Overview
Eugenics refers to the application of selective reproduction towards creating a human population with particular genetic characteristics.
It is widely considered one of the most horrific set of beliefs that humans have ever proposed and put into practice. Not only has it relied heavily on pseudoscientific essentialist frameworks that are widely refuted through empirical analyses, but it has attracted some of the worst personalities and dehumanizing impulses available to humanity. Eugenicists have attempted to address every social, physical, and spiritual ill of humanity through genetic explanations, with stopping a certain group’s reproduction as the part of every solution. Everything from “criminality” to intelligence to mental illness to poverty has been a problem hat eugenics has attempted to tackle with barbaric solutions like forced sterilization or mass exermination. That includes substance use disorders; the idea of sterilizing those struggling with SUDs to prevent the transmission of genes with a predisposition for addictive behaviors.
History and Etymology
The United States has been a prolific incubator of eugenics, so much so that Nazi Germany was inspired by the eugenics movements and laws of the US. In Buck v. Bell (1927), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote “three generations of imbeciles are enough” as an endorsement of forced sterilization programs against over 60,000 people in the United States. The case has never been formally overturned.
Commentary
The line between elitism and eugenics is paper thin. Eugenics provides those suffering from elitism an etiology to rationalize and justify their position and rewards within a system larger than them. After all, the alternative involves either admititng that one’s position has largely been determined by factors out of their control or adding even more rationalizations to explain the dissonance between themselves and everyone else who expresses the same virtues without the same rewards.