Stupid?

Thank you for making a small contribution to the future of mankind for removing yourself from the gene pool.

Really, is this what our so called civilisation is  all about?

So do we include the disadvantaged, the old, the mentally ill and the disabled?

Sorry, but it may be just well “well ‘ard” and a  fashionable desperation  to avoid being labelled “politically correct ” but  just who are we to define exactly who is “ stupid”? Maybe you are not entirely serious; if this is so, well do forgive me.*

Hitler tried to purify the gene pool; do we really want to go there again?**

* sigh, irony

** slightly ironic


76 thoughts on “Stupid?”

  3. Ah I see. Don’t follow Brendano down the route of counter blogging. Its counter productive and a waste of bandwidth.

  5. OK, no prob’s, but that his is style and I really don’t see the point of starting another blog when one is already running.

  6. You may have a point but this post is not about a narrow issue; it broadens the discussion.

    I felt is better to make it a separate post. I’m not really bothered if others disagree, or don’t want to comment. I wanted to write this.

  11. Anyway, this is not a challenge or a counter-post, just my feelings on this subject.

    I’m off to bed.

    Please feel free to delete it, if you find it offensive, Bearsy.

  12. Erm,

    Minty MBE, I think you are taking this too seriously. The Darwins are simply a long standing award system which recognises the stupidity of certain yoomans. Obviously the stoopid gene does not exist because it would have died out in generations past.

    By highlighting the unfortunate but incredibly dim demise of certain folk it could be argued that the Darwins act in a Elf n Safety manner. “Don’t urinate on a live third rail, or this will happen” sort of thing.

    🙂

  13. Sometimes, I think, people attach too much importance to throw away remarks. The comment:

    Thank you for making a small contribution to the future of mankind for removing yourself from the gene pool.

    was intended to be humorous, or that’s the way I read it and not to imply that the author would endorse purifying the gene pool. Indeed, to take such a comment as intending to mean that seems, in my opinion, way, way over the top.

    It is becoming quite ridiculous, again in my opinion, when simple humorous remarks are taken out of context and interpreted as having some dark and sinister meaning.

    Someone once said to me that they didn’t intend to die soon… it had been a jokey kind of conversation and I responded with the line that ‘it could be arranged’. The next thing I knew was that person was accusing me of trying to murder them…

    It is far too easy, as we all know, to read intentions and feelings into the written word…

  15. Hugh,

    To quote the greatest observer of human nature ever to have not existed..

    “Stupid is as stupid does.”

    Mrs Gump.

  16. Yikes.

    Calm down! I haven’t the time to respond at length at the moment, I have to go out.

    Hi Furry One.
    But no, I understood that Bravo’s post was not serious, but there is a serious side to this subject, hence this post.

    Boadicea, your comment #20. I agree completely!

    Janus: thank you, at least you seem to have understood my point.

    Bearsy: my amendments were intended to be explanatory.

  19. Bearsy :

    Janus – I didn’t. Nor, had I done so, would it be irrelevant to Araminta’s post. You are letting your irrational antipathy run away with you.

    I said ‘calling unfortunate people stupid’ in answer to your question “where are the “intolerant attitudes in society”?” My antipathy is to intolerance and that ain’t irrational.

  22. Ferret :

    Erm,

    Obviously the stoopid gene does not exist because it would have died out in generations past.

    Purely for the sake of debate and with no animosity intended towards anybody, I would like to take issue with this remark. Intelligence quite clearly is hereditary and if one accepts that stupidity, which is of course a relative term, is the absence of intelligence, then it too is hereditary. Clever parents are more likely than stupid parents to have intelligent children, though I fully accept that this not always the case and that genetic combinations and environmental factors play their part.

  23. I think this is more about ‘sensible’ people who do ‘stupid’ things like the guy who attempted to prove how strong the windows were in a skyscraper by hurling himself bodily against a window which promptly shattered allowing his body to fall hundreds of feet to his death.

  25. oldmovieguy :

    I think this is more about ‘sensible’ people who do ‘stupid’ things like the guy who attempted to prove how strong the windows were in a skyscraper by hurling himself bodily against a window which promptly shattered allowing his body to fall hundreds of feet to his death.

