Hitler and Darwin? What are your thoughts?

Question

Darwin wrote in his book, The Decent of Man, "Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed... At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races... '

(Below, sited from: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mjg... )

"While it must be very clearly emphasized that the gentle-souled Darwin himself never supported ill treatment of any race or group, his words inspired a movement to 'scientific' racism."

Answer 1

go to the best book on man ever.and its destiny.god the creators word.the bible.where darwin and every other one gets and got there ideas to start with.good luck.

Answer 2

Why don't we all look at Darwin for what he was: a theorist. Not the Giver of Gospel Truth.

Answer 3

Hitler was a racist of the worst kind - that was his motivation & inspiration - not the writings of Darwin.

Answer 4

both very interesting people.

Answer 5

Darwin is 1850s and lead the way for the Age of Reason -- we could ask questions about gods without ecclesiastical courts murdering us. The philosophers that followed would refute Adam Smith, among other gods.

Darwin is a by-product of the richest middle class every recorded in history, Victorian England.

Hitler morphed into everyman's bookends for things religious, things philosophical, things political, things militarily. Hollywood transformed Adolf into the Uberman what almost whooped American butt, ergo Hitler is the comparator for Americans... eg. "do you think Geo. W. Bush is worse than Hitler?"

Do not confuse Hitler with Darwin.

Answer 6

HATE THEM BOTH

Answer 7

Hi.  I really don't know why mention of Darwin brings the crazies out but it always seems to happen.

I think the quote you provide is a very good example of how even the most gifted thinkers and scientists are only right some of the time, and are as susceptible to assumptions about the world based upon their cultural biases as the rest of us.

You can certainly see some parallels between Darwin's application of natural selection to human populations and, if this idea is actually acted upon, National Socialism as practiced by Hitler.

Darwin did not really invent "social darwinism" or eugenics, this had already been expressed earlier as a justification for the enormous gap in wealth between the richest and poorest in Victorian england (this later became a standard line for American conservatives as well.)

A reasonable summary of the emergence of this kind of thought can be found at :

http://www.term-papers.us/ts/hc/sxr23.sh... (although it waffles far too much at the end).

It must be remembered that the concept of one race or class of people being superior to another would not have raised any eyebrows at all for the Victorians.  The Empire was based upon the assumption that it was perfectly acceptable for white anglo saxons to invade, colonise and then exploit other races for their own good.  This was not only seen as OK, but a laudable thing for young white men to spend their careers doing.  (Google "the white man's burden")

The science supporting all of this was quite new, however the practice of breeding animals for superior or specific traits had been well known for centuaries.  

Rich agriculturalists with a privelidged position who obsessed about their ancestry and family tree would therefore hardly need a great deal of convincing that their position was not only justified, but that society generally would be better if it contained more people like them.

This is a pretty common point of view, actually, both then and now.

Darwin's Cousin, Francis Galton (an early contributor to the science of genetics), went even even further than Dawin with his social breeding concept proposing in his 1869 book "Herediatry Genius" that a super race could be acheived by marrying the "best" people to maximise their breeding potential and sterilizing the worst.

This was taken up most enthusiastically in

n**i Germany and many states of the U.S.  

Some 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized due to mental illness (real or percieved) moral degeneracy ( = promiscuity) or on racial grounds.

See: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Pu... [ Be careful of this reference, it is a fundamentalist Christian attack on Darwin but the underlying facts are accurate enough. ]

It should be remembered that our instinctive horror of where this can lead arose from history, actually seeing what this kind of approach can turn into in the hands of an amoral monster - and it was not until Hitler put his ideas into practice that the full point of that lesson was driven home.

If you are looking for a way of arguing against the practicality or justification of social eugenics I would suggest the following:

Whilst simplistic breeding of animals may acheive success of particular species, human societies work not only because we support those with our genes (ie family) but because we can co-operate in vast communities.  Societies that cannot make this transition stall at tribal level of development.

What makes such communities function is not only a wide variety of attributes, skills and attitudes but also a spirit of co-operation and compassion that by definition will not survive an attempt to breed a super-race.

Secondly, human societies and humans change in response to external threats and developments much faster than by heredity.  A human can learn and adapt to their environment far more rapidly than, for example, a galapagos turtle.  If you take what appears to be a fairly hopless group of people and give them resources, support and education they may well be able to trancend their initial disadvantages.

Thirdly - what the master race looks like is allways defined by looking in a mirror.  The real strength of modern democracies has come from adaptability and diversity allowing an explosion of communication, science and trade that would not be possible from a homogenous group of people.

Fourth, human strenght comes not from body but mind.  The human mind is far too complex to breed superior intellects as often people who have very bright parents may not inherit this trait, or not be as successful at whatever they choose to do as someone else who is not quite as smart but has other attributes such as tenacity or imagination.