Astronomer

Yeah that's what I meant when I said that it would never be right to enforce such a rule upon society.

What I getting at was how you go through all of these tests in your life: exams at school and uni, driving license, working with children check for work, etc... but then when you get pregnant there is no handbook or examination to prove that you're capable of it or anything. And you're responsible for brigning up another human being... life is the most precious thing in the world and you're suddenly responsible for one of them that isn't yours. It's just pretty terrifying that you can have so much responsibility so easily.

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Fruitonica

The abortion police is a scary thought.

TheBig3

In the 1930's they use to sterilize people they didn't think were worthy of breeding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#United_States

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Alfred

My post there was (almost) entirely facetious.

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Astronomer

Yikes, that's a pretty scary thought.

Interesting reading, during that same time in Australia they were attempting to use sterilisation and mixed race mating to try and 'breed out' the Aboriginals.

It makes me feel quite sick, to be honest.

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duga

not to divert the thread...but i'm kind of curious about what happened with the aboriginals. like, did people react just about the same way as we did to the native americans? we all but isolated them into one state and make sure they can make absolutely no progress. it is incredibly sad and it is one of those things that i feel ashamed of even indirectly being a part of.

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someonecompletelyrandom

Even so, the current attitude towards physical discipline is horrendous. And it ties into what this thread is saying. Kids are losing respect because kids aren't showing respect because kids weren't taught respect.

Astronomer

Don't want to hijack the thread so go here if you want to read about some of the things that happened regarding the issue:

Stolen Generations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The movies Australia (although pretty terrible) and Rabbit Proof Fence are both about these incidents that took place regarding the Aboriginals.

Sorry about such a short response... didn't want to turn the thread off-topic.

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TheBig3

Whats most scary about it is that its fairly easy to find it to be agreeable. I mean this is argueably Darwinism designed. Those people with those defects had a slim chance of reproducing anywya, we're just going to solidify that it won't happen anyway, and we could essentially "breed out" certain diseases.

I mean i think we are talking about what was then the foremost in science. But it was all science, and anyone who takes a passing glance at what happens when you try to drive nature will find out only terrible things happen. I could imagine a world where we've breeded out the curses or natural resistances to all sorts of plagues.

@ Duga: I think everyones missing the point of threads like these. Its not like the topic is important at all. Feel free to digress. If people wanted a serious discussion, as Lat said, go to the Philosophy forum.

in other words, feel free to ask what you want as long as it follows a linear digression.

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Guybrush

Breeding wasn't exactly a new idea with Darwin. Lots of people, like members the european upper crust, believed strongly in breeding long before Darwin ever wrote about natural selection. Darwin described a breeding process out there in nature that takes place without our help and for that he's become a popular target for eugenics rubbish.

You could say it's like blaming Einstein for the bombs hitting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I'm fairly certain eugenics would've been part of modern human history even without Darwin as those ideas were indeed floating around a long time before Origin of the Species. I believe the real problem was values, western society back then didn't have the same moral values as it does now. It's not just one idea which ****ed it up. Stuff was worse in lots of little ways.

Here we lobotomized gypsies which had nothing to do with eugenics. Society just thought their lives just had little value, so you could experiment on them like they were animals.

edit :

Oh and kids are stupid. If we're going to make our own family, I have to move out of the big city because the kids here are gods damned awful. They dress awful, they talk awful, their values are crap and probably only like 1/10th of them have ever climbed a tree. Where your kids are brought up, that becomes part of them and I'd rather find a nicer place for my own.

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