How Not To Blog ?

Is the debate on whether or not requiring a license to be a parent still closed? Why would The Asshole Family need a license or permit for fishing, driving, bicycling, camping, boating, hunting, but be able to have as many damn kids (most likely also to be either assholes or dysfunctional) as they want? If a parent is a child abuser, molester, drug addict, etc., they can bear as many children as their houses can hold, and even stick some in a family member's house. Maybe one day the kid(s) will be taken from their home by DCFS if the parents are deemed to be unfit, and put into some other home where their chances of being directly or indirectly abused is also high. But why allow unfit parents to make more humans in the first place?

Selective breeding? Yes. Is it right? Probably not in that context. But why close the discussion before it even opens?

This is a stupid idea. It's stupid because it would never fly in today's society. I bring this up because it is interesting to think about other programs, harmless and for the better, that also would not fly in today's society. And harmful ones that do fly.

Two examples would be a class on Friendship and a class on Social Skills. They are what you think they are and would be held in school. Not "taught" in the traditional sense, but explored. A school would most assuredly resurrect its dead sexual education class or fine arts program sooner than it would even think about a class on how to work within society. Are not people skills much more important than spending 2 weeks discussing who Magellan was and where he went?

A lot of people in this country seem to wonder why anti-social behavoir is on the uptick. But where do children learn behavior that's beneficial to society? Why would Sally have a grasp of algebraic concepts but no idea why being honest to others is a good idea? (No, she isn't learning it at home, which is the usual answer.)

We live in a society that is already considering selective genetic breeding of humans. Some laboratories are actively pursuing it as a business model. Science gets away with a lot because most people are too stupid to grasp the science behind the processes and thus don't consider it to be a part of their lives until it's staring them in the face. Talk about it non-scientifically and people get all emotional and don't want the discussion to continue. That's why there's no vote (or "pubilc permission") on scientific and technological advances or research. It just happens to society, rather than society being a part of the evolving discussion. The effect is that our technology is more mature than we are.

Kids in the future, rich and poor alike, may be born genetically perfect but still have fucked-up parents. You can't change how a person thinks no matter how many reworks of your genetic algorithm you process. Even then, the above two discussions will probably be closed while we're busy breeding "perfect" humans.