Eugenics And The Contemporary Ideological Divide Between Pronatalism And Antinatalism

Here's a boring essay I had written a few months ago as part of an English assignment, titled "Parallels between Eugenics and the contemporary ideological divide between Pronatalism and Antinatalism".

Needless to say, this is one of my unimportant and skippable posts, and I doubt you could learn something new that you already don't know or can't know by a simple google search of the terms and making the connection yourself; you might even write a better essay than I did, as I did it for a required assignment even though I selected the topic myself, I won't exactly say that I was highly motivated and driven by some sort of cause or greater meaning.

Enjoy, if you are capable of enjoying something like this. Don't get me wrong, these are fascinating topics, but then the way this essay has been written and the content don't do them justice, but here it goes anyway:

Everyone has at some point of time heard the name of Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution. One less known but equally interesting figure in history was his cousin Francis Galton. Francis Galton misinterpreted The Origin of Species to reason that society should not try to protect the underprivileged and weak, and let nature take it's own course. But the idea of Eugenics goes even further back to Plato, who believed that human reproduction should be monitored and controlled by state.

Here we have to be careful not to project the moral standards of today to such an early time in history. Eugenics can be divided into two broad categories: positive Eugenics that is aimed at increasing desirable traits, and negative Eugenics that aims to decrease undesirable traits. This idea was supported by many prominent scientific personalities of that time, and Hitler used it to justify his genocide against the Jews.

While these people may have acted with the intention of improving the human civilization, modern scientific tools and methods have shown that the ideas expounded by Eugenics are not backed by rigiorous evidence. There is also the ethical question of what traits we should value, and we don't know enough about the brain and moral philosophy yet to tackle such questions without a lot of confusion and motivated debate, but today it is a generally accepted idea that Eugenics has been a way for the people with power to maintain their status-quo and exercise control over the less fortunate.

Now I'll attempt to connect this ideology with the current division between the Pronatalists and the Antinatalists. Pronatalism is the belief in the policy to promote childbearing because it would be beneficial for human civilization in the long run and save it from extinction, whereas Antinatalism is the moral belief that procreation is unethical and that humans must abstain from it because the current condition of the world doesn't justify creation of any new life that is bound to suffer by circumstances set in motion by their ancestors.

Nowadays there can be seen an emerging trend of Pronatalism among wealthy tech and venture-capitalist circles. Proponents of Pronatalism include Elon Musk, who has fathered 10 known children, and been known to openly admit his obsession with Gengis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol ruler whose DNA can still be traced to a significant portion of human population. Venture capitalists Malcolm and Simone Collins, founders of the non-profit initiative Pronatalist.org, advocate that people should bear more children because cultural pressures like nihilism, economic strains and China's "last generation" meme are convinving people that having children is a bad idea, period.

Some of this thinking traces back to a philosophical movement called longtermism, which has recently captivated the wealthy tech elite. Nick Bostrom, one of the founding fathers of longtermism, wrote that he worried declining fertility among "intellectually talented individuals" could lead to the demise of "advanced civilized society." which is discriminatory against underprivileged people from the developing countries who did not happen to be born in a rich country or traits considered desirable by today's ruling elite.

It is also being used by some people to justify white-supremacy around the world, from marchers in Charlottesville chanting "You will not replace us" to the mosque shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who opened his 2019 manifesto: "It's the birthrates. It's the birthrates. It's the birthrates."

In many ways, pronatalism appeals to Silicon Valley's preoccupation with legacy. In the 2010s, the longevity craze swept Silicon Valley, and industry titans like Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, and Larry Ellison, poured billions of dollars into biotech companies they thought could help them defy death.

But as the Thiels and Ellisons of the world get older, the chance of radical life extension in their lifetimes becomes more unlikely. So some are turning to the next best thing: having lots of children, and funding new fertility technologies that one founder said are "reinventing reproduction."

For people who believe deeply in the genetic heritability of traits, passing on what they see as their superior DNA can be the ultimate path to influence.

While many rich and education also adopt Antinatalism by abandoning the idea of parenthood altogether, the poor have no say in this because of their economic and social status in society. So if the discussion doesn't include representatives from all sections of the society, and the beliefs behind the ideologies aren't evaluated rigorously, there would be no scope of a healthy debate and it could have dire consequences on the human civilization if powerful people with misguided beliefs try to shape the course of the civilization on their own. also see nobel sperm bank.