Is Eugenics Justifiable? — A Delayed Judgment [Third Review]

5,693 characters2018.12.07

At the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, as Darwin’s theory of evolution gained popularity, “eugenics” arose one after another in several countries in Europe and America. Various countries adopted all kinds of compulsory or incentivizing birth-control policies, encouraging some people (the healthy, the highly intelligent) to have more children, while suppressing the reproduction of others (the sick or the “low-end population”).

It was not until eugenics became linked with genocide in Nazi hands that it finally fell into disrepute. So after World War II, in addition to trying the Nazis for their crimes, the international community also abolished eugenic policies one after another. With the rise of various currents of egalitarian thought in the second half of the 20th century, eugenics seemed to have been swept into the shadowy corner of history, never to be mentioned again.

But the question is: why exactly has eugenics been met with such scorn? This question has always seemed obscure. Where exactly was the Nazi error? If racism was the only fault, then why could no other country retain a version of eugenics cleansed of racism? If, beyond racism, eugenics itself was also wrong, then what, exactly, was wrong with it?

In the blink of an eye, another turn of the century arrived. In the early 21st century, with the rapid development of genetic technology, eugenics seemed to be making a comeback. Recently, He Jiankui’s two babies, produced by means of gene-editing technology, have unmistakably raised the banner of eugenics for the new era. Yet we still do not seem prepared to judge eugenics—for apart from racism, what, exactly, is wrong with eugenics itself?

Racism is of course wrong. The Nazis believed that the so-called Aryans were superior to other races, while Jews were born inferior; therefore “eugenics” meant letting Aryans reproduce more and Jews reproduce less. This invented Aryan race and these delusional racial differences have long since been thoroughly refuted. Today we believe that neither Jews, nor Black people, nor Indigenous people are inherently inferior; even between men and women, the only difference at birth lies in physical strength, while in intelligence they are equal from birth.

That is to say, we continually invoke science to prove that “racial superiority and inferiority” simply do not exist, and thereby eliminate racism. In the mainstream cultural environment of the contemporary West, if you still talk about one kind of person having any “inborn superiority or inferiority” over another, you will be ridiculed.

But rejecting eugenics by denying innate differences does not solve this question: if there really were some people who are innately inferior, could we discriminate against them?

Intellectuals will cite countless scientific data points to tell us that there are no innate differences between races, but if we imagine—note, only imagine—for instance, that we really did discover that Black people are innately more antisocial and more prone to crime, then how should we regard them?

Someone might say: since this hypothesis is simply false, why should we even bother thinking about it? Indeed, for decades, intellectuals seem to have evaded precisely this question in just that way. But now the development of genetic technology has brought this question back in a new form that cannot be avoided.

That is: if some genotypes are superior to others, can we discriminate against those who carry inferior genes?

As wholes, white people or Black people of course cannot possibly exhibit any especially antisocial trait in their average condition. But if, through genetic analysis, we divide populations more finely, we can indeed find certain groups that are “innately more antisocial.” Then how should we regard them?

Or, to take another example: when a large number of people have acquired better talents through genetic technology, should those who have not yet received genetic customization be subject to discrimination?

If racial discrimination is transformed into genetic discrimination and becomes widespread again, are we prepared to resist it—or to embrace it?

Before examining the various unprecedented new problems brought by genetic technology, we may as well first sort out that unresolved old question: apart from racism, what was wrong with the Nazis’ eugenics?

Bauman had already given a clue in his famous book Modernity and the Holocaust: he believed that the Nazi crimes were a unique product of modernity, and not merely the result of one supposedly superior race’s hatred toward another race—that kind of arrogance and hatred was not uncommon in antiquity either, but Nazi concentration camps contained something newly unprecedented.

That something was “reasonableness.” Nazi actions were carried out under the implementation of rational goals such as more efficient management of society and the production of superior offspring. Nazi racism was not born simply of hatred, but of the modern “instrumental rationality.”

Instrumental rationality, first of all, appears as a demand for total control. As Bauman says: “In modern society, which is distinctive precisely because of the ambition of self-control and self-management, racism instead declares that there exists a certain group of people who stubbornly and irreversibly resist all control and are unaffected by any effort aimed at improvement.”[1]

Second, it appears as a one-dimensional way of thinking in which there is only the excellent or the inferior. The inferior, uncontrolled parts are regarded as “weeds that should be cut away” in a well-ordered garden. The Nazis “divided human life into lives worth having and lives not worth having; lives worth having would be carefully nurtured and granted ‘living space,’ while lives not worth having would be ‘kept at a distance,’ or exterminated.”[2]

Viewed in this light, the Nazi error lay not only in misidentifying “who the weeds are,” but even more in the very idea that “weeds need to be cut away.”

The development of genetic technology will inevitably bring about a confrontation between two new “races” of people—the technically customized makers who control in advance, and the naturally born who are not controlled—and different technological customizations will in turn form new “subspecies.” If we have never completed this belated trial of the Nazis, “concentration camps” or “segregation” will sooner or later reappear.