John C. Wright's Blog, page 169

Eugenics and Other Evils

A reader with the aspiring name Ascendant (who makes the effort to imply, but not very convincingly, he is a baptized Christian) writes in to praise the theory and practice of Eugenics, which he avers can be reconciled with Christianity.

Because the intimate way one must address a brother in Christ differs from the more distant and courteous way one must address a heathen, I will write two replies, one if Ascendant is a Christian, and one if he is not.

Here is the my first answer, my reply if he is a Christian:

“One can be humble before God whilst realizing fully their superior biological endowment …  a good breeder does not let his stock develop inferior traits.”

As one Christian brother to another, I assume the “superior biological endowment” refers to the size of his schlong, which is no doubt of an impressive and virile dimension.

I will pass without comment the insolent contradiction involved between a profession of Christian humility and the description of one’s fellow man made in the image of God, the wretched, poor and weak of the world, as livestock.
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Eugenics and Catholics

A reader with the aspiring name Ascendant (who makes the effort to imply, but not very convincingly, he is a baptized Christian) writes in to praise the theory and practice of Eugenics, which he avers can be reconciled with Christianity.

Because the intimate way one must address a brother in Christ differs from the more distant and courteous way one must address a heathen, I will write two replies, one if Ascendant is a Christian, and one if he is not.

Here is the my first answer, my reply if he is a Christian:

“One can be humble before God whilst realizing fully their superior biological endowment …  a good breeder does not let his stock develop inferior traits.”

As one Christian brother to another, I assume the “superior biological endowment” refers to the size of his schlong, which is no doubt of an impressive and virile dimension.

I will pass without comment the insolent contradiction involved between a profession of Christian humility and the description of one’s fellow man made in the image of God, the wretched, poor and weak of the world, as livestock.
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On the Consolation of Philosophy

This is something of a confession on how I wasted a good deal of my life. It was brought to mind by a reader with the ursine name of Bear. He writes:

When my wife was pregnant with our third and presumably last child, the ob/gyn, with whom we had no problems previously, became cagey. Due to my wife’s age (she is in her forties) he recommended amnioscentesis. When she refused, he wished to do a blood screening. She refused again, because she believed he would push her for an abortion should the child turn out to have some perceived defect. He then ran the tests on some of her regular blood samples anyway. Our son was healthy, so nothing more came of it. Even so, I still had others recommending to me that I push my wife to terminate the pregnancy, for reasons of overpopulation, risks, the fact that I am a poor man, and so on. I would be irresponsible, I was told, to have the child. Kill it, was their message. They never sai: You are poor, let another take your child and raise it as their own. Only: Kill it.

As I read the quotations you cited, I felt ill, thinking of what they would have had me do to my child. I thought of your son, and I could only imagine the emotions this would stir within you.

Let me say something about those emotions, and perhaps my tale will serve as a warning to other.
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Eugenicists and Progressives

A reader in this space expressed surprise that I would list “eugenics” along with  contraception, abortion, euthanasia as a part of the same vague cloud of generally Progressive social movements that include liberal politics and secular humanism.

One must confess that who is a member of which group is a matter of judgment, or even speculation. The metes and bounds are not sharply defined. Nonetheless, I suggest that there are enough famous voices on the secular side of the issue, and sufficiently authoritative voices on the clerical side, to make the matter somewhat unambiguous.

Below are quotes from Malthus, Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Konrad Lorentz, Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw.

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John C. Wright's Patented One Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction

Here is the John C. Wright patented one-session lesson in the mechanics of how to write fiction.

A word of explanation:

I wrote the following to a friend of mine who is a nonfiction writer of some fame and accomplishment, who was toying with the idea of writing fiction. We batted around some ideas and I have been encouraging (read: pestering) him to take up the project seriously.

He wrote back and said that while putting the logical format to a work of nonfiction was clear enough, he was not big on this artistic and poetical stuff. I took it upon myself to show him the logic behind the stuff that dreams are made of.

So here is what I wrote to provoke him to write, and I share it with any and all comers who wish alike to be writers.

For my part, I am eager to share my trade secrets. I do not fear competition. Unlike every other field, my value as a writer goes up, not down, the more competition I have: because more science friction writers means more science fiction readers, a larger field, and more money in the field.

So I think everyone should try their hand at writing. I cannot read my own work for pleasure, after all.

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Victory

A story from Ahram Online:

Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as “human shields”

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

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METROPOLIS -- or Yesterday's Long Lost Tommorow

Today, at the time of this writing, 6 January, is the Feast of the Epiphany, which celebrates the adoration of the Magi, the sorcerer-kings of the East, who had read in the conjunctions of the stars that a new king was born of Jewry, and trekked from the astronomical towers and cryptic libraries of Babylon to find him, beyond expectation, in the hovel of a cabinet maker.

Tradition names this as the last day of the Twelve Days of Christmas, the Twelfth Night, which of old was celebrated with a masquerade, servants dressed as masters, women as men and suchlike. The famed Shakespeare play, where Roselind goes garbed as Ganymede commemorates this cross-dressing antic.

It is therefore a fitting day to discuss the restoration of the 1927 silent film METROPOLIS. It is fitting because the film includes visions as prophetic as anything an astrologer could dream, including a tower fittingly called “Neubabelsberg” or “The New Tower of Babel” and including the Twelfth Night masquerade deception of a machine man dressed as a maiden.

It is fitting finally because Santa Claus left, as part of my rich Xmas loot, my own copy of this film, which I have been eagerly yearning, if not salivating, to own, ever since I heard the rumor of it.

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Christianity is now officially Mean-spirited and Violent

Here is a copy of the Manhattan Declaration, which is a statement of principles asking the American people to return to the traditional view of Marriage and God and the Sanctity of Life. It is about as offensive or controversial as being in favor of motherhood, the Star-Spangled Banner, babies, or apple pie.

However, we live in a day and age, which I call the Kingdom of Mouth-Foaming Christophobia, but which the Holy Father (with much more dignity than yours truly can muster) calls the Culture of Death, where to be in favor of babies is thought to be against the equality of women, and to be in favor of marriage is held, as a matter of law, to be an act of discrimination if not a bigotry akin to race hatred.

Here is a copy of a release from the Manhattan Declaration, explaining that Apple products will not carry an iPhone app allowing people to read and sign it.

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Moebius Transformations — And a Darwinian Snark

Found this elegant visual explanation of projection while asking the Internet to correct my spelling for Moebius.

Looking at this, I am glad I do not live in one of those non-Euclidean universes governed by Cthulhu (you know the ones, where parallel lines diverge, and no plane figures are congruent with any others of differing sizes).

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Quote of the Day!

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. [...] A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities — but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.” ~ Winston Churchill