. He was a big fan of Charles Darwin's and he popularized Darwinism for Germanic consumption. In fact, on his way back from the Canary Islands, Heiko, which was his version of the Galapagos,

he visited Charles Darwin who was staying in Kent. Okay. Now, Haikl saw the social sciences as applied biology because he's a zoology. Yes, because so many fucking people did during that time period. Well, and again, this is why I'm okay being a presentist because they were wrong. I get how they got there. He favored the Lamarkey and approached his zoology despite the fact that he admired Darwin. So he's like, no, Darwin's got some good ideas, but because at that time Lamarke was the Lamarke essentially positive the idea that evolution did indeed happen, but it happened via changes to the parent organism over their lifetime. So the easiest example is a giraffe is made to stretch its neck, that stretches its muscles,

it grows its neck over time, and that elongation and that need and the response that need will then pass on to the children starting them with a longer neck than their parents started with and so on. It doesn't work, but I could understand intuitively why I think that, right? Well, it's intuitively. It's the evolutionary equivalent of believing that the sun goes around the earth on some levels. Oh, yeah, based on you, depending on the broad brush, you know, yeah. Yeah. So the thing was, Heikl didn't see his approach as actually conflicting with darwin's either, but rather a continuation of it. He said, look, we combine the mark and Darwin. It

means that evolution didn't have to be random and unguided by humanity. In fact, humanity could guide it. An animal husbandry leads you to that as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we've had 5,000 years of agriculture by that point, right? Yeah. 7,000. Agriculture bad point right or 7000 Michael actually combined this with something called the Roman Roman. This is German Romantische natural Philly Sophia Romantische natural philosophy that which is an idea put forth by a Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Shelling

These people in their fucking names. Anyway, essentially, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, Similar to how the Ionian philosophers of Ancient Greece who predated Socrates and believe that everything was both alive and able to change from one form to another, since all matter was alive and essentially the same. Therefore the nature philosophy people adherents like Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling were trying to explain nature in its totality as one thing, unified field theory of nature, right? And all things change, all things live, all things breathe. And on some levels, I could understand somebody again in the 1800s grabbing onto that. And from this, they could generate a general theoretical structure for how all organisms behave.

Okay. I see what they're aiming at. I think they're off the mark. Obviously, I've got, you know, 200 plus years of work since then that I could draw on to point out why they didn't. Yeah. Now, this meant then that once such a thing was understood, according to Heikl's approach, that humanity could then guide and pick and choose how nature did its thing. Again, he's a zoologist. Again, I would bring up agriculture, animal husbandry, botany, all of those things prove

that humans can, in fact, interfere with the genetic and do some genetic tinkering with creatures great and small with plants, great and small. Now, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this approach to zoology and biology and then social sciences could certainly be exciting to certain Germans 20 something years down the road from what these guys were doing. Because these guys are getting going really big in like, yeah, the turn of the 20th century. And while his works were co-opted by propagandists later down the road from a certain national socialist workers party. Angle, yeah. Yeah. He actually was out of favor with them because he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, So, Heiko also called the Great War the First World War in Europe. Oh, wow, okay. He was the first one to use it.

He actually called it that in 1914. He said, quote, there's no doubt that the course and the character of the feared European war will become the First World War in the full sense of the word. All right. Yeah. Of course, he also thought that different human ethnicities were different species or offshoots of different species. And this was obvious to him in language differences. Yeah, it's one of those like, wow, that was a really deep

fly ball. You hit it went foul. Yeah, here's what he says about language. Quote, this is this is a Heikl. We must mention here that one of the most important results of the comparative study of languages, which for the Stambalm, Stambalm is German for family tree, of the species of men is of the highest significance, namely that human languages probably had a multiple or polyphiletic origin. Human language, as such, probably developed only after the species of speech lists, or mention, or often mention, this is another word for ape men, had split into several species or kinds. So he's just, I'm gonna break in here.

So human language developed after we split into different kinds or kinds. So I'm going to break in here. So human language developed after we split into different kinds of apes. So ape. Oh, OK. Right. Yeah. Back to him.

With each of these human species, language developed on its own and independently of the others. If one views the origin of the branches of language as the special and principal act of becoming human and the species of humankind as distinguished according to their language stem, then one can say that the different species of men arose independently of one another. Okay, so but one of the primary tests of species being specified, species-aided, is can they mate and produce viable offspring?

Right. And anybody who has witnessed sailors like throughout human history. And their effect on genetic diversity. Right. You can't try to argue that Europeans and Asians and Africans are separate species because if you give humans the opportunity to fuck each other, they're going to fuck,

and they're going to have children. Right. Who are then going to go on? To have children. And have children. And like you're selectively ignoring one of your own kind of key principles. It is very blind spotty.

It is very like, it's like, like, no, it's all about language. And he just throws on the blinders to hyper focus on this language thing. And he's like, look, languages are different. And they develop in different places and these people all look different. And therefore, they must be different species. And it's like, bro, what about them? Fucking no, I'm looking at their language. And that's and like, I think, again, very smart people convinced themselves that

they're very good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and they, and in the early 1900s, nobody had done any kind of, the concept of implicit bias, right, was like, didn't even, hadn't, hadn't been considered yet. It didn't exist. Which is wild, because his next quote is gonna have a lot of proof of that.

Okay. So just to qualify what he said previously, again, we have different languages. That proves we come from different species because they develop and parallel, but independent tracks of each other. Okay. So to him, there's no PIE,

there's no proto-indo-European language, right? It's, there were the ancient Greeks, there were the Chinese, and they're clearly from different species of ape. Okay, yeah. That's his thing. So he's like, can we all stop being the same a long time before this?

