Two Scientifically Clueless Professors Float The Idea Of Genetic Communism: Babies Randomly Assigned To Couples At Birth
At first, you wonder if this is a Swiftian "Modest Proposal." But, no, these are actual professors writing this and they seem to be doing a genuine muse on -- yes, get this: the notion that babies be randomly allocated as a way to end racism.
Of course, this is not going to happen -- not without an authoritarian state -- but with the erosion of our freedoms on so many angles, and the general lack of interest and lack of interest in doing anything about it, we are at least more pointed in that direction than we've ever been.
The authors:
Howard Rachlin
is the Emeritus Research Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University. His most recent book is The Escape of the Mind (2014).
Escape of the mind? More like "escape from modern science." From the Oxford listing of the book, it:
Proposes a unique philosophical approach, teleological behaviorism, that places the mind wholly outside of the body...
In other words, it seeks to bring back Cartesian dualism, the notion that the mind and body are separate -- despite a host of research in recent years showing bidirectionality (back and forth) between the body and mind, with what happens to the body affecting the mind and vice versa.
Marvin Frankel
Marvin Frankel obtained a PhD in psychology at the University of Chicago. He is currently a professor of psychology at Sarah Lawrence College. He has published numerous articles on clinical psychology.
Rachlin and Franklin wank off thusly at Aeon on the notion of randomly assigned babies as a way to end racism:
You may argue that genetic bias is indelible in human nature. Social mixing would not only disturb the comfort of this fatalistic attitude, but also use genetic chauvinism for ends beyond mere economic equality, providing grounds for a compassion that goes beyond the wellbeing of our immediate families. Since any man might be your biological brother, any woman your biological sister, concern for them would have to be expressed by a concern for a common good.A second effect of social mixing would be to generate a strong interest in the health and wellbeing of expectant mothers, which would ultimately translate into an interest in the social and biological welfare of everyone. Since any child might end up our own, we would provide the social and educational environments that would best enhance their development. Ghettos and slums would be an eyesore for us all. Poverty, drug, and alcohol addiction are already everyone's problem, but this fact would be more meaningful than it is now. The child of that addict might be our biological child. Every victim of a drive-by shooting might be a member of our genetic family. Each of us would see the link between our fate and the fate of others.
Third, the superficial connection between colour and culture would be severed. Racism would be wiped out. Racial ghettos would disappear; children of all races would live in all neighbourhoods. Any white child could have black parents and any black child could have white parents. Imagine the US president flanked by his or her black, white, Asian and Hispanic children. Imagine if social mixing had been in effect 100 years ago in Germany, Bosnia, Palestine or the Congo. Racial, religious, and social genocide would not have happened.
Fourth, the plan accords with John Rawls's concept of justice, introducing a welcome element of randomness into the advantages that each child can expect. At the present time, if you are a child of Bill Gates, you will have not only a genetic advantage but also a material one. Under a regime of social mixing, any baby could find herself the child of Bill Gates and enjoy the opportunity of optimally exercising whatever her genetic gifts might be. As for Bill Gates's biological child, he might find himself the son of a barber, but with his natural genetic gifts he might make the most of a less than optimal educational environment.
There are, of course, many natural objections to this idea. It will be said that one of the joys of marriage is for lovers to see the product of their love. To this we say that the product of one's love lies not in the genetic production of a human being but in the mutual cultivation of the life of a child. But isn't it true that either the genetic match between parent and child or a bond formed between mother and child in the womb makes each parent uniquely fit to raise his or her own child and less fit to raise another child? The evidence for such idiosyncrasy is slight. True, adopted children tend to have more mental and physical problems than non-adopted ones. But children are often adopted at relatively advanced ages, after they have formed close attachments with caregivers. Children adopted during their first year are at no disadvantage relative to non-adopted children.
It will be objected that in defusing genetic chauvinism we will be giving up our only secular moral constraint - which translates into the fear that under social mixing people will be as indifferent to their own real children as they are now to the biological children of others. But there are no grounds for such deep pessimism. Look at the behaviour of adoptive parents now, or look at the practice of surrogate motherhood. The many apparently infertile parents who adopt a baby only to have a biological child subsequently do not tend to reject the first child.
