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On Eugenics

Though I support personal betterment (E.g., bulk building, nootropics, cognitive exercise; activities which train or enhance human faculties beyond the permissable rate of what the demands of the individual's environment would otherwise allow for) to a certain degree, I'm against irresponsible development of genetic technology: when it can no longer be contained by ethical consideration and necessitate proper application; i.e., wholesale penetration by the market, resulting in narcissistic abberations such as customizable (behavioral traits as well as physical ones) offspring.

I have two main reasons for this; the first one being, and contrary to sci-fi tabloid hype, I believe people are in no real position to interpret the demands of the environment and decide how to impose them onto others; it is pure arrogance to assume you know enough to thoroughly standardize every human attribute and dictate the person's role in society rather than giving them the chance to try to attain their ambitions and leave it to circumstance to decide. When society "transcends" being a process of human adaption, seeks to exploit/reward others on a basis of merits it almost arbitrarily derives and assigns to us from the day of birth (regardless of volition or drive) only to ultimately serve the interests of small circle of 'profiteers', it degenerates into something very frightening: fascism. And yes, predestiny (also parodized as "one-way chance") is 'fascism' of the worse kind. From this standpoint, it's easy to see how eugenics introduces an additional variant of intrusion into our lives. When there's intrusion, there's most certainly less self-determination. When there's diminished self-determination, there's lessened freedom. What good is striving to be a "queen" (Shutup Tone) when you were preconditioned during conception and conditioned during childhood to be nothing but a drone - all focus restricted to a narrow pursuit? Somewhere down the line individuality ceases to exist, except perhaps as a privileged trait reserved for those at the top (I have seen references to this being proposed in a hypothetical future). With the advent of eugenics nearing, you can bet entrance into the 'elite' will become increasingly hereditary. Exploitation will be closer to becoming inescapable if the genetic science cannot advance with responsibility.

Secondly, and despite any ability to regulate/discern its uses, eugenics is a very experimental proposal, unless you consider yourself an 'expert' who 'knows better'. It's unknown whether genetically modified children are really superior in any sense. It's also an unknown whether their traits are concordant with their desires, desires the environment and parenting will predominantly instill, unless society is one day to infringe upon this as well. Talent requires stimulation from your own efforts, will, and the environment. People cannot dictate talent themselves; they must make it happen. A good analogy is steroid abuse: you can pump iron for only 2-5 years and yield a bench of 400+, but it will inevitably atrophy unless your body is doing the work by itself without successive abuse. Another example is intelligence. While genetic information from parents helps, parents who have already done the work in their lifetime, it alone is useless without reinforcement from the environment and willingness to apply it. When you eat nothing but junk food, sit on a lounge chair flicking the rolls of fat on your stomach all day, it doesn't go toward restoring your body to what it might have been 5 years before. Genetic modification might contribute to your potential, but ultimately it is not a way around evolving from challenge.

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