Right. Which means that if you recombine these groups, by the way, and he thought this, that yes, we would fuck and all that. And if you put Greek people with Chinese people, with British people, with German people, the fittest will obviate themselves. Okay. Now, you want to know which ones he thought were the fittest here it comes quote the Caucasian or Mediterranean man homo Mediterraneanius Has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all the races of men as the most highly developed and perfect It is generally called the Caucasian race, but as among the varieties of the species the Caucasian branch is the least important

We prefer the much more suitable appellation of Mediterraneanes. So just real quick, how lucky that all the stuff that he's read the history of turns out there at the head of the table back to him. Yeah. More of the most important varieties of the species we are, which are more ever, or sorry, for the most important varieties of this species, that is, Mediterranean's, which are more over the most eminent actors in what is called universal history, first rose to a flourishing condition on the shores of the Mediterranean. This species alone with the exception of the Mongolian has had an actual history. It alone has attained to that degree of civilization, which seems to raise men above the rest of nature. Okay, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Yeah. So, so he's saying, if I'm interpreting that right, that, that this, this, this particular subspecies of human, which just happens to be part of, is the only one to have developed history. Yes, you caught that. Yeah.

And, you know, the part of that that I find most interesting again is there is, like, yes, he is telling on himself so obviously that is implicit biases. Like, that's wow. He's writing for other people with the same bias to read. Yeah, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Obviously, that's it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Um, obviously, that's it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do come to heaven. But, but, but, but this, already, like some European academics are in new to be factual about the Middle East.

Egypt. Egypt? The obvious example, the Egyptian. Yeah. And China. All the other things you go to the British Museum. Yeah, and see all the shit they stolen from everybody. And he'd see, like, but, but by this time we need,

scholars knew about the Rosetta Stone. Yes. So, like, I mean, number right there, like on the, on the, on the, you know, front doorstep of Mediterranean. Right. And he would say that's the Mediterranean influence on Northern Africans. Like, you're gonna paint the target after you shot the arrow.

Oh, yeah, well, of course. But like, also, if he'd gone to the British Museum, he'd have found, I think by that time, bronzes from China. And perhaps even, I don't know, I don't know if they discovered any of this stuff, but, you know, evidence of the Chinese having writing going back to 2000 BCE. Oh, like the, the turtle shell. Yeah, yeah, the turtle shells with, with divination marks on like, no, bro, like you're making

this statement that is, he would have just straight up said, I mean, in correct, he would have said, yeah, but they use pictures that doesn't count his words. It's like those pictures literally count his words. Those pictures were literally pictogram, pictogram. It's right there in the word that European academics came up with to the private. Yeah, it's it's even a swit. He's not interested in history. He's interested in biology and he actually is. Okay, you know, okay, you know what? No, no, that's K-Fabe.

That's bullshit. That's me doing K-Fabe. Yes, but I think, yeah, I, well, I know. He believed his own K-Fabe. I think, well, yeah. I think he believed that he was. I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did. Yeah. But, you know, the thing is, you don't, you, the thing that continually staggers me whenever we wind up talking about any any of this shit from from this time period and since is the extent to which the level of intellectual dishonesty involved in pushing any of this shit is just so intense. Yeah, you know, like, and because of the fact that it fed into preconceived notions, which nobody had had the vocabulary to describe, you know, implicit bias, everybody just fucking lapped it up. When in a later era, we look at it and we're like,

well, okay, but if you apply your own rules of rhetoric and logic to it, it falls apart like wet tissue paper. Sure. But anyway, sorry. Yeah. I had to vent on that. But all, all good and true. Uh, anyway, uh,

Hikel's biggest contribution to science was that he divided humanity into 10 races. And it was a hierarchical list. Yeah, I'm just for us. On top, of course, and black skinned folks were on the bottom because according to Heikl, they had the most opposable big toes of all the races. Wait, but his whole argument before was based on language. No, no, that language also helps prove it. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Remember, he is first and foremost a zoologist. Yeah. So he also believed that Lemuria was a real place that the continent that was supposed to have sunk in the Indian Ocean. He thought that he'd real. And that humanity started in Central Asia, which is an idea that later would

support the idea of Aryanism, which is awesome. Essentially, his theories and his background in science gave rise to proto-fascist fantasies about the natural state of humanity and what forms of government should best guide us as a species. So, so, Heykel, Heykel, are you saying? I'll say Heykel, because that's the Latinist in me. Okay, so, so Heykel came up with the ideas that gave rise to the racist, that got distilled into the racist ideology of the national socialists. But he himself was not sufficiently extreme. Right. Has to stay on the good side of the national. Socialists. Yeah. so he essentially gives him intellectual cover in a lot of ways. Without realizing it, he doesn't know. Yeah, well, yeah. He liked most or dead by the 1920s. But, but on two more modern versions of Eugenics. So Charles Darwin took a boat to the South

Pacific. He studied birds and he ate turtles and he wrote a book about evolutionary pressure, and he wrote a book about evolutionary pressure, which he published in November of 1859 titled, on the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. Authors back then love their titles to be as long as German and Austrian names apparently. In this book Darwin argued argued that the populations of species evolved gradually over generations due to a combination

of natural selection and inherited mutations to adapt to the pressures of natural selection. Or as Herbert Spencer had put it, quote, survival of the fittest, end quote. By the 1870s, the science communities all around the world accepted this theory as verifiably true, which was awesome for naturalists and fossil hunters. And I got to say, he pretty well nailed it. Darwin pretty well nailed it. Like that, that is, that is the thing, right? Yeah. Of course, many took it and ran as hard as they could toward applying it in the most brutal, oppressive and racist ways they could, starting with a guy named Sir Francis

Galton, a man who was half cousins to Charles Darwin, and the sion of a Quaker gun manufacturing family. Wait, you can get a lot too. Non-painty factors. Yeah. Yeah, you can get out of that too non-manufacturers. Yeah. Waker gunmen. So, to be a quaker and a gun manufacturer, you would only sell them to private citizens because selling them to a government that get used for an army? No, no, no. Like, money.

So, wait. Yeah. Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, I laughed for a while when I found this out. Galton himself was brilliant. He could read by the age of two. He could do long division by the age of five who knew he knew Latin and Greek and had left school at the age of 16 because it wasn't smart and open enough for him. Now some of that might be tall tales some of that might be a little bit of puffery, but we have heard of people like this before.