It may be objected that under social mixing cultural diversity would disappear. But this would only be true for diversity that depends on the shape of your features and the colour of your skin. This is the kind of diversity that racists wish to maintain. The cultural diversity we care about - of language, food, dress, religion, music, speech - would be preserved no less than it is now.
It may be objected that parents' desire to have their own biological children is so strong that they would be blind to the public good, that they would have babies and bring them up in secret. But those babies would not have birth certificates, they would not be citizens, they could not vote, serve in public office and so forth. If discovered, the children might be taken away after the strong bonds of psychological (as opposed to biological) parenthood had been formed. Few Americans would risk these penalties.
What kind of sick people think of this, except as the plot of a dystopian novel?
The end of the piece:
Genetic chauvinism lives on very strongly in our culture. Modern fiction and cinema often present adoptees' searches for biological parents and siblings in a highly positive light. The law in child custody cases is biased towards biological parents over real parents. You might claim that this bias itself is 'natural'. It is so common as to seem part of our biological makeup. But subjugation of women was also common in primitive human cultures and remains so in many cultures today. Unnatural as it sounds, social mixing promises many advantages. If we are not willing to adopt it, we should consider carefully why. And if naturalness is the key, we should ask ourselves why on this matter, ungoverned nature should trump social cohesion.
A commenter at the site, Damien Quinn, points out:
Your proposal, has at it's heart, a basic contradiction. If "genetic chauvinism" is such a minimal factor in family relationships that sundering such bonds would be reasonably consequence free, why on earth would "genetic chauvinism" create a wider social bond.You discuss the relationship between adoptive parents and adopted children. There are many, many adopted children in my extended family, and what you say about the bonding process is true, to a point*, however none of them seem to have any greater than average concern for the welfare of people in the wider society on the basis that they may, possibly, be genetically related. If your proposal carried weight you would expect they would. Have you found evidence to suggest this is so?
*Here's something you may have missed in your consideration of adoption, generally speaking, parents do form a bond with the child while it is in the womb. This is clear from the grief clearly suffered following miscarriage and the emotional trauma associated with abortion. Where adoptive parents are generally as excited as expectant parents when they meet their child for the first time, and thus the desire to bond is mutual, under your proposal the parents would be grieving their lost infant upon introduction to their randomly allocated adopted child. Bonding in these circumstances would be strained.
Finally, social exclusion and prejudice are not particularly tied to skin colour or physical features, those things just act as markers, overt signals, to provide snap judgements about whether an individual in "in-group" or "out-group". In singular race societies, prejudice still exists, the markers are simply refined.
So no, it probably wouldn't achieve a society without prejudice and even if such an outcome was absolutely 100% sure to follow, it would create trauma for 100% of the population to save trauma in 15 or 20%, which makes no sense.
I talk in my recent TED talk, "The surprising self-interest in being kind to strangers," about possible ways to diminish the "in group"/"out group" "us"/"them" outcomes from living in a vast, stranger-filled society.
Another commenter, Zach Cochran, writes:
I think we've already begun half of this experiment where so many children (especially poor children) are randomly assigned fathers. I don't think those results do credit to your hypothesis.I'd also note, in that light, that you continually mention "parents", plural. Do you see how you are making some rather ridiculous assumptions? Do you plan to make divorce illegal, or require genetic identification of parents for this swap to ensure the right "parents" are assigned?
The scientific evidence is also clear about heritable traits and their impact on outcomes. I know, I know, science is racist, blah blah blah. But impulsivity, intelligence, athletic ability, and so forth, are all heritable. How does your big old baby blender solve this? (It doesn't.)
Cool Utopian ideas like these, based in no real world experience and no real science, are why you goofballs in the Ivy League do so much harm to the rest of us. I have a proposal: what if we assigned college professorships completely at random? Dr. Rachlin, you can teach Psychology at Idaho State. Dr. Frankel, let's assign you to Tiffin University, in Ohio. Let me know how that works out.
These are professors who are ignorant about vast quantities of research, just starting with how people give gifts and do kind acts disproportionately keyed to levels of genetic relatedness.
