posted
My mind works in strange ways when its being creative.
I've come up with a villianous organization, well, I think its villianous.
The Darwin Interventionist Society.
Their goal is to improve the humen genome by facilitating the removal of unwanted traits--particularly stupidity--from the viable gene pool.
In other words, the quietly assist stupid people out of reprodcutive possibilities.
Some of their schemes so far---Selling "enhancement" medication over the internet that is laced with sterility drugs. If you are stupid enough to think you can get "large and in charge" by a pill over the internet, they think you are stupid enough to be kicked out of the pool.
Though Cell Phones do not cause brain tumors, they have arranged for the installation of RF Amplifiers in the head rests of most automobiles. That way if you talk often on the phone while driving, your brain is microwaved.
I'm working on a plot, involving a reporter or policeman who is uncovering their plots, and must decide to join or destroy them.
I need some more good DIS schemes though.
(Has this group been around long? They are the origins behind the phrase, "Man, you have been DIS'ed.")
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Ylouo could make it ironice..have them be the people who hand out the "Darwin Awards" every year, so that no one will take accusations seriously if their threat is uncovered.... Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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As someday it may happen that a victim must be found, I've got a little list, I've got a little list Of society offenders who might well be underground, and who never would be missed, who never would be missed...
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
They've been around since the American Eugenics movement had to go "underground" after the atrocities of the Nazi regime discredited all such overt methods of gene-pool cleaning.
The other things they've done:
- work to eliminate motorcycle helmet laws through their front organization ABATE.
- foster mandatory testing in schools so they can get longitudinal data on kids.
- implement state lotteries.
- working through various Native American government councils, they set up casinos and tax-free cigarette sales.
- talked OSC into adding a "Books, Films, Food and Culture" section to his official website.
Hey!
- they pick up hitchhikers and sterilize them. Anyone stupid enough to hitchhike these days should never be allowed to breed!
- they invented RPG video games
- Promoted privatizing Social Security so they can have an ongoing gauge of who makes stupid or smart investment decisions.
posted
Fund people condemning chemotherapy and promoting homeopathic cancer cures. Start rumors about harmful side effects of vaccines.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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My hisband once suggested adding contraceptives to tobacco products, because anyone stupid enough to smoke should not be able to reproduce.
Posts: 2711 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Cool idea. Here's what came to mind for me.
They predate Darwin. In fact, they were pissed at him because he was either 1) a defector from their group bent on achieving fame or 2) someone who came up with evolution independently who spoiled the secret knowledge they'd been working under. In the turmoil of this, the dominant faction came out as the Eugenicists. They were major forces behind democracy, market capitalism. The current crop is haunted by the Holocoust, some because of the sheer human tragedy, but some only because of the loss of valued genetic lines. Most of them are obsessed with the Olympics and know an ungodly amount of trivia about it. As a joke (or because he specifically modeled it after them) they informally refer to themselves as the Second Foundation, ala Isaac Asimov.
posted
To make them at all interesting, they need to be going for something more than smart, strong, fast. If they're dedicated to survival, maybe they want to breed people shorter to consume less resources (Vonnegut did something interesting with this in Slapstick).
It doesn't matter what the actual desired trait is, just make it something non-obvious.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I thought the best way to eliminate smoking was for one out of each ten thousand cigarettes to cause a smoker to completely combust, leaving nothing but a wisp of smoke and a small pile of calcium-rich ash. Chances are still good that would-be smokers will, at some point in their life, see somebody light up, take a drag, and then flare up with a blast of heat and flame and then ... be gone. I think the sight of that would cure you of ANY desire to smoke.
By the way, stupidity is bred into the human genome precisely because it IS useful. Without stupidity, how would you ever find teenagers willing to go off alone when they KNOW a madman with an axe is killing people in the neighborhood?
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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With all the respect I owe you, mister Card, if watching her wife die slowly and painfully from cancer due to smoking didn't cure my father from his will to smoke, then what you suggest won't either. Cigarettes are a drug, easy to begin with, hard to end with.
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
The old eugenic's movement being driven underground -- and coming to realize that breeding for Kornbluth's MarchingMorons until they became the voting majority would be more useful to the upper class -- would work to explain the past 37years.