And of course, any person with a beginning like this is going to end up being a terrible person and a very influential person because that's what we do. Okay. and a very influential person because that's what we do. Okay, Goulton, he ended up, and again, this is Sir Francis Goulton, he ended up studying medicine, mathematics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, meteorology, and statistics after his father died. Holy cow. He traveled the world, he explored it other places that other people lived, he got all sorts

of attention for it, like any other upper-crass Brit would at the time. By the 1870s, Sir Francis Galton had read all of his cousin's works, had plenty of overseas exploration experience as well as encounters with people of different cultures. Naturally, this makes him an expert in all things evolutionary like you do. Now, Mr. Gaulten, Sir Francis to his friends, set out to determine exceptionality of upper class families was in fact hereditary because look at his life. He is exceptional and talented and excellent and the problem is if those traits are largely cultural and their value and their quality and quantity. So it would be akin to asking if being good at politics is hereditary. So he's pushing for something called a historic metry. The study of human progress, which is its own assumption that really needs a lot of fucking interrogation.

For instance, what do you mean by progress? Well, I mean, obviously, we mean the state by which society wound up putting me on top. Right. Because that's obviously the natural order and naturally everything in history was working, was working, yes, was working toward this goal. Yes, right. Now, what's gonna happen afterward

is probably going to be disappointing because fucking look at me. So yeah, it's the study of human or individual progress using statistics to analyze capabilities, genius, behavior, and all while in a allegedly neutral setting. So I love, I applaud your allegedly. Oh, yes. Quite so. So, like, like Billy Bean, uh, his approach to baseball, um, you know, like, uh, I

don't know if you saw the movie with Brad Pitt in it or if he was a fan in the early 2000s. I know enough about the movie to know what you're talking about. Okay. So like that approach to baseball, but instead of like, how do we get a team with the lowest, with the lowest salary cap? Yeah. The lowest payroll, how do we get that team into the, the, to the postseason, right? Yeah. So like that approach, but instead of that question, you're saying, why is my son such a perfect man? Hmm. Wow. So so many. So many, as you say, so many uninterrogated things going on here. Like, wow. So in 1869, 10 years after the origin of the species and all the other things that rival

the length of a name of a German landed aristocrat during World War I, Galton published hereditary genius in which he argued that as soon as you looked beyond the first or second degree of a family's line, the number of exceptional or eminent relatives dropped off sharply. Now, that's probably because people didn't really raise their cousins and nephews. That's probably because like, but one, people, people didn't raise their cousins and nephews to somebody like Galton. I mean, there is some level of biology involved in the ability to learn to read at that kind of young age.

But with that said, if a kid has that biological ability, And if a kid has that biological ability, but does not have parents who have the resources to nurture it, to provide the tutors to do all of them, who don't have the time, because they're busy working in the fields or acting as servants to some other family, or just working, you know, if we're talking about, you know, descendants of aristocratic families, if they're just members of the bourgeoisie. All right, if all the people who's putting their effort into luxury chickens. Yeah. Yeah. Hello, Mr. Baum, how you doing?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that is like, it's interesting because that kind of comes around to the random selection of it all, right? Yeah. Oh my God, you were born to be brilliant. Sorry that you got enslaved by Portuguese people. Yes. Now you're like, no.

Now, yeah. Well, one, there's that. You were born to be a moron, but sorry for the rest of us that you were raised by, you know, a German monarchy and now you're in charge of an entire country. Yeah, like You you should have been the the night manager the night assistant manager at a foot locker, but instead you So yeah, and and and the the intersection of you of natural inborn talent, whatever that actually is,

with resources and privilege and everything else. Yeah. I mean, obviously, if you're born as the scion as of a noble family, you're going to look at, well, once you get out, past cousin level, the number of exceptional people drops off. Well, yeah, because they didn't inherit the family fucking fortune, did shit. They weren't always with healthcare.

Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Unlike some people, their parents had to work somehow for a living. Right. Like, you know, um, all their siblings didn't live. Yeah. Like, yeah.

So yeah, it turns out according to according to his research, all that happened. Now, he claimed that this was evidence that he was right about history of a metric, but that it also deserved better study, specifically using twins. And so he developed questionnaires, big on questionnaires, and he collated that data and he published a paper in 1875 stating that further, that stating that there was a further need to study adopted twins who ended up in different homes. And even twins who are adopted trans racially, his word, not mine. Because even Dalton noted that one needed to take into account

being raised in different homes by different related adults would actually have an impact, and then this would help understand the drop off better. It doesn't mean that he was willing to throw out the baby with the bath water though, after all, there had to be genetic determinant factors to why he and other upper class brits were in fact exceptional. Here's the thing, a guy as smart as him because clearly he was a genius.

But a guy as smart as him, being surrounded by the landed gentry and the people who were at that time gentlemen. Yes. Like, like, couldn't he just go to his gentleman's club and note how many fucking upperclass tweets he was surrounded by it? Like in his social circle. Right. Yeah. The number of guys who were the eldest son of an ancient family dating back to, you know, before William the Conqueror. Right. But like the guy's a knitwit.

Like, like he's never, like so many of these guys never had to work for a living. Right. guys never had to work for a living. Never had to think about anything beyond surface depth. I'm thinking of, I don't damn it, what it is, title lined up becoming. The British king who abdicated to Mary Wallace Simpson. And where George is George. Yeah, George. and George is George. Yeah, George. Seven three. I'm trying to remember what is what his title was after he left the throne, but he was famously ennainly vapid and empty headed in conversation.