    I refer the right honorable gentleman to my comment of some moments ago. Re the teachings of one Mrs Gump, of Greenbow Alabama.

  26. There’s nothing funny about somebody dying, no matter their lack of intelligence or place of origin. The lack of pity displayed in the last day or two disgusts me.

  27. I think everyone is missing the point. The Darwin awards are to highlight the stupidity of some humans, that is not to say they are stupid, but they have done a stupid thing. As we all have from time to time. Just in this case they go to far and Wham dead.

    Haven’t we all picked up a hot pan without thinking or walked into a lamppost (when sober) it is that time when we turn off the brain cell and the self preservation cell at the same time.

    The reason they are funny is because we all identify with them, and we are all glad it is not us.

    Humour is laughing at the misfortune of others. And without humour the world is a sad place.

  28. Cheers Rick – your comment #42 sums up exactly what I have been struggling to write for the last five minutes. It is because we all know that we are capable of doing daft things and relieved that we haven’t so far done anything terminally stupid that we make flip comments…

    That we laugh and joke does not indicate a lack of pity, just a simple and very human emotion that it wasn’t us – this time.

  30. Ferret :

    Sipu,

    You are circling the drain of a Nature v Nurture debate there chummy.

    What is that supposed to mean? I merely pointed out that ‘stupidity’ does have a genetic basis. You seem to think otherwise. Or at least that is what I understood from your comment.

  31. Ferret to some extent it may be. We all laughed at Bush’s glaring boo boos or Kinnock falling over.

    It is human nature

    A few years ago I was in Greece with my 2 sisters and we went to see one of the castles in the Pelopenese. My younger sister (the one who will walk into a wall) stopped this guy and asked him to take a photo of us. (we all speak Greek) As he held the camera I began to giggle, why because of all the people walking around my sister picks the guy with no fingers on his right hand.

    Only she could do it. Needless to say the photo wasn’t taken as he couldn’t press the button, but he though he had and we thanked him anyway.

  32. Hmm, it gets worse.

    Thank you JW, and Rick. Yes, Rick I understand your point absolutely. The thing is, where do you draw the line? And I think there is a line. Humour yes, black comedy yes, but step over the line, and this is a personal thing, you end up with intolerance, cruelty, and simply offensive, to some, bad taste and some sort of unpleasant detachment from what makes us human.

    Cyperspace is a perfect vehicle for all these things and frankly I’m offended by less and less, but just occasionally, one has to ask why? Is is a deadening of sensibilities, and is this a good thing?

    I have decided it is not. I understand totally that the post from which I quoted was intended to be humorous, but that is not really the issue.

    I found some of the responses to be completely without humour, and I agree with JW here.

  33. Thanks for returning this Araminta. I can’t tell what has gone missing so the comments cannot have been all that mind-blowingly wonderful – or relevant.

    As I’ve said elsewhere, this post, as I read, it was about the possible insensitivity about thanking people for not contributing to the gene pool.

    The comment in the context of the Darwin Awards, is a throwaway – since it is probable that many have already have contributed…

    On a serious note I think there is a case for thanking people to do just that. There are a number of hereditary ‘conditions’ for which there are pre-natal tests. Should we not, at least, be asking those with problems like Huntingdon’s chorea to to take the tests and abort those foetuses that have inherited the genes that cause the problems?

  34. Boa,

    How soon can the markers for degenerate disease be identified in a foetus?

    BTW,
    The TOCs of a Darwin award insist that to be eligible, the nominee must NOT have contributed to the gene pool. Thats wht Bravo used the quote from the awards themselves.

    Minty has raised a much wider concern here.

  36. To suggest, as you have, that reference to the Darwin Awards implies that the referrer supports real-world actions paralleling Hitler’s eugenics programs is so way out that the imputation cannot be taken seriously. It is, like it or not, sophistry –

    But Bearsy, as I have already explained this was not my intention, and I implied no such thing. Neither was any mention made of the Darwin Awards. My quotation certainly was from Bravo’s post on the subject, but as I have said, it was quoted in order to widen the subject or subjects.

    One of the subjects is most certainly the gene pool, and if you link my reference to Hitler’s eugenics programme to “So do we include the disadvantaged, the old, the mentally ill and the disabled?” then I suggest it is very relevant to the discussion. Is it really such a leap from intolerance and elimination of “impurities” which characterised the obscenities of Hitler’s programme?

