| Prethems of Human Evolution |
| | While other species of animal and plant can undergo sig-nificant genetic change over a few generations, we main-tained that thousands of generations of the most radically varying conditions of selection and selective mating had left only the most superficial genetic variance within our spe-cies. |
| | Intellectuals (albeit not the man in the street) were firmly convinced that we were the product of evolution, but they were equally entrenched in the odd assumption that hu-man beings were the one species no longer affected by that process. |
| | Even as society paid a premium for ability and gumption in virtually any form of activity, it became fashionable to claim that such factors played no role in the formation of social classes, which were held to be entirely a function of chance and privilege. Indeed, the scholars who dominated the pub-lishing marketplace and academia denied the very exis-tence of innate IQ variance in human populations. |
| | A huge academic testing industry sprang up, but its find-ings were widely declared to be not merely approximate, but lacking in any validity whatever. |
| | With the transition to smaller families, scientists observed that generation after generation of the intellectually en-dowed were failing to replace themselves-exactly as was feared by earlier eugenicists - but society accepted the phe-nomenon as natural. |
| | We became more and more successful at implementing a process called "medicine" for the elimination of natural se-lection, but remained blissfully indifferent to the existential threat that these short-term successes posed for future gen-erations. |
| | Hard at work deciphering the map of the human genome, we continued to apply moral criteria to behavior that would soon become scientifically explainable. |
| | While our social conduct, like that of all other animal spe-cies, was necessarily centered on the mating ritual, our per-ception of this process remained governed by a myriad of camouflaging taboos and fetishes. |
| | We created a genetic caste society that co-opted talent born into the less privileged castes, efficiently exploiting and manipulating these castes, while at the same time pro-claiming equality of opportunity as our slogan. |
| | Equality of opportunity was proclaimed as the great goal of society, but one of the chief causes of lopsided opportunity - the difference in genetic endowment between people - was off-limits as a target of social engineering. |
| | Freeing ourselves (very temporarily) from the constraints of natural selection and the limitations of natural resources, we refused to recognize that we had become a species that perfectly fit the definition of a disease, wrecking havoc on ourselves and our fellow species in a massive assault on the host that we parasitize - the planet. But who wants to see himself in this role? |
| | We created an unsustainable economy dependent on re-source exhaustion, yet we proclaimed still greater levels of consumption as the goal of society. |
| | We proclaimed freedom of speech, all the while ruthlessly excoriating any opinion in the area of human genetics found offensive by any significant segment of society. |
| | Seymour W. Itzkoff, Smith College |
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