Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Natural Eugenics and Artificial Eugenics

According to Darwin and a few others, Sexual Selection is a variety of Natural Selection, in which the seeking of optimal characteristics is the motivation for the choice of a partner in the reproductive process.  Hence, Natural Selection can also be termed Natural Eugenics.  Now, this drive is a Species drive, even if it is superficially interpreted as a sexual 'like' of an individual member of the Species.  Thus, it has more in common with the Unconscious of Schopenhauer than with that of Freud.  Now, the term Artificial Selection is sometimes used as a contrast to Natural Selection, so, likewise, it can also be called Artificial Eugenics, a contemporary example of which is the purchase by a woman from a sperm bank based on some of the characteristics of its donor.  However, the Natural-Artificial distinction is not clear.  For, the capacity to revert to 'artificial' means can itself be the expression of a Species drive, in which case Artificial Eugenics is only a special case of Natural Eugenics.

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