    … but it doesn’t become a Nazi eugenics program. That extrapolation is itself offensive and tasteless and debases those who suffered during WWII.

    No quite the reverse. Any manipulation of the gene pool can be for good or evil, and Boadicea has widened the discussion in this direction.

  37. Boadicea.

    I deliberately quoted out of context, although I can now see how this could be misleading. It was a convenient hook for the discussion. It was intended to open up a discussion as to whether death is a suitable topic for humour as well as deliberate meddling in the gene pool.

  38. Re your question on testing for genetic “conditions”, if one is aware of a family history, then it is possible to Carrier test for some conditions. I cannot imagine I would want to risk pregnancy if there was any significant risk factor.

    Regarding testing early in the pregnancy, I would personally prefer to know and I would have probably be prepared to terminate the pregnancy. I honestly do not know because I have thankfully not had to make this decision.

  39. Afternoon, Araminta – Two points on this very interesting debate, if I may.

    Firstly, the more genetic conditions can be screened by advances in medical science, the more the life insurance companies will insist on them and will grant cover only for those conditions that are not flagged. Known ‘pre-existing conditions’ is one thing, but the level playing field where neither party can predict the possible future will be removed, IMHO.

    Secondly, I think Ferret and Rick have exactly the right take on the Darwin awards, the TOCs (sorry Tocino) of which also state that children, for example, or those adults who are obviously, erm, challenged, cannot qualify. The awards are for the terminally stupid, as I was once when I instiinctively plunged my hand into water to recover a still running electric drill I had dropped. Thank God for circuit breakers is all I can say, otherwise my heirs might well have had a Darwin certificate on the wall. 🙂

    OZ

  41. OZ,

    If you were issueless at the time of of your aqua/electric jaunt into the realms of the terminally daft, then you might well have qualified under the award scheme.

    Had you been succesful in the Darwins, you would not have any heirs. Thats kinda the whole point of the award. 😉

  43. Most of this strikes me as the pious mouthings of mealy mouthed claptrap.
    For those misguided souls that wish to debase the gene pool further, I’m sure your descendants will thank you for the ‘standing room only’ morons with which they will be beset.
    The more that remove themselves the better for those that remain.
    Whether removal is done amusingly lies totally within the eye of the beholder but as society already has a plethora of the stupid there will be plenty of them left, of that we can assure ourselves.
    So I really wouldn’t get your knickers in a twist over it.

  46. Thanks OZ.

    Yes, good point about the insurance angle; would you say that this is a reason for not testing, or would it be wise/possible to not allow disclosure of the results to insurance companies?

  47. The test or not to test debate is an interesting one. I mean how far sould this be taken?

    For example, a father with type 1 diabetes may pass on an increased risk to his children. It may reach the stage whereby there is a test for this, and parents may decide not to have a child with an increased risk of developing diabetes.
    One argument is that in evolutionary terms this would be the best solution, as an untreated type one diabetic would not live were it not for medical science, and allowing such a person to live and reproduce we are re-introducing ‘weaker’ genes into the gene pool.

    Or is that just taking things too far?

  48. Araminta – It’s a jungle out there and everyone needs to take the benefit of every available advantage, including testing. The insurance companies would never sit still for non-disclosure, though, because they’re also in the jungle, albeit somewhat higher up the food chain than most of us.

    OZ

  49. Thanks for your contribution, Tina.

    I can appreciate how utterly painful it must have been for you to read this post; never mind writing a comment!

    I’m just trying to decide if you are “well ‘ard”, or fashionably desperate to avoid being labelled “politically correct ”. 😉

  52. Oh, I’m totally against taking things this far, Rick. I was just using it as an example. I feel we have to be careful with testing. What they can do NOW is just the thin end of the wedge.

  54. Pseu I agree. but then people like Kinnock and Brown should not be allowed to reproduce..just in case 😉

    On that this is my last comment on this subject.

  55. I’ve just noticed that my post is “stuck” at the top of the Homepage.

    Thank you, it was kind of you, but I’ve tried to unstick it, and it doesn’t seem to be working!

    Help!

