rey Yondji Dr. Thom Young English 102 May 19, 2014 From a Utopian Vision to a Dystopian Society I believe everyone has an ideal of a perfect society. No one wants to live in a society where there is violence and evil. In my opinion, a utopian society would consist of very few government mandated laws and a desirable constitution. People would get along, and everything would be perfect. In order to achieve such an ideal, people must do anything in their power to manifest what they have envisioned. Human nature, like any other animal’s nature, causes us to become competitive, especially with each other. In practice, the attempt to have a perfect society leads to the creation of a dystopian society where people are unhappy, afraid, and not treated fairly. A utopian society can be sought through two methods: eugenics and genetic engineering. With eugenics, a society attempts to improve the human body. In gene therapy or genetic engineering, the goal is to replace bad genes in someone who has a genetic condition with ones that are good. Eugenics is for the good of society, and genetic engineering is for the good of the individual. Both techniques are supposed to cure disease, create a better quality of life, and improve society as a whole. The term eugenics is derived from the Greek “eu,” meaning good or well, and “genos,” meaning offspring. Conventional eugenics, or intentional selective breeding for improved genetic traits, has been performed on crops and livestock for thousands of years (Hix, Laura). The term eugenics as it pertains to humans was first coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883. Eugenics gained popularity throughout the late 19th and early 20th... ... middle of paper ... ...le’s personalities are from their experiences in the world. Nature shouldn’t be messed with. No one can be perfect because there is always the slightest flaw in anything. If everyone and everything was perfect, everything would be boring and people wouldn’t strive to do the unexpected things in life. We are flawed by nature and we will always live in a flawed world. If we reach our definition of perfection only to find out it falls short of someone else’s, then have we failed? It is easy to create such a world in fiction, yet not achievable in reality. We as humans will never live in a society where perfection exists; someone will find a way to go against the system. Our way of living is to try our best to overcome each imperfection, but we cannot get rid of it completely. I believe God made us this way so that we would remember there is a power greater than us.
The eugenics movement started in the early 1900s and was adopted by doctors and the general public during the 1920s. The movement aimed to create a better society through the monitoring of genetic traits through selective heredity. Over time, eugenics took on two different views. Supporters of positive eugenics believed in promoting childbearing by a class who was “genetically superior.” On the contrary, proponents of negative eugenics tried to monitor society’s flaws through the sterilization of the “inferior.”
Society will never be perfect. Equality will never be sustained. A dystopian society will always have corruption of government. Corruption is present all around the world but is swept under the rug. Abridgment of human rights happens every day in our country or another. Oppression is the cause for all the sadness in our world. There will be always selfishness in dystopia. One must sink for another to rise, but “good doesn’t mean good for everyone. It means worst for someone.”
Eugenics- Eugenics is a term coined by Francis Galton in 1883 and it is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population. This idea that one could trace hereditary problems and find solutions for them gained significant ground in addressing certain societal issues such as poor people and welfare. Two types of eugenics emerged, positive and negative, but the U.S., negative eugenics was preferred. This is the idea of destroying defectives and degenerates from the population to promote and preserve the fittest, a very social Darwinist idea. This is important to sexuality because many homosexuals were sterilized, thus creating the stigma that homosexuality was a disease that could be cured.
The eugenics movement was a period of time when it was believe that the genes of your father and mother gave rise to any and all traits, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, behavioral, and moral. Essentially, eugenics established that all of a persons appearance, skill, and potential was rooted in your genes.
Utopian societies are often thought to be impractical based upon the human idea that no one person or thing can ever be completely perfect. Because this idea of perfection is practically impossible to achieve, various controlled techniques need to be used in order to create a utopia. Aldous Huxley states in his foreword to Brave New World that the creation of a perfect utopia is quite possible if we as humans “refrain from blowing ourselves to smithereens” in attempts at creating social stability (xiv). Huxley’s Brave New World “depicts a World State where there is absolute social stability made possible by government-controlled research in biology and psychology” (Woiak 4). While the existence of this utopian
The modern day eugenics movement all started with Francis Galton who, in 1869, proposed that procreation between the upper class men and the wealthy women could lead to a superior race. This led to the American Eugenics Society being founded in 1926, a society that wanted restricted access for immigrants of inferior genetic makeup into America as well as the right to sterilize the insane, retarded and epileptic within the country. This was with a view of furthering humanity and improving the gene pool by preventing the poorly endowed (genetically speaking) from continuing their blight on the world.
Perkins, H.F.. A Decade of Progress in Eugenics: Scientific Papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics. 1993 Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Company.
The beginning of the Eugenics Movement all started at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. The United States coined the term Eugenics from Great Britain in the early 1900s. In the year 1910, a man by the name of Charles B. Davenport founded the Eugenics Records Office (ERO). The funds for this building came from Mrs. E.H. Harriman (“Eugenics: Did the Eugenics Movement Benefit the United States?”). The movement was initially meant to purify the Gene Pool. One of the ways this was done was through immigration control. The mixing of genes (mixing of different races) was extremely frowned upon for the unknown outcomes that would eventually surface. One issue that was very high priority was “feeblemindedness” within the gene pool; the ERO wanted to remove this mutated gene to make the non-feebleminded people prosper, making them the “strongest” gene carriers (“Learning from History: Long Island’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, circa 1920.”). The bulk of the movement happened within three decades, in order to start the change towards fitter families (“Learning from History: Long Island’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, circa 1920.”).
Ben Franklin himself said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
In order to accomplish its goal of producing healthier people, eugenics embraced two goals. First, it attempted to improve certain heritable qualities with the human species through selective breeding. Second, it prevented other "undesirable" qualities from recurring by either restricting reproduction or through direct removal from the gene pool.
The Web. 27 May 2014. The "Eugenics" - "The. Dictionary.com. The World of the. Dictionary.com, n.d. -. Web.
The term eugenics was coined in the late 19th century. Its goal was to apply the breeding practices and techniques used in plants and animals to human reproduction. Francis Galton stated in his Essays in Eugenics that he wished to influence "the useful classes" in society to put more of their DNA in the gene pool. The goal was to collect records of families who were successful by virtue of having three or more adult male children who have gain superior positions to their peers. His view on eugenics can best be summarized by the following passage:
Human sacrifice killings is a horrific but devastatingly true reality for some that come too close to the jaws of the Matamoros cult. People usually think of a utopia as an amusement park or just an amazing dream. The dictionary version is often defined as “any visionary system of political or social perfection” (“Utopia”). A dystopia is quite the opposite though. Think of your worst nightmare and that is exactly what a dystopia is. The professional definition is “a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding” (“Dystopia”). As it goes in 1984, the whole book is based on a dystopian society. Citizens have horrible lives which leave them dehumanized by the central government. They are also being under
The concept of Utopia has been around for many years, tracing back to ancient Greece. The word for Utopia came from the Greek words ou and topos, meaning no place. Even from the beginning, the concept of Utopia was not seemed to be possible.
Utopia Dystopia Many articles and novels challenges the idea about a utopia. Although everyone lives in a futuristic restricted lifestyle, there are some people who can’t handle that way of life. There are many arguments about utopias, whether or not they can exist or not. Three reasons why utopias can’t exist is that there is no way a perfect society can be achieved, utopias degrade over time from their decisions, and that there are hazards living in a utopia. First of all, perfect society always looks good to any human eye, but in reality, there is no way it can be achieved.