And for fuck's sake, he wasn't one time king of England. Yeah. Like the very assumption that this guy is coming from, that, well, the exceptional people you find are in the main line of dissent of the most important families. Like how do you explain the verpidity of so many of your peers? Right. Like yes, there were any number of Landed gentry gentlemen who we look at now as the founders

of many portions of modern scientific thought because they had the money and the time to devote to it. Mm-hmm. Essentially, it's a hobby. Right. But like for every one of them, there had to be 15 or 20 just complete idiots. Yeah, he seemed to, I wonder if that that polite affect that you never actually mentioned. The utter shittiness of your peers, I wonder. of your peers. Yeah, I wonder. Yeah, genuinely wonder. Okay. Anyway, from there, Gulton would then go on to note that civilizations were inherently culturally based. Cool. Oh, okay. That sounds like a topology, but okay. Well, at the same time, like, yeah, civilization is a culture. It's not racial. Yeah, it's a predatory. It is. It is a set of things we do around here, right? Okay. And those

can change over time. And that such cultural circumstances could in fact impact the reproductive success of a civilization in question. This all meant that if done right, a civilization could quote improve its race and quote by means of careful selection of reproductive pairings. Now, if this sounds familiar, it should. For Galton, it would also mean that his admiration of Sparta and their effort to do so by means of Advancicide would come into play in his theories. Galton himself envisioned a more compassionate version of Sparta, at

least at first. That's a low bar. It is. I mean, it is as we talk about on this podcast, like the Romans were not nice people, the Spartans were fucking evil. Yeah, it's one of the like, he's like, I like where you're going. I don't think he got you were going the right way to get there Okay, so it's not yeah, it's not he takes issue with the infanticide

But like you have to go that next step to be like oh, but he's still liked what their goal was Yeah, here's here's what he says in hereditary genius quote the best form of civilization and respect to the improvement of the race. I'm going to stop right there. That's called begging the question. Evolution does not and could ask your cousin evolution does not promote perfection. It promotes adequacy bare minimum adequacy to get over the next hump. Now I will also say Darwin didn't quite come to that. Yeah, but but Darwin, Darwin would have argued that, you know, this isn't about perfection. This is about adaptation to circumstances. Right. Right. Now, he would not have gone to say the part about bare-minute on the Hatticoacy, which that's going to come later. That's absolutely going to come later. But so, so I'm not going to hold Dalton entirely his feet entirely to the fire on that. But he and many like him said that the

goal of evolution is to improve the species. So back to this quote, the best form of civilization in respect to the improvement of the race would be one in which society was not costly, civilization and respect to the improvement of the race would be one in which society was not costly. Where incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources and not much through inheritance, where every lad had a chance of showing his abilities and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education and entrance into the professional life. By the liberal help of exhibitions and scholarships, which he had gained in his early youth, where marriage was held as in high honor, as in ancient Jewish times, where pride of race was encouraged. Of course, I do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the present day.

That goes under that name, where the, that's him putting that parentheses, where the week could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, and lastly, where the better sort of immigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed in their descendants naturalized. End quote. Okay, well, so many things happened in and quote. Okay, well so many things happened in that quote. Yeah, first, he gained everything about his station and society through inheritance through inheritance. And he's arguing against inheritance as a system.

Because he also was exceptional to begin with. Yeah, I mean, everyone has had it. Everyone who's exceptional should have had the same privileges he had, that's his point. On the one hand, like, that feels like a double-edged sword. Like, I'm looking at that like, okay, Maritok, I'm okay with Maritokrasy. I like this idea. I'm really not. Okay. And this is why because at the end of the day, he's saying that Maritokrasy is the reason for dignity. Okay. And to me,

that is monstrous. Okay. But I don't, okay, the part where he's tying it to dignity, I fully agree with, but the idea is that he didn't directly tie it to dignity, but he is saying that for people to be given the means by which to improve themselves, to make their lives better in any way, shape, or form, that it has to be tied to meritocracy according to him, which means the rest of us are just fucked. Like he's only right at the top two percent. Okay. Yeah. And the other thing is, since he's talking about this, just occurred to me,

bouncing this off of you. Sure. Since he's talking about the scholarships and these opportunities and exhibitions and whatever all, uh, being secured in youth, being secured in youth, he is building in a level of ableism. Would that realize a good? Yes. Because in order to get the scholarships to get those opportunities, you have to be excellent early in life, right, which then points right back to the essentialism of his, well, this is all genetic argument in the first place.

Exactly. Yes. Yes. Maritocracy by all means, but merit is the way of proving he's using, here's the deal. This is, this is, I think what it comes down to. When you, when you peel apart what he's doing, he's, he's not looking for, you know, meritocracy based on man you busted your ass. Right. He's not looking for meritocracy based on virtue. Right. None of that. He's looking at meritocracy based on some level of inherent naturalistic, meaning it is

part of your nature superiority. He wrote hereditary genius. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, yeah. And so the thing is, he's using, he's cloaking everything in this meritocratic language, but it's still just the idea that there are chosen ones. And that, this is, you got to the core of the problem that I have with meritocracy. meritocracy is inherently ableistic.

Like, it just is. The whole thing with the SATs, schools not requiring them, oh god, what are we going to do? I don't know, something not based on fucking eugenics. How about that? Yeah. And, you know, there's an argument that some dipshit tried to get me into on on on the tiki talk. And I just straight up said, I'm like, well, clearly you and I have different priorities. And I just left it there. Because

I'm like, I don't need to engage you on somebody else's lawn. Yeah. Why the SAT is a problem. I can I can guess who's lawn you engaged them on, but you'd be incorrect. I'll show you. I'll show you. I'll show you. Yeah. But anyway, yes, the idea of the SAT is like, oh, well, you know, if they pass the test, I'm like, oh, the test that you could improve your score upon if you just keep taking it,

what if you, you know, or if you get tutoring for, or, you know, any number of things that can up it, which with with, yeah, linguistic, like linguistic questions that are, that are, you know, written by people from a bourgeois, like, yeah, now there's, there's, there's some of it wrong with the Asian, and then you go back to its origin. And its origin is actually probably, let's see, we're on page three. So probably on page 16. Okay. So this is going to be another one of those. Well, you, um, wanting to every quote. So. So, well, I mean, I have to know how can you know, um, yeah, like, um, and then

there's another thing. I'm gonna talk to you as harsh shit. Go on. Okay. Moving on. The song, I'm fucking the tag in the song, Dynasties. Black screw just into the ground. Yeah.

Well, and yeah, like, do you look at him? And yes, it's a matter of fact. At their time, they clearly worked, but they worked on the corpses of billions of peasants. Yeah. And I don't know who would call that working. And over and above the ethical concerns we have. Right.

Which are from which will yeah, but strictly from also let's actually look at the effectiveness of these governments. Right. Like, the tang in the song, Dynasties, they're lower on my list than the other ones that I've studied in terms of like who, who gets all the fire about this shit like. Oh, yeah, well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then what was the, what was the tail end of, of that quote? Yeah, it was long. The better, oh, immigrants of the better sort. Yeah. Well, and the week such a great phrase, they also even says where the week could find a welcome and a refuge.

