Eugenics and Other Evils
'Eugenics and Other Evils ' Summary
In his political essay, Eugenics and Other Evils, G.K. Chesterton weighs in on this debate, with his usual wit. In his time, eugenics mainly translated into controlling marriages (say, pairing Melania Trump with Slavoj Žižek and hoping to get tall blond children with exceptional talking abilities — or forbidding them to pair lest they beget nincompoop and twitch-riddled gnomes with a lisp instead!). Indeed, it seems the British MPs of the time were considering in earnest the possibility to translate such a project into law. But in Chesterton’s view, the aim of the people who vindicate eugenics “is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children. Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs” (p. 10). A eugenics regulation would have opened the door to all sorts of abuse and segregation against the disadvantaged, the ill, the disabled or simply anyone who opposed or didn’t fall into the normative categories defined by a ruling elite. Eugenics is a way to “nip in the bud” all forms of humanity that do not comply with the standard values, and breed a herd of regimented and docile human cattle.
Book Details
Language
EnglishOriginal Language
EnglishPublished In
1922Genre/Category
Tags/Keywords
Author
Gilbert K. Chesterton
England
Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright,...
More on Gilbert K. ChestertonDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
- Select Speed
Related books
The National Geographic Magazine Vol. 09 by National Geographic Society
National Geographic (formerly the National Geographic Magazine, sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is the long-lived official monthly magazine of the Natio...
Heroines of Fiction by William Dean Howells
This two-volume work includes heroines from the works of Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, Harte, Austen, Edgeworth, Scott, Dickens, Hawthorne, E. Bronte, Thack...
The Early History of the Airplane by Wright brothers
The Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, on 17th December 1903. They were not...
Five Lectures on Blindness by Kate Foley
It contains five speeches by a very enthusiastic teacher who is blind from early childhood herself.
Prejudices, First Series by H.L Mencken
The late war, very unpopular at the start, was “sold” to them, as the advertising phrase has it, by representing it as a campaign for the salvation of...
Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort by Edith Wharton
Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort is composed, in part, from magazine articles by the American writer Edith Wharton on her time in France dur...
Of the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books by Immanuel Kant
This essay of Kant’s on copyright argues that the unlicensed copying of books cannot possibly be permissible, due to the fact that it assumes a consen...
The National Geographic Magazine Vol. 05 by National Geographic Society
National Geographic (formerly the National Geographic Magazine, sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is the long-lived official monthly magazine of the Natio...
How to Tell a Story, and Other Essays by Mark Twain
How to Tell a Story and Other Essays is a series of essays by Mark Twain. In them, he describes his own writing style, attacks the idiocy of a fellow...
An Interpretation of Keats's Endymion by Henry Clement Notcutt
A careful study of Endymion made some ten years ago led to the conclusion that there was more of allegorical significance in the poem than had hithert...
Reviews for Eugenics and Other Evils
No reviews posted or approved, yet...