In this blog post, we will look at how we can respond to the issues of discrimination and inequality in the future society that eugenics and scientism may bring about.
Looking back on human history, we can see that discrimination has always existed. Not only slavery, feudalism, racism, and gender discrimination, but also countless other factors such as educational background, academic factions, money, status, skin color, and religion have been used as criteria to divide people into superior and inferior groups. The movie Gattaca also shows us the discrimination that could occur in the future society. It is discrimination resulting from eugenics. Eugenics is a science that studies various conditions and factors with the aim of genetically improving the human race. In other words, the genetic information of unborn babies is improved to make them superior, which leads to discrimination against children who are not genetically improved.
The main character of “Gattaca,” Vincent Freeman, is born through natural conception in an era where it is commonplace to be born with only superior genes through genetic manipulation. In the era of this movie, as soon as a person is born, it is possible to know exactly what diseases they will suffer from, what talents they have, and even their lifespan based on their genes. Therefore, genetic testing itself becomes a qualification and determines one’s identity. It is a society where even whether you pass a job interview is determined simply by whether you have superior genes. In reality, our laws do not discriminate between people with inferior genes and those with superior genes. However, in the movie, these laws are useless, as people are given scores based on their genes at birth, which determines their class.
In such a society, Vincent Freeman constantly strives to achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut, but because he was born with inferior genes, he can never become one. Despite his tremendous efforts and superior physical abilities gained through genetic manipulation, he is not even given the opportunity to fulfill his dream.
This movie shows the harmful effects of eugenics. Due to scientific absolutism, which threatens not only humans but also the authority of God, humans are discriminated against from birth. Furthermore, even if they work hard their entire lives, this gap cannot be narrowed.
At first glance, eugenics seems to have many positive aspects. With the development of eugenics, genetic counseling will enable disease prevention, early detection, and treatment. This will reduce the number of children born with disabilities and eliminate genetic diseases inherited from parents.
However, eugenics, if misused, can lead to self-superiority. In conclusion, eugenics is a science that aims to leave more people with superior genes in society.
As a result, if social leaders and those in power accept eugenics, they will try to exclude those who are socially inferior. Such cases can be found throughout history. The harmful effects of eugenics can be seen in the cases of the United States and Germany. The United States had been struggling with racial issues since the late 19th century, when eugenics first emerged. Those with political and economic power in the United States were Anglo-Saxons who had immigrated from England.
However, as the number of other races increased, the Anglo-Saxons gradually became aware of their identity and began to reject other races. They believed that other races had different cultures and customs from their own. They also believed that other races were causing mental retardation, crime, prostitution, and alcoholism to spread rapidly within American society. After experiencing World War I, Americans believed that the Anglo-Saxons needed to improve their racial quality in order to win large-scale international wars. The Anglo-Saxons came to believe that mixing their blood with other races would cause their race to degenerate. As a result, they easily passed laws in several states allowing forced sterilization. Under these laws, immigrants who were considered eugenically inferior were secretly sterilized in institutions for the mentally ill, unemployed, and homeless.
In Germany, after the Nazis came to power in 1933, a political movement rapidly developed that racially distinguished and discriminated against blacks, Jews, and Eastern Europeans. They passed a forced sterilization law targeting people with congenital mental illness, schizophrenia, epilepsy, congenital blindness, and severe alcoholism. This law was extended to all children of color in Germany in 1937, and by the end of the Nazi era, approximately 350,000 people had been sterilized. In addition to forced sterilization, they also implemented a euthanasia program. In the late 1930s, the extermination of children with physical and mental disabilities began, eventually expanding into a program of mass murder targeting healthy adults of other ethnic groups. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Poland, countless Jews, Gypsies, and mentally ill people were shot to death under this program.
In the end, millions of innocent people were massacred in concentration camps with poison gas for being unable to work, sick, or antisocial, in a tragedy unprecedented in human history. The cases of the United States and Germany occurred at a time when eugenics was not yet sufficiently developed scientifically. In other words, it was a time when it was not possible to manipulate human genetic information, so inferior individuals were eliminated through sterilization or death.
Therefore, some may argue that such tragedies will not occur in the future when we have achieved significant scientific advances and are able to manipulate all genes. Proponents of eugenics argue that the concept of eugenics has changed significantly from the past. They say that while eugenics in the past aimed to improve the genetic traits of the entire population, the new eugenics aims to treat genetic diseases and enhance traits in individuals. In other words, in the past, parents who spread their genes were the target of eugenics, but now it is their unborn children who are the target. Therefore, there is no possibility of a tragedy like the one in the past, and abortion, gene therapy, or trait enhancement are possible based on the voluntary decisions of individual families.
However, as mentioned earlier, even eugenics that has developed to this extent still leads to fundamental discrimination against humans. It means that everything in life is determined at birth. Such a society will further exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor, creating a gap that cannot be bridged by effort alone, and ultimately leading to even greater social inequality than we see today. Children who are not genetically modified may not be killed, but they will be marginalized and buried in society. A society where everything is determined by parents, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, will not only lead to discrimination but also many moral problems.