He's saying that let's not kill off the week or anything. But where are they gonna find it in celibate monasteries? Well, I mean, obviously we're not gonna have a reproduce thing. Like come on. Duh. Right. You know, and sarcasm. So, well, obviously.

I just wanna make sure, you know, and sarcasm. So, so, so obviously, I just want to make sure, you know, erotic joy is not something. It's just not something. Well, I mean, or for the wise of the exceptional, let's be real, but think of England and her philosopher kings. Like, you know, but that's the thing. And that's where I'm looking at the dignity is like, who gets the fuck? Yeah, because saying that someone doesn't like the fuck because they're not smart enough to fuck is, I mean, I get that. It's your a safe file. I get that. Yeah.

But if you're talking on a societal level that if you're unless you got an IQ at this level, you don't get the fuck. That's a removal of dignity. I'm sorry, no. Well, it's, it's literally dehumanizing. Yes, it is. It's taking away a critical part of the human experience. I mean, it literally is the definition of chattel, isn't it? Like controlling the reproduction. That's life. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, okay. And then, yes, where, where the right kind of immigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed like, holy cow, wow.

Like, could you imagine if I got turned into like some sort of immigration policy? Anyway, in 1883, Galton introduced a new term to science in the introduction of his book Inquiries into the human faculty or inquiries into human faculty and development. So this is in the introduction of his book.

This quote, this book, this book is like in brackets. So this book's quote, intention is to touch on various topics more or less connected with that of the cultivation of his of race, or as we might call it with eugenic questions, and to present the results of several of my own separate investigations. Okay, so this is this is the codifier moment for the concept. Okay. Yes. In fact, a footnote below this new term, Galton explained to the term using all sorts of academic speech. Quote, this is with questions bearing on what is termed with questions bearing on what is termed in Greek, Eugene's,

name, or eugenics, namely good and stock, hereditary endowed with noble qualities. This and the allied words, eugenia, et cetera, are equally applicable to men, breutes and plants. We, men, breutes and plants. In 1883, you know what happened in 1880, the Berlin conference, you know what Leopold said, exterminate the brews like mother fuck

Okay, so back to yeah, and plants quote we greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock Which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating But which especially in the case of ban takes cognizance of all influences that tend in, however, remote a degree to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express this idea. It is at least a need or word and a more generalized one than vericulture, which I once ventured to use. Wow. Yeah.

Hmm. Um, just so much. Oh, wow. Yeah. I love, I love, yeah. Make sure that like the good blood gets to continue. Yeah. It tends to pull like just. And the, and the, the, you know, better, betterment of, betterment of the races like you can, you can draw a straight line from that.

Yes. To, to Nazi ideology and actions. Yeah. Like, wow, which, yeah, and that's still a long ways off. This is 1883. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I know. But we're we're most of the way there. Still in England. Yeah. You know, do we do we know so by 1883? Mm-hmm. 83. Mm-hmm. Darwin was still around, right? At that point, or had he passed already? I think I know Marx had just died.

Okay. Um, and I, just because of the research that I've done on, on women's voting and Martin's daughter and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, let me thank Charles Darwin. He wrote in, oh, yeah, he does. He dies in 81 or 82. Yeah, because yeah, yeah. Okay. Because I can't help but wonder like how much we know about his exposure to these kinds of ideas. Like, obviously like obviously wasn't there for the coining of the term eugenics right in this book, but Like his his looking at okay. No, that's not what I fucking said Which of course he was he was far too far too gentle and religious solter to use that literal language.

Right, but emotionally it would have been, that's not what I fucking said. Right. That's not. He didn't get out of the car. No, he didn't get out of the car. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, um, Well, Darwin would have just been like, what are you doing? I'm talking about birds have just been like, what are you doing? I'm talking about birds and shit. Yes. What are you doing? I'm talking about people, right? Like way more complex.

We're not on the food chain. Yeah. We have, we have pulled ourselves off of the food chain. Yeah. Like literally by a sheer force of will over many thousands of years, we have managed to remove ourselves from the food chain. I'm not talking about us. Right. Yeah. So, Galton developed his ideas into theory. And that theory was that civilization, since its laws protect what he saw as the weakest among us would eventually weaken the human race

So civilization is a weakening thing. Oh wow Him and Robert E Howard would have gotten along Famously, uh-huh, well, and a lot of people talk about how we need hard men not soft Yeah, we need hard men we need men who are closer to brute than to civilized like yeah Honestly, this Caesar wrote about the same shit. He talked about how the, uh, the, the, the, the gals, they, they engaged in what was it? Um, they, they did not, oh, yeah, the bell guy were furthest away from civilization. And therefore they did not engage in the mercantilism that softened men

such as civilization would. You talked about that. Fucking Alexander talked about it. Oh yeah, well, again, about Darious like and and commentators commentators in in Dark Ages England. Yeah. You know, after after the Romans left when the when the Saxon kingdoms were at their height, you know, after the Romans left when the when the Saxon kingdoms were at their height commentators who admittedly were mostly religious, but they they decried the softness and effeminacy of Saxon nobles and like, you know, they've gotten they've all gone soft. Right. This has been a forever complaint. I mean, you get the townmouse and the countrymouse and you've got this. Yeah, like, you know, so I mean, you get the townmouse and the countrymouse and you've got this. Yeah. Like, you know, so, I mean, fucking Horatius Horus wrote about this in his satires. So, civilization weakens us by this as an end, Colton would go on to claim that those with less

intelligence were also more fertile. Now, this is, remember, keep in mind, this is back when people thought that the body was a closed energy system. You come the softer your brain is. Yeah. Now this is going to well, yeah, the closed system and a zero sum game. Yes. Yes. So the more you fuck for pleasure, the dumber you get. And in fact, Irish people were locked away in a siloums at a much higher rate than anyone else in America for masturbation. Because it was assumed that the Irish married later and therefore weren't fucking and therefore had to be masturbating. Um, one, I know, Catholic, so marrying like later, like, but because they were so, they're Irish Catholic, they're really poor Catholics.

