The Strong Always Eat the Weak

From Roman Polanski's Pirates.

Time Machine

Eugenics and cannibalism combined: Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells.




Humanity in the year A.D. 802,701 is divided into the Eloi, a society of elegant, androgynous, and rather childishly naive people and the Morlocks - troglodytes, who breed and eat the Eloi.


Here is a fragment of the 1960 movie directed by George Pal:

Rwandan Eugenics

Quoted from Modernity Problems: Belge colonizers were into measuring cranial dimensions of Rwandans and making them do calisthenics in the name of evolving the barbarians. Back in the day, it was all about ethnicity. Today, its about mental capacity. And, creepily, forced sterilization. Wednesday, Human Rights Watch urged:



Rwanda to revise a draft law which it said would introduce compulsory HIV testing and require all people with mental disabilities to be sterilized…



The draft legislation would oblige the Rwandan government to “suspend fertility for mentally handicapped people,” the rights group said.



“Systematic forced sterilization had been recognised as a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” it said.



It is beyond profoundly disturbing when a country subject to socio-political eugenics that led to a genocide drafts legislation for a forced sterilization program.

Three generations of imbeciles are enough

The fourth child of Wioletta Woźna (42) has been taken away from her after social workers declare, that "the house is untidy, the floor is not swept, the dishes dirty, crumbs of bread on the table, the woman is unresourceful, her partner works in the field and doesn't help her much. The court states, that the woman is handicapped, and the father is 63 year old".





The story (in Polish) here;





However, there's something more: after coming back from hospital, the woman discovers, she had been sterilized without her consent during the cesarean. Read the article (in English) here (please note, she was not a surrogate mother, as the article states, but that is not important).



This happened a couple of weeks ago in Poland. It was just one of many cases of women, whose children were taken away from them on grounds of their low IQ. See for instance these two articles:




Mother fights claims she is 'too stupid' to bring up child


Second mother 'too stupid to raise her children'




And the famous case, that started all that: Carrie Buck.







Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in 1927:




We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. [...] Three generations of imbeciles are enough. (source)


More about the case in this article by Stephen Jay Gould

Micro Point Mosquito Surgical Hemostat Non-Cantilevered Ringed Forceps

Vasectomy instruments found on ebay. The set includes:




1 Ring Forceps

1 Micro Point Mosquito Surgical Hemostat

Non-Cantilevered Ringed Forceps. ("fixation clamp")





LIFE time Warranty against rust





The description says it all:

One of the most common and popular means for contraception around the world is vasectomy – a brief, surgical procedure used for male sterilization. It is a popular means of birth control for couples that have decided that their family is complete. It is nearly 100 % effective and is intended to be permanent.


(via Urlesque.com)

Mendel's Law

This is the third post concerning eugenics on this blog. Take a look at the previous ones here and here and then enjoy the poem below (click to magnify):













Source

Superorganism

The 1000 Swiss franc note might not be seen often (it's the equivalent of roughly $900), and the one beneath is no longer in circulation (replaced by a new note in 1998). It gives homage to Auguste Forel (1848-1931), famous Swiss myrmecologist and sexologist. And pioneer of eugenics in Switzerland and Europe. While directing Burghölzli asylum in the 1890's, he favored the sterilization of mentally retarded, disformed or otherwise socially "unadapted". 

Forel's disciple Alfred Ploetz developped eugenics in Germany and coined the term of "racial hygiene". Ernst Rüdin, another Forel's pupil has become a leading Nazi Rassenhygieniker as well. 

As notes Philippe Ehrenström, "sterilization thus became the most common feature of negative eugenics in Switzerland. Introduced in Zurich in the 1890s, it was thought of as a therapeutic measure which did not require explicit legalization. The existing legal framework allowed such an operation to be performed as long as it was in the best interest of the patient. Communes, which were confronted during the 1930s with an ever worsening economic crisis, thought otherwise. The numerous compulsory sterilizations of the poor and the destitute which followed forced cantons to adopt stricter administrative frameworks. The only canton which went as far as to adopt a new statute on the matter was once again the canton of Vaud in 1928.8 It is somewhat ironical that this famous and much vilified example of a eugenic health policy was adopted to protect the mentally insane from the communes’ unrestricted desire to sterilize their poor and destitute".