And the late Margo Wilson, with Martin Daly, did research on how stepfathers are more likely to abuse or kill children (those not genetically theirs). From the Wiki link (because it explains their work and theory quickly and clearly:
Evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson propose that the Cinderella effect is a direct consequence of the modern evolutionary theory of inclusive fitness, especially parental investment theory. They argue that human child rearing is so prolonged and costly that "a parental psychology shaped by natural selection is unlikely to be indiscriminate." According to them, "research concerning animal social behaviour provide a rationale for expecting parents to be discriminative in their care and affection, and more specifically, to discriminate in favour of their own young."
Though we can love and raise a child who is not ours, we are genetically vested in acting in ways that foster the passing on of our genes. The ignorance of that -- and the vast and growing body of research reflecting that -- is breathtaking.
via @clairlemon
Except researchers have found negative opinions of other races to increase in diverse neighborhoods. We are much more tolerant of otherness when we dont have to live with it.
Anecdotally, i was a flaming liberal until i lived in east austin and saw, firsthand, how poor people choose to be poor. Theyd knock on our door, and ask to run an extention cord to power their large flatscreen, because their electric bill didnt get paid. Theyd run it past the 5 pickups they had out front. Meanwhile, we still had a box tv, and an old kia, but we had electric.
Momof4 at March 18, 2017 7:43 AM
Beyond all the obvious problems with this proposal, consider all the couples spending upwards of 100K to have a 'child of their own' rather than adopt
lujlp at March 18, 2017 8:29 AM
I cannot help but notice that both of the authors have traditionally masculine first names, and are thus, I assume, male. They both also take relatively little recognition of how much many (if not all) women bond to their biological children in utero, as commenter Damien Quinn noted. Coincidence?
I walk to work now, but when I lived farther away, I drove a 1999 Capt. William Kidd.
L. Beau Macaroni at March 18, 2017 9:06 AM
Such an erudite exposition of a childish idea. And it's 2000 year-old pap. From the Wikipedia summary of Plato's "The Republic":
"In Books V-VI the abolition of riches among the guardian class (not unlike Max Weber's bureaucracy) leads controversially to the abandonment of the typical family, and as such no child may know his or her parents and the parents may not know their own children. Socrates tells a tale which is the "allegory of the good government". No nepotism, no private goods. The rulers assemble couples for reproduction, based on breeding criteria. Thus, stable population is achieved through eugenics and social cohesion is projected to be high because familial links are extended towards everyone in the City. Also the education of the youth is such that they are taught of only works of writing that encourage them to improve themselves for the state's good, and envision (the) god(s) as entirely good, just, and the author(s) of only that which is good."
Maybe we're being baited to see who signs on to the idea. Professors have played practical jokes before.
Canvasback at March 18, 2017 9:32 AM
While some parents adopt out of a big heart, some adopt because they can't have children and some for the social service payments. Most people will never consider adoption. It is hard enough to raise kids who look like you and have your genes. It passes the point of being worth it to raise other's kids. Plus, read the accounts of slaves when their kids were taken away, how they grieved--these idiots want that to happen to EVERY mother who gives birth. The birth rate would plummet if mothers knew their kid would be taken away.
cc at March 18, 2017 9:46 AM
" It is hard enough to raise kids who look like you and have your genes."
Exactly.
Amy Alkon at March 18, 2017 10:00 AM
Has this motherfucker ever and I mean ever been to a continent called South America?
A place where where it's not uncommon to not look anything like your parents race? Or your brothers and sisters race? A place that is a magnitude more incredibly racist than any western country I've ever been to.
I'm not kidding. Latin-Americans have no concept of race because we really can't yet we do have a concept of caste based on color and we use it to do things that nobody in the old school south would ever dream of. Latino Obama would be the first one out curb stomping and exterminating latinos he personally deemed too black.
"Except researchers have found negative opinions of other races to increase in diverse neighborhoods"
There are studies saying the opposite and studies confirming that. I think people are asking the wrong question.
Personally as an ethnic person that's been all over I have found that people don't care as long as you adapt to their cultural values and are polite, clean cut and have some self-awareness.
Well as long as you aren't dark-skinned.
You touched on my personal experience though. Poor people of any race are incredibly unlikeable with a lack of self-awareness and mistreatment of everything (property, children, pets, food, public spaces). I really think that's where racism comes from in this country.