And you have to hold off. Yeah. And there was, I mean, Malthus had talked about that very specifically when he was talking about the famine. Oh, yeah. So, so that informed American sanitary policy. Yeah. So, anyway, this particular aspect of fertility belonging to the Dumber will matter a lot

more when we start actually analyzing ideocracy. So put a pin in this concept very specifically. Now, at this point, Sir Francis Galton clearly shifted his philosophical grounding from explaining a phenomenon to fixing a phenomenon. And therefore fixing a problem like you do. And since he was an incredibly smart man with a lot of privilege based on the luck of his birth, it was very hard to convince him that he wasn't the most correct person in the room. Now, of course, this is going to lead to Galton creating the first attempt at a standardized test for intelligence, because why the fuck wouldn't it?

He not only said that intelligence was hereditary and measurable, but which are those are their own problems independently, but he decided to glump them together, like combining peanut butter and pork chops, but that other things could also signal intelligence. For instance, a person's reflexes might signal intelligence, or muscle grip, or my favorite head size. When we talk about the movie, I'm going to come back to that. Okay. In 1883, Galton published his observations and correlations in an article or in a paper titled inquiries into the human into human faculty and its development. However, it should be noted that his efforts were admittedly even by him fruitless.

So he keeps like, like, I'm going to see how fucking stupid this idea can be. And then he comes back, he's like, you know, it's kind of stupid. But because I chased it down, there's still something there. Y'all. Mm hmm. Like, uh, I'm going to find a meat on this bone. Right. You know, somewhere. Yeah. And he's like, well, I only found Merrill, but there is protein there. You know, God, just like, dude, no. Yeah. Now, Bene and Simon or Simone would then take the ball and run with it, setting up the Bene some Simon test, which is essentially the very precursor to the IQ test,

which was originally meant to reveal a child's mental age, which would then help select out the kids who didn't meet the standard and get them removed from public schools and get them placed in a sila. That was the original use of the IQ test. Not just how smart are you? Not just how smart are you as a fifth grader. Not just that, but like determine your mental age and if you're below a certain rank, you get taken out of the school because we need to triage this shit. Walk. Yeah. Now, Galton's solution was actually somehow less awful than that. He said selective breeding, send them to schools, but then do it like you do with livestock. So, and here's why I say this is less awful than that because he said,

let's find a way to get smart folks to want to fuck more. Like, just really encourage the hell out of that. You can do two things. You could tax what you don't want or you could subsidize what you do want, right? Okay, yeah. So let's subsidize smart folks fucking. Let's make sure they go to smart folk fucking parties. And he did say we do need to find ways to get dumb folks

not to fuck so much too. But he cared more about, let's just drown them out and smart come. Like let's just, let's just drown him out in smart come. Like let's just let's just hen tie the breeding program. Let's just go. And and he had evidence. Animal husbandry did prove that you could enhance and strengthen certain traits in that you desired in goats, dogs, cows, horses.

So if you did it with humans, you could do the same. And there it's again, I find myself understanding where he's coming from because intuitively, if you have two tall parents, you have a kid who might play volleyball. Mm-hmm. Always? Not always. But more likely than not? If you got a hockey playin' dad and a dancer-wife, I didn't say white, dancer-wife, but a dancer-mom, if you got those two, you might have a kid who gets to the NHL.

You might. Yeah. Or then if you have me, you know, a mom. And so, just think it's though, if you got the hockey-playing dad and a dancer mom, then you've got a kid who is going to be enmeshed in physical activity. Well, yeah, but there might be certain physical traits that do pass on that advantage dad that might advantage son or daughter.

Yeah, but the other thing is though, if you're working on a system that then says, okay, well, we're going to subsidize this to make, you know, these people who, for reasons of IQ tests or reflexes or whatever, we've decided it is the people we want, fucking because we want to get children who have these traits, and we're going to subsidize them. Right. We're going to doize them. Right. We're gonna do all these things to encourage it and then make it easier.

And then, and then, because we spent all this time getting these children born, we're then going to be throwing more resources at these kids. You're perpetuating, Yes. You are self-selecting to perpetuate. So like you don't have any sort of looking for objective way of knowing.

If the kids that you're getting who are smarter, you're right, in air quotes, smarter. Like, is that, is that because of genetics or is that because they're the ones that got all the fucking resources? Right. And again, human beings are different than animals, partly because our generations last so long, partly because our fertility is such a wide spectrum and it's not lifelong. There's, and our fucking infancy lasts, like you gotta raise a kid for like 15 years before they're having, you know?

And, because I keep coming back to like, okay, well, look at where a lot of, you know, wrestling schools get started and it's in the Midwest. Why? Because that's where you've got a lot of kids who are already strong because they're working on farms. Why? Because they come from farming folk. Why? And on and on and on. And yes, you will look for a spouse that can give you those kinds of traits and those kinds

of kids. But at the end of the day, if you've got a kid who is born as skinny as my son and you put him on a farm from the age of three forward, he's going to bulk up. He'll have some shoulders by the time he's 16. Yeah. And so regardless of the genes, he's going to now, will he be measurably less than a family that's been farming for eight generations? Yeah, that is possible. But will it be significantly measurably less so?

Probably not. And then, so now, expand that into shit like that you can't test for, shit that you can't really measure. Yeah, you get the issue, right? Yeah, the variation is always going to be a marginal thing out of the edges. If you really want to see a dramatic difference, you're going to have to be doing it for many, many generations. Even then, the nurture side of it is still going to be a more powerful factor than the nature part of it.

Yeah. And just complete side note, but now that we've gotten deep into talking about eugenics, I am now into my second beer just in this episode. Yeah, because dear God almighty. Yeah. Oh, we have anything to the bad stuff. What? Yeah, you're gonna be drinking a lot for fuck. So, um, in Dalton's model, uh, you can imagine how the Irish fair. Well Well hold on, there's an aristocrat from England in the late 1800s. Yeah, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how the Irish would fare. So the next sentence is as well as anyone else who wasn't educated and upper class British like him. So you have the Irish especially. Yeah. And since head size and the obsession with the long Nordic skull was now a thing. The analogy would certainly help this

theory along. No. Back to the introduction of hereditary genius quote, I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world. So that just real quick, breaking in, that goes back to Heiko and that belief in the natural philosophy, right, that unified field theory of all organisms back to to Galen. Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding those limitations to obtain by careful selection of a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.

