(no subject)

[kradeelav]

thinking about uhhh Society lately made me remember this morbidly funny story:

i was back in middle school history class, one of those vaguely moderate evangelical slash southern baptist college preparatory schools. (i say moderate since in all honesty they did an okay job allowing dissenting thoughts; it wasn't like critical thinking was completely squashed out although it wasn't entirely encouraged.) and i think the history class topic of the day was on ye classic ww2/nazi/etc topics where the teacher was subtly trying to get the class to see how easily it was to fall into the 'get rid of the degenerates' arguments by kind of baiting them with the "reasonable" lines of arguments (and then at the end pointing it out why that was dangerous in a complexity appropriate for middle schoolers).

(another piece of necessary context is i'm pretty glaringly physically disabled, and even back then nazis were kinda a Special Interest for proto-kink and 'yeah i need to know this shizz' reasons, so i could see where the teacher was going a mile ahead of most of the students.)

the teacher had opened the floor to a wider debate and one of the kiddos was starting to get too close to verbally agreeing blindly with said 'getting rid of le degenerates/etc' line of thinking. (it was kinda awkwardly sandwiched with the cultural hubhub of the abortion debate back in the 00's because again this is a southern baptist school but personally i would argue it's a useful lesson to learn in a historical context even if some of the wires were crossed.) 

and the details are sketchy but i think the kiddo was on the specific track of 'sure aborting/killing certian disabled folks makes sense if x y z-' even if obviously he wasn't explicitly saying that word for word.

the teacher and i exchanged A Look as the kid kept going on ('lol you know where i'm going with this. dunk the kiddo')

and i kind of. saucily just raised my hand without saying a word.

like heyyy, you do know you're talking about me with that line of argument. :D

i have never heard a kid go dead silent that fast lol.

(that said, i really didn't get any malicious vibes from the dude (i was well liked or at least neutral with very literally everyone) - total dumbass 'oh shit i didn't think about how that would actually. include a real person i know. oh fuck.' teenage ignorance of the kind we've all had before. but the kiddo was pretty quiet for the rest of the class.

.... anyway my thought these days is i hope i didn't scar the kid too much with mortified embarrassment lol. not the worst lesson to learn (eg 'think real hard about the consequences of policy decisions') but i think these days i'd make sure he knew i knew it wasn't personal.

Comments

[mucky]

Jeez, when even a middle schooler knows to be embarrassed instead of dig his heels in further... lol

That reminds me, recently a colleague at my internship told me about being in a class at [Prestigious Private College on the Eastern Seaboard]. The college professor was discussing CRISPR and new technology that would allow pregnant people to choose the traits of their offspring, and stuff like that. You know the drill.
My colleague is a social worker. He was the only man in a class of women, but even the professor (also a woman) was horrified at the overwhelmingly positive feedback being provided in the class.
He raised his hand and said, "This is eugenics."
And that's the story of how the entire class turned on him that session and accused him of being a misogynist, because women should have control over their bodies (including, I guess, the life that will one day be autonomous and learn that certain of their traits were selected because they were more "desirable" than others). LOL

All this to say, eugenics comes in many forms.
I wish people were taught more often that the argument of "some people deserve to live more than others" is just eugenics, because then you have to define who deserves to live versus who deserves to die.
And most often, it's the people who have more in common with you that you think deserve to live.
That's why I was a nihilist/endorsed VHEMT growing up. Equal-opportunity death! xD

[kradeelav]

it is absolutely nutty how the discussion around CRISPR so *rarely* mentions that particular use-case that's like, happening now and all of that. really appreciate your colleague there to talk about a different viewpoint! there's nuance to be made about when/how it's applied but just the fact it's so rarely raised is.. yeesh! gattaca had more nuance lol. appreciate your viewpoint as always.