Ppen at March 18, 2017 10:02 AM
There are even adaptations for 'kin recognition in plants'. (Search that phrase in Google Scholar.) Absent the presence of environmental cues triggering kinship identification adaptations in parents, parents would likely shift trade-offs between mating effort and parenting effort more toward the former, meaning more divorces for example. Could it be that this is already happening, what with pre-school reducing hours of contact and so on? (Also Google Scholar search professor Deborah Lieberman at Miami if so inclined.)
harpers at March 18, 2017 10:37 AM
It's all BS and I don't give them credit for making a joke.
Those that do not already care for themselves, their offspring, or the birth mothers will do or have done any of the following.
"... concern for them would have to be expressed by a concern for a common good."
"...generate a strong interest in the health and wellbeing of expectant mothers, which would ultimately translate into an interest in the social and biological welfare of everyone."
" Each of us would see the link between our fate and the fate of others."
"... the superficial connection between colour and culture would be severed.
Bob in Texas at March 18, 2017 10:54 AM
Racism is pretty small potatos compared to living in the kind of totalitarian state necessary to impliment such brutal scheme.
The only kids who would be reshuffled would be those of the powerless, or your political enemies,
(and if you think the people running things would willingly throw their own offspring into this socialist meat grinder, you need to be institutionalized)
Articles like this are extremely valuable though. They expose psychologists and academic psychology for the nitwitted social justice fakery that the field has become.
Isab at March 18, 2017 11:13 AM
Isab: "They expose psychologists and academic psychology for the nitwitted social justice fakery that the field has become."
I think these people live in a world of abstractions. Communism is good in this abstract world because it reduces inequality when implemented perfectly by selfless rulers. No need to look at the awful track record in the real world. There is this abstract patriarchy concept, and no need to actually document it working. Men are bad: but just ignore those guys who work hard, support their families, love their wives & kids, hold doors for people. All this data and stuff is just a distraction from the pure world of abstraction. Plato would be proud--he hated democracy too.
cc at March 18, 2017 1:58 PM
"I think these people live in a world of abstractions. Communism is good in this abstract world"
Of course they do, but that is really beside the point. Real science avoids this kind of navel gazing which is why no one takes anything psychologists say seriously anymore.
They are so far down the road of abstract speculation about stuff that cant be tested in the real world, it is worse than useless. They tarnish the entire field of enquiry.
Isab at March 18, 2017 4:22 PM
> Has this motherfucker ever and
> I mean ever been to a continent
> called South America?
Yes, Pen. He was making his own meat, the way they do down there when they're pretending to be urban and sophisticated and competent.
The thing about the liberal presumption that all of the world's human conduct is just clay for their modeling is that their impulses are so quintessentially childish.
Stolen Generation notwithstanding, it's a reliable and perhaps inviolable truth (perhaps most certainly in the United States) that if you tried to take people's babies to swap out the colors into some eye-pleasing rainbow, their parents would shoot you in the head.
I'm okay with that.
Crid at March 18, 2017 4:34 PM
Progs, including feminists, are anti-humanity incarnate.
Jeff Guinn at March 18, 2017 9:08 PM
Ahem...
GenerationS.
Sorry. That's worth getting right.
It was going on well into my adolescence, because as we all know, Lefteez Bring Teh Luv™:
Crid at March 18, 2017 9:17 PM
...And honestly, can you IMAGINE a more horrific place to take children than into the 1970's??????
???
Kidding! Har!
Totally trying to bring a little levity to this reflection of a monstrous corner of Western Civ...
(Hee heh!)
Because it could certainly happen again.
Crid at March 18, 2017 9:24 PM
I couldn't even get through that... are these guys total idiots??
Take a woman who has just spent 9 months in some combination of puking, waddling, being swollen, and/or peeing herself to bring a child into this world. THEN she spends hours painfully pushing that child OUT of her body... and right then you are going to say "we'll just take this baby you've incubated - here's another one."
Some women will be too tired to do much... but the rest are quite likely to commit homicide.
This is, quite possibly, the single most idiotic thing I have ever heard - and I've hung out with young kids who think up things like flying toilets.
Shannon at March 19, 2017 6:13 AM
I scanned a bit more (shaking my head the whole time) and noticed the part about "any woman could be your sister" etc.