And quote, so he's looking at dog breeding. He's looking at animal husbandry. He's like, we could do this too. And again, could, could you make that argument that over the next 200 years, that's 10 generations of breeding specifically for certain traits. Yeah, probably, but again, those traits are merely physical traits. And you could even like, people breed dogs for temperament and all of that, but people completely control the culture in which dogs live. They control the kennels. They control the familial relations between dogs. They take dogs out of play. Like, it's not just like, okay, and then you sent them into the forest and you bring them back every

three years. No, you can do every aspect. And unless you're going to do that, you're not going to get this. Now, Galton was intensely and sympathetic to the average person. He disdained mediocrity, and he thought that it should be avoided as much as possible. So you could see why I hate this man. Galton's main driving focus in creating eugenics was at its core and attempt to further venerate the upper class in Britain, answering the question that the youngest of seven children who was prodigious in so many ways would really need answering. Quote, why am I so amazing?

Yeah. And also as the youngest, why do I also deserve my dad's love? Yeah, well, there is that. And by the way, just to point out the futility of what what his ideas were Joe Montana one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time correct Yes, you know what his dad did Not a quarterback so it doesn't get no matter like yeah

Yeah, the one thing is dad did that really helped him become a good quarterback was he lied about Joe's age Signed him up for something saying he was nine years old. So he could go to the you know the sports camp or whatever Having to wait a year. That's it. That's it. Other than that immigrant family from Americanized immigrant family from Italy Um, I think two generations back, but not a goddamn quarterback So think two generations back, but not a goddamn quarterback. No. Anyway, Galton ultimately believed that it should be humanity's goal to seek to improve itself and he'd convinced himself through

his own understanding of science and statistics that the biggest impediments to these laws or to this were laws that protected everyone equally because of course they were. So you protect everyone equally, then the stupid don't weed themselves out. And therefore, other efforts would be needed to go around these laws in order to improve the human race. Okay, so this is literally illiberal on its face. You know, funny that you would bring that term into it because actually he's the more liberal version of eugenics.

Because by the early 1900s, eugenics branched into two separate approaches, a left-wing approach and a right-wing approach. Oh, shit. And he's the lefty hippie dip. Well, his approach will be. It's not simply wealthy, rightist, anti-democratic, shipbirds spoiled bitch boys who think this stuff up. Good, decent, well-meaning, shipbird racist liberals who want an equal but excellent society that is tied entirely too much to blood and heredity also get into the shit. And I think he's that guy. tied entirely too much to blood and heredity, also get into this shit. And I think he's that guy. So nobody's clean here. This is not liable versus conservatives, not Republican versus Democrat. This is not WIG versus liberal later labor. None of that.

This is left wing right wing. On the right wing were the biologists who heavily leaned on biology to explain eugenics for the good of the race animal husbandry. On the left wing there were statisticians and sociologists who said it was a combination of biology and social customs. He is of that. So he's the left wing eugenicist. Now both wings couldn't leave people to fuck alone Now both wings couldn't leave people to fuck alone, and they both bought into the idea that humanity could, as a species, be improved upon with flawless precision if they got their way. And both made for different approaches toward perfecting the human race,

right wing eugenicists wanted negative eugenics that would stop the wrong people from fucking and allow the right ones to fuck unimpeded and to outbreed the bad ones. Left-winged genocists wanted positive eugenics, wherein they encouraged the right people to fuck a lot and therefore outbreed. So one taxed the dumb, the other one subsidized the smart, right? Right. Both let's let's get smart people fucking a lot more. And both wanted policies that took humanity down their chosen path of fucking with people. So begging the question, plus white supremacy.

So so did any of these people think about, okay, 15, 20, 30 generations down the road, right? Oh, they jerked off to that. Well, okay, but hold on though. Like, were they envisioning, like, ultimately, both of them, were they envisioning a future with the Eloi and the more locks? No, just a Eloy more like I would have died off. Okay, right. Okay.

So then. So then who's going to work in the factories? Because you look at machines. Remember, this is during the guild of the age. This is during the mechanized age. This is what's based on. age. This is during the mechanized age. This is what's the basis on. Yeah, right. Yeah.

All right. Now back to Ernst Heinrich Philip August Heikl. Because I can't leave well enough alone. Heikl took his understanding of biology and evolution and applied it to humanity using racist intuition, rather than actual science. He wrote a book called Wonders of Life, which sounds nice in 1904. He wrote this book after listing the amount of people who were held in Europe in institutions who were considered for that time lunatics his term. Heiko then went on to describe 200,000 of them as incurable and thus better served by state-sponsored, killing by poison.

This is what he writes in Wonders of Life. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? What? Yeah. So he writes W wonders of life in 1904. Yeah. Is that your third one? Oh, okay,

it's your second. So he writes it's a it's a manful gulp on the second one. Lord, he writes wonders of life in 1904. And he lists. He says the amount of people being held in institutions for being lunatics, his word, the word at the time. He described 200,000 of them as simply incurable and therefore they would be better served by being euthanized. It's for their own good. It's compassionate conservatism. I'm going to have a fuck. Quote. Wow.

Here's Heiko. Okay. How much of this pain and expense could be spared if people could make up their minds to free the incurable from their indescribable torments by a dose of Morphea? Naturally, this act of kindness should not be left to the discretion of an individual physician, but be determined by a commission of competent and conscientious medical men. Do you remember when I did V? And we talked about the term death panel. This is an actual death panel he's advocating for.

Yeah. I just want to point out that I'm looking at the timeline. Oh, one. But no, I'm trying to find a timeline on this. But for prior to the World Wars. Yes. German philosophy. Uh-huh. What we're talking about right here is, you know, German quote-unquote, men of science.

