What many call Eugenicide I call Plenticide.
That is because I think the same mass impulse among the educated of past years to cleanse the world of misfits (culminating in the mass murder of Slavs, Jews and Romas) also sought at the same time to rid it of all types of non-human "pests".
It was all part of the complex and unconscious reaction formed by a truly unfortunate coincidence thrown up in the late Victorian Era.
The 1870s' arrival of the machine cum chemical age seemed to negate the age-old need for human, plant and animal slaves - the sort of slaves the US Civil War had just been fought over.
Particularly as new strides in public health was greatly reducing death rates and thus visibly making the world an increasingly overcrowded place : lots of both 'first-rate' (masters) and 'second-rate' (slaves) people.
Yet in the same period, new advances in global transportation and communications also overwhelmed the affluent and educated with a vivid new sense of the plenitude of the world's cultures, languages, species, strains , habitats --- too too much way too too soon.
The machine world suddenly seemed to have far too many species and cultures - most of them seemingly inefficient as compared to the new Scientism Man.
Too many people at the same times the world seemingly could get by on a lot less - thanks to machines powered by the energy of fossil plants and animal 'slaves'.
Eugenics was thus born - at this exact time, in this exact place - as a result of this unconscious reaction among the affluent.
As was born the Gospel of Germs and the Gospel of Soap/Cleanliness, and new interest in Scientific Pest Control.
Immigration controls, culturalization campaigns against minorities and immigrants in schools, campaigns for greater purity in food and chemicals, synthetic replacements for everything natural - starting with food.
I could pile up the connected list of reactions for days at a time - but not today !
But note that they all started up right after the 1870s to blend together to produce what we now call the streamlined* age of Modernity.
*Streamlined = Eugenics = Plenticide = tidy up = clean up = purify, all basically meaning the same thing in this context ...
No comments:
Post a Comment