If anyone wants a serious discussion of this issue, I highly recommend Stephen Jay Gould. Eugenics logic is very appealing to folks with just a bit of knowledge of biology and evolution, but Gould has, in a number of places, systematically disemboweled the idea. I especially liked his The Mismeasure of Man, but I think he's covered this more than once (arguing against racism, for example).
And now back to your regularly scheduled fluff.
As an ex-smoker who has FINALLY reached the stage where the smell of cigarettes burning nearby is no longer even remotely pleasant to me, I have to say that yes, they contain powerful addictive agents. Once someone is hooked, it's very hard for them to free themselves from the addiction. Not impossible, of course, and easier for some than others. But I have to agree that if the chances were estimated at about 1:10,000, a lot of smokers wouldn't quit.
Some kids might not start. But I'm not so sure about that either. But then, I work in traffic safety and nothing about teen risk-taking surprises me much anymore.
Ah!!! Now here's a good one. Maybe this group invented MTV and the whole "focus on youth" cultural trend. The logic being that eliminating stupid teens also saves money, but it's sort of self-funding and (mostly) gets them before they've had a chance to breed (much).
Of course, you'd have to posit that our youth culture is somehow destructive. Hmm...
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
They also sell guns in crime ridden areas, but guns that don't shoot. Their thinking, "If you are stupid enough to enter a fire fight without making sure your weapon fires, you don't deserve to breed."
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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What is stupidity? I think that most people will agree that stupidity has very little to do with intelligence. Some of the most deeply stupid people I've known (evidence by doing truly stupid things with their lives) are also some of the smartest.
Posts: 751 | Registered: Apr 2005
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OR...it's the home of the movement. It's where stupid people--seeking freedom--come to die. And those who have survived the culling that was early NH are the prizes of the movement.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Note that this is to be humorous. You cannot genetically delete stupidity because being stupid in not genetic, its a fact of the human condition.
Never Underestimate the Power and Beauty of Human Stupidity.
Perhaps that is this groups arch nemises, the power of the stupid.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
They could sell doors, clearly labled "Pull", that discharged a lethally intense blast of electricity when pushed.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Why eliminate stupid people? Do we need PHD's to sweep the floors, pick the crops and be Infantrymen? It would be more efficient to isolate very intellegent people breed them with each other, cull any children who show recessives (by giving them to John Tesh fans) and produce a group of truely brilliant people. It only takes one Ubber Genius to move things along the rest are unemployable layabouts.
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I was in a restaurant the other day and the door labled "PUSH" opened inward.
Anyway, if we're going to go for eugenics, what we really need to worry about isn't stupidity, it's health. We have a VERY high genetic load in our society because unhealthy people stay alive to reproduce. One of the reasons I don't want kids is I don't want to pass my broken and unhealthy genes onto the next generation.
The world can live with stupid people. And I for one would give up a significant number of IQ points to be "whole".
quote: Why eliminate stupid people? Do we need PHD's to sweep the floors, pick the crops and be Infantrymen?
This is an extremely ignorant and insensitive thing to say.
All humour aside, two of the smartest people I've ever known have at one time either swept floors or jumped out of an airplane with a gun. The first (a janitor) was a political exile from Iraq who advised President Bush on Kurdish relations prior to the Iraqi war. (Please no wise-cracks about what a great job he did. I see the humour in it, but only in the cruelest way).
My point is that a job or task doesn't define a persons intelligence. Making the assumption that it does only pre-qualifies you to sweep my floors.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
I worked at a local amusement park in my teens, selling those glorious games of chanc--er--skill. You put down your quarter and try to win a stuffed animal.
I was the barker.
That's where I met my wife.
We all would get together and laugh about the stupid people who would be standing in front of a sign displaying the cost to play, and ask us "How much?"
We thought they were soooooo stupid.
Till the first visit me and my wife made to the park after we quit. She knew that I knew the tricks to the games, so she walked up to one and said, "How much?"
The attendant looked at her strangly, and pointed to the sign directly in front of her that said fifty cents.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I once had a woman sitting in front of a window ask me if it was sunny outside. My silence caused her to ask me again...
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That is a truly cool idea.
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Dan!
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