Auguste Forel's portrait by Oskar Kokoschka 1909/10 (source)

However my point is not to blame Auguste Forel for the consequences of his ideas. Professor Regina Wecker  of the University of Basel points out that he was a pacifist, advocated full equality of the sexes, recognition of unmarried mothers, gay marriages etc. Many of his ideas were revolutionary indeed, but his highly utilitarian and rational outlook was well in phase with modernist philosophyof the time. One must remember, that his advancements in the field of sexology and myrmecology were never questionned.

By the way, it seems that the study of ant colonies might have helped him develop eugenic ideas. Ant colonies - often described as superorganisms - could have served him as a model of perfect society, which in the minds of many eugenicists was more valuable than the lives of individuals (especially if they were "unfit"). It's interesting to note, that his most important work in myrmecology was entitled The social world of the ants compared with that of man (Genève, Kundig, 1921-1923, 5 volumes). 

As I wrote in one of my previous posts, I don't try to prove, that the popularity of eugenics among Western societies of the early 20th Century could serve as the explanation for Karl Denke's killings. Nevertheless it seemed more than likely that the widespread reception of eugenics catalyzed atavistic behavior, which in this case took the form of killing vagabonds, beggars and homeless - people regarded as unfit by the eugenicists. Also the fact that none of the killer's neighbors had ever noticed Denke's crimes seems highly symptomatic.

I will come back soon with more posts about the reception of eugenics.

The Solution

Karl Denke's case puzzles many historians and psychiatrists who try to answer the basic questions: why was he murdering people and making food out of their flesh? And why his neighbors didn't notice the human slaughterhouse in his flat for at least 15 years?

Unlike Carl Großmann and Fritz Haarmann, Denke wasn't a sexual maniac, even if he was mentally retarded. His behavior seems rational to some extent. He killed only beggars and vagabonds. His acquaintances and neighbors knew he sold meat products and traded second hand clothes, they thought however, that as a farmer's brother he must have had easy access to pork and veal.

In order to understand Denke's motives at least partially, it is necessary to consider his acts from a broader perspective. The fact that he had been murdering beggars and vagabonds is in my opinion crucial. His later years coincide with the collapse of the old world order, symbolized by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That world perished in the trenches of the First World War. A new axiological, political and social paradigm was yet to be invented. The post-war period was marked by a tremendous turmoil, from which emerged such ideas as fascism, communism etc. This was also the time of a primitive positivism in science. The latter was meant to bring happiness, peace and wealth to all. The assumption that science can bring answers to all possible questions became a form of religion, but confronted with the prevailing ideology of the time - nationalism - it gave birth to a very dangerous "science": eugenics.

This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money too"

The idea of selective reproduction of people became popular among some scientists and politicians of many Western countries in the late XIXth and early XXth Century. Germany wasn't an exception. Eugenics were applied long before the Nazis seized power in 1933. It is worth noticing that Karl Binding's and Alfred Hoche's book Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (Release for Annihilation of Life Unworthy of Life) was first published already in 1920. Beggars and vagabonds became one of the first victims of eugenic policies in the Weimar Republic. However eugenics was not only a scientific theory of that time. It reflected the atmosphere of the time.

Karl Denke - a man of very limited intellectual capacity - couldn't obviously understand the scientific language and philosophical or social implications of eugenics, but he could understand that beggars and vagabonds were a threat to a healthy society, they were a problem - he concluded - just like parasites. Some villages in Lower Silesia officially issued laws to expel them from the communities. Denke must have been aware of that, so he had found a simple solution to the problem: by killing the vagabonds, he would help the local authorities and make some money by selling their flesh. From a certain point of view, he wasn't even a cannibal, because he didn't consider his victims as humans.