But pure philosophers in Germany were busy talking about morality and ethics as like their main talking points. Kantian ethics is a thing. And I find it remarkable that one of the most morally driven traditions of philosophy could be sharing a timeline and a place in space with this kind of horrifying, this kind of horrifying, horrifying inhumanity. Uh, I'm sorry, no, this is, um, this is sparing people pain and expense. This is the most humane thing you could do. This, this is an act of kindness.

Have you fucking asked any of these people if they're suffering? Oh, they don't know what they want This this this is what this is people doing what needs to be done. This is the ultimate kindness This is this is the moral bonfire you're talking about. We do people with dark souls. Yes, so here's the thing He has himself good at this. this is why words fucking matter. He has himself convinced and anyone who reads him that this is, he is recast kindness. So Kantian ethics require you to do this. Wow. Because it's a societal thing.

It's not just a personal thing. So the, the demeaning that happens to your soul by doing a violence to someone else is Is immaterial when you look at the overall good that it does So you can't escape Bentham when you're talking about this stuff Because that gives you the mode the moral yeah, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna finish this episode with this quote from Heigel Now, I'm going to finish this episode with this quote from Hegel. Okay. Quote, what good does it do to humanity to maintain artificially and rear the thousands of cripples, death, mutants, idiots, et cetera, who are

born every year with an hereditary burden of incurable disease. It is not better and more rational to cut off or is it not better and more rational to cut off from the first this unavoidable misery, which their poor lives will bring to themselves and their families? The truth is, the opposition is only due to sentiment and the power of conventional morality. Sentiment should never be allowed to usurp the place of reason in these weighty ethical questions." There just be so emotional about this. See, I'm motivated by logic.

Right. Quit being such a little bitch. Yeah, she, fucking Christmas. Yeah. So here's a, here's, this, this occurs to me hearing all of that. Say I'm, you know, born all 10 fingers, all 10 toes. Sure. I'm, you know, born all 10 fingers, all 10 toes. Sure. Fully compost mantis, right?

Mm-hmm. And I live 15, I do say 18 years. I live 18 years, totally fine. I am able-bodied. I am sound of mind. And then I get involved as the 1880s, so I get involved in a street car accident. Sure. And either or both I lose a limb, I suffer massive brain trauma, and I'm still able to function,

but I'm like, I'm alive and I can still talk. I'm still a sapient being, but my IQ has been damaged. This has just taken a 30 point nose diet. Yeah, yeah, or it isn't even my IQ. I've just lost a leg. Sure. Well, those are two very different things. Okay. Yeah. According to Hakell, Hakell, I'm making an assumption here, but okay if I've if I've just lost a leg Fuck on yeah, if you're if you're proven to be good at the brainy stuff, fuck on But if I've taken a 30 point IQ nose dive

That might affect your kids here's here's here's yeah, and so here's some hemlock. Yeah. Yeah. Any kids I've already had are okay. Right. But because we're dealing with more of Mark. Yeah. And also think of the burden that you are on the state.

Well, yeah, and then we're getting into the right wing, you know, economic political argument. She made bloody. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't think I had enough beer in the house. Well, that that's it for this episode. So you're okay. We're in between. Um, I already know what you cleaned. Uh, there's only on page five. Uh, is there anything you would like to recommend to people to read? Um, no, not at this point in the proceedings. I'm going to recommend everybody, depending on when you're listening to this,

like if you haven't listened in a few weeks, and it's like, oh, I have a couple of episodes to catch up on. In that case, I am going to recommend bourbon. I'm like too strongly recommend after this episode is over before you go starting up the next one. If you're planning on binging, now would be a good time to go to your liquor cabinet because I can tell already this is going to be rough.

because I can tell already this is going to be rough. She's probably gal. Yeah, so that's my recommendation at this point. Good Lord, these people are awful. Yes, yes they are. You know, and one thing that does occur to me, kind of as a gleaning at this point, One thing that does occur to me, kind of as a, as a gleaning at this point, is whenever anyone on, on any, from any point of the political spectrum, the moment anyone starts zooming the picture out far enough, you need to watch very carefully what they're saying.

Yes. Because whether from the left or the right or or any point on the spectrum, if you zoom out far enough for the individual to blur enough, you are you are painting a picture to allow awful shit to be done. Yeah. It's important to zoom out,

but look at who's asking you to zoom out and for what purpose. Yeah. Because very often, anytime you zoom out, you lose detail. Yeah. What details are they trying to get you to not point out? Yeah.

And when you need to start listening for, are they starting to say something that is dehumanizing anybody? And the moment that happens, pump the brakes hard. Yeah. And yeah, because so much of this, you know, and another final point, final thing that occurs to me,

is so much of this is coming from a point of view where the people that are reading this shit and the people that are talking about this shit in their salons are so removed from anybody who is working class. That that you know that paternalism breeds in in circumstances where they don't have social contact with these people. Right. Like there is no egalitarianism in these social circles to make it so like, well, okay, yeah, no, but, you know, if you did that, you'd be saying that Bob doesn't get to have kids and we all know Bob and like, he's a good dude, right?

You know, that doesn't happen there. And so these things don't get questioned. So yeah, liquor hits the liquor cabinet. So yeah, that's that's, but do you have anything you'd like to recommend? Actually, I would. Here's a story that will cheer you up a bit. It's called Crazy 08 by Kate Murphy, CAIT Murphy. And it is essentially, well, the subtitle is, how a cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnets created the greatest year in baseball history. And so it's essentially about the New York

Giants attempt to get to the World Series. And it's the last time the Cubs won the World Series. So spoiler alert, the Giants don't make it. Okay, has to do with Merkel's boner, which is awesome. Baseball fans, you'll know what that is. And by the way, this was the year that Honus Wagner probably had the best baseball season that any player ever had in major league baseball by experts measures. Yeah. And he was on the pirate. Since this three way rivalry, it is fun. It is so fun. It will be a palette cleanser. So have that

on your hand after you listen. All right. Cool. Cool. Do you want to be found anywhere? I do not at present. Okay. How about you? Find me on thread at the harmony. Oh, yeah. I figured I'd give that a shot and see what happens. Okay. It sounds like not toxic Twitter so far. So there you go. All right. Yeah. Other than that. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony.

And I'm Ed Laylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.