  60. One of the reasons why I ask about genetic testing for known conditions is that there is clear evidence that a number of my immediate ancestors suffered from Huntingdon’s Chorea. I’m pretty sure that the condition was ‘introduced’ into the family by a woman born in 1769. I don’t have her death certificate, but I do have those for her husband and for four generations of her descendants. I have often wondered how my grandmother and her siblings felt knowing that they could have inherited that problem. Blow problems with insurance companies and the ‘cost’ to society – I have to ask if it is reasonable to have a child knowing that they will suffer. I am grateful that I never had to face that problem – my grandmother did not inherit the faulty gene.

    As to being a candidate for the Darwin Awards (with or without descendants) – like OZ I might well have qualified the day I decided to cut the plug off of an appliance while it was still plugged into the mains. Ruined a perfectly good pair of scissors – but I survived to tell the tale… 🙂

  62. After… but even as recently as the 1980s there was a lot of misinformation about the subject. Once it has died out of the family – it’s gone. My great-aunt was the last sufferer – she died in 1943.

  63. Just to take this discussion further, Boadicea, one can understand why the parents of adopted children may want this sort of information about their natural parents, or the children themselves when they are old enough.

    Quite apart from the natural desire to discover from whence you came; it may be very significant.

  64. I think the other thing to bear in mind is that testing of any sort can deliver wrong results.

    I say this from experience. My first pregnancy was a nightmare. Early blood test results indicated a need to investigate further: Amniocentesis which is a procedure that carries certain risks and is not very pleasant, thankfully made the question of abortion irrelevant and all was well.

  65. For whatever reason, no doubt something to do with my upbringing, I have had a slight distaste for abortion. That does not mean I go around condemning people who have had them, its just that I do not like the idea and I confess that any woman who admits to having had one is somewhat diminished in my estimation. I quite understand the rationale behind the screening of foetuses in order to prevent the suffering of children who may be born with some affliction, but morally speaking I wonder if there is a difference between euthanasing a newborn baby and aborting a foetus based on such criteria. I can certainly understand that there is a greater bond between a mother and child than a mother and foetus and that it would be more traumatic to lose the former than the latter, but that is all to do with the mother’s well-being, not that of the baby/foetus. If we are talking about the welfare of the child’s future life, then abortion and infant euthanasia amount to the same thing from a moral perspective.

  67. Sipu, I have very much the same gut-feel as you about abortion but surely circumstances alter cases (eg, rape, health, diminished reponsibility) but infant ‘euthanasia’ is the top of a much longer slippery slope leading to state-sanctioned manslaughter in the name ‘the welfare of the ….. future life’.

  68. Janus, I would agree with you to a large extent, but I cant help feeling that we started down that slope when society sanctioned abortion in the first place. Leaving aside the argument that it is a woman’s body and that she has a right to do with it what she wants, consider what is happening more and more in western society. Women are leaving child bearing till quite late in life thus raising the chances of having a baby with Downs Syndrome. Often they have an amniocentesis, which, as Araminta says, carries a high risk. Would it not make more sense to have the baby and if it is born with Downs, euthanase it, rather than risk damaging a healthy child in the womb? I think that by using the term that I have coined for such a procedure, ‘post-natal abortion’ it would make it much more acceptable to society; in much the same way that ‘euthanasia’ sounds more acceptable than ‘killing’. If we are brutally honest, we will admit that society does not like the idea of children with genetic defects and we would wish they were gone. So if pre-natal abortion is acceptable on the basis that defects will be eliminated, so should be post-natal abortion, which in any event could probably be carried out with less trauma to the victim. I would suggest a three month period after birth as being the limit for such a procedure.

  72. Thanks for that, Bearsy. I appreciate that this subject can become very personal and it is not my intention to point fingers at anybody. I am trying to be as objective as possible while at the same time present an opinion, regardless of whether it is actually one I subscribe to or not.

  74. hydra :

    To think one his over clever can be stupid when trying to do it and then days later, can not do it.

    Hydra,

    I haven’t got a scooby doo what you are saying there. 😦

  76. Hello Hydra.

    I’ve just been reading your post on another site. Wonderful pictures. I have a friend who was at Nottingham University and she shared a house just the other side of Trent Bridge.

    Brought back some happy memories, thank you!

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