So, under this weird world they've created, would it be ok to marry your sibling - since they would most certainly NOT be related to you, but you'd need to check a registry or something to make sure that Sam from accounting isn't actually your brother?
Shannon at March 19, 2017 6:18 AM
Dear authors: Your evil is perhaps only exceeded by your stupidity. Or perhaps vice versa.
Jeff at March 19, 2017 7:18 AM
I'm guessing these guys never read "The Giver."
bkmale at March 20, 2017 9:43 AM
Speaking of "The Giver," Lois Lowry turned 80 today. (Incredibly, I can't find any tributes!)
_____________________________________________
While some parents adopt out of a big heart, some adopt because they can't have children and some for the social service payments. Most people will never consider adoption. It is hard enough to raise kids who look like you and have your genes. It passes the point of being worth it to raise other's kids.
-cc
____________________________________________
Especially when there have been so many improvements in treating infertility. From what I hear, because of that, couples who are even willing to adopt healthy BABIES are not as common as they used to be (a very sad situation for older foster kids), even though single women who give up babies for adoption are not as common as they used to be either. (Of course, they were typically forced into it, before the 1970s, and many of those women never got over it, which is why even women today who didn't plan on getting pregnant, but give birth, so often opt for single motherhood. Very often, too, it's the poorest of single mothers who refuse to choose adoption, since a baby is the only positive thing they own.)
Btw, one thing I find weird about pro-natalists is that while you can count on at least some of them, now and forever, to label childfree couples as "horribly selfish," you practically NEVER hear them use that term when it comes to infertile couples who WANTED children but who refuse to adopt. I strongly suspect the real idea is that it's wrong and "selfish" to want to have sex without having babies - after all, priests and nuns don't get called selfish!
In 2012, I said, elsewhere:
Reminds me of Judy Blume's 1981 book "Tiger Eyes." In that, the girl's 40ish aunt and her husband say they "tried everything," for years, to have a kid, and the girl wonders why they never adopted a baby, but she doesn't ask.
Blume's main reason for their not adopting, of course, was that the aunt's childlessness helps to drive the plot. However, I finally figured out a likely reason: The middle-aged, control-freak relatives don't really approve of anything from the "outside" or anything unpredictable that they may not be able to control. (As if reproduction were really that different!) It's also noteworthy that while they connect with their colleagues and those who share their interests, they don't really seem to be friends with them - they only seem to connect strongly with their relatives. Even then, they can't allow themselves so much as a sense of humor.
lenona at March 20, 2017 2:59 PM
A place where where it's not uncommon to not look anything like your parents race? Or your brothers and sisters race? A place that is a magnitude more incredibly racist than any western country I've ever been to.
I'm not kidding. Latin-Americans have no concept of race because we really can't yet we do have a concept of caste based on color and we use it to do things that nobody in the old school south would ever dream of. Latino Obama would be the first one out curb stomping and exterminating latinos he personally deemed too black.
-Ppen
____________________________________
Somehow, I never heard of those problems - would you please point me toward some good books or movies that might give me a better understanding of racism in South America? (Aside from the tribes in Brazil and Venezuela who are struggling to maintain their traditional way of life; it's easy to imagine how and why THEY get horribly mistreated.) Offhand, the only movies I remember seeing were from the 1970s - like "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands" and "Bahia."
lenona at March 20, 2017 3:05 PM
"would you please point me toward some good books or movies that might give me a better understanding of racism in South America?"
It would be quicker to visit Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo and go out on the town. You'll figure it out tuit de suite, I guarantee.
If you're not kidnapped first. Seriously. Watch your back traveling there.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 20, 2017 3:53 PM
I AM aware that Argentina is probably well over 95% white, so clearly that would not be a country that's sensitive to people who aren't white.
But I was wondering more about countries like Brazil, which is only half-white, IIRC.
lenona at March 20, 2017 4:26 PM
Dennis Prager has declared John Lennon's "Imagine" to be the de facto anthem of the left.
Turning children over to "experts" to raise seems to be fairly popular in science fiction. Heinlein imagined societies where babies were raised in "creches", and I'm reading a series where babies are taken at birth to be raised in "maturias" and raised to be honorable members of an honorable society.
Then you have explicit dystopias like Brave New World.
karl Lembke at March 21, 2017 8:15 AM
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