Everyone always jumps to eugenics to explain Idiocracy, but I don’t ever remember hearing genetics mentioned in the movie. The movie merely states that dumb adults raise dumb children. I don’t know about you, but I see that everyday. This doesn’t need to be explained by genetics. Children mimic the ways the adults in their lives act to model themselves on as they mature. You can counter this with things like public education or community involvement, but if the parents are involved and interact with their child, they’re going to mimic them. If you know a smart person who was raised by dumb people, chances are the parents weren’t really involved with the kid as they grew up.
This isn’t even a obscure fact. What do you think those Jesus Camps are for? Why do you think rich people send their kids to elite schools?
It’s eugenistic because the movie argues idiot parents have idiot children while smart parents have smart children. For every example you can find of this being true you can find another of it being false.
eugenistic because the movie argues idiot parents have idiot children while smart parents have smart children.
This still comes down to a nature vs nurture argument, and the movie tends to fall back on things like education being the primary issue.
Idiots raising idiots isn’t necessarily an argument based in eugenics. Parents who never learned are not going to be able to teach their children. If there isn’t something like a decent public education system, then what chance do the children of idiots really have?
The movie’s “happy ending” is literally that the “smartest person” becomes the boss of all the stupid people. I think y’all don’t really know too much about eugenics.
Yes, everyone knows about this scene. This still isn’t claiming that intellect is a genetic trait that can only be inherited. It’s claiming that intellect is no longer a valued societal trait that people find necessary to procreate.
I think the problem with your interpretation is it is focusing on biological evolution, when in reality the satire is based on societal evolution. Idiocracy is only set like 500 years in the future, not exactly enough time to see humans biologically adapt in any significant way.
At 1m58sec they are talking about medical advancements…not genetics. Again, I think you are jumping to conclusions. Medical advancements that allow people to procreate at a faster rate is not biology, it’s sociology.
It kinda seems you are dismissing the possibility of nurture attributing to the equation at all, which in and of itself is a eugenics based argument.
The joke is “this could have been prevented, if that guy became infertile, but unfortunately, modern medicine saved him”. That’s not jumping to codclusions, that’s the literal text of the movie.
Seriously, what’s wrong with your media literacy? It’s so obvious.
It kinda seems you are dismissing the possibility of nurture attributing to the equation at all, which in and of itself is a eugenics based argument.
Nice try. I’m simply interpreting the text of the movie.
I thought the movie was more nuanced than that—the “smart parents” of Idiocracy did not have smart children—they had zero children. The smart couple in fact were the ones doing “self-eugenics” to their own detriment.
Eugenics or not, evolution favors the population that produces the fittest offspring for the environment–not the smartest.
The majority of comedy works because there is truth in it. Sure, Idiocracy is prophetic, or we wouldn’t be discussing it today. Nobody discusses South Park’s “Bigger Longer Uncut” like Idiocracy because it doesn’t really engage this kind of truth.
What I cannot tell is if people have always been this moronic and we’re only more aware of it because of ubiquitous cell phone camera technology and the Internet’s capability to rapidly distribute awareness of dumbness that would have otherwise stayed regionally isolated.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”—George Carlin
This movie came out when social media was in its infancy. Just replace eugenics with manipulation from social media and we’re headed down the same highway of doom! Toot toot
I don’t think the movie wqs intended as eugenic propaganda, but sure looks like it. Also all the memes and jokes about our future being this movie sure as heck don’t seem to care about the ending.
It’s a funny film about “what if stupid people ruled the world” with a 2 minute sequence at the beginning to get the audience up to speed, during which Judge manages to poke fun at both rednecks and middle class wasps.
If it was some polemic against modern society and how purging the undesirable from society through eugenics, don’t you think it would be a bit more obvious?
I don’t think you have a thorough grasp on what eugenics is.
Eugenics as a field actually “good intentions” at heart. It comes from people who were introduced to ideas of genetics and were afraid that without any natural predators, you would need to limit the reproduction of “undesirable” traits in humans, else the species would degenerate. It just turned out to be not only a wrong understanding of how evolution worked - let alone in a social species such as humanity - and also an excuse to do the most fucked up thing, humanity ever did.
But it had good intentions at the start. So, “eugenics” doesn’t necessarily refer to literal Josef Mengeles killing/sterilizing everything that’s not “Aryan”. It begins with: “intelligence is hereditary, so if stupid people breed too much, we’ll have a problem.”
Did you read my whole comment? Smart kids come from dumb parents when the parent isn’t involved as much in the child’s upbringing. The movie is simplify the concept because it’s a movie, not a lecture.
Ok, but what you are saying translates to if the parents are not smart enough they should better not be involved in their own children’s upbringing for their sake. That’s an awful take.
It’s not an awful take, it’s reality. Being dumb is not genetic and this has nothing to do with eugenics.
Also, they didn’t say parents don’t need to be involved at all. I think the idea is that the children get exposed to other people and ways of thinking and not JUST the things their parents decide for them. Otherwise it’ll be indoctrination -better or worse- but the kids won’t think for themselves.
For example, I think homeschooling is especially awful because parents just can’t teach all the things that being in a classroom will. I don’t know why it is legal in the USA, they should just have separate classes for kids with special needs imo, like in Europe.
I see where you come from and I agree - things like homeschooling should not be legal. A society should absolutely be involved in raising children and help to fulfill everyone’s potential.
I think the idea is that the children get exposed to other people and ways of thinking and not JUST the things their parents decide for them. Otherwise it’ll be indoctrination -better or worse- but the kids won’t think for themselves.
Well said, but in that case it doesn’t matter whether your parents are smart or dumb. You should always be exposed to other people and encouraged to get out of your small oyster. Especially in a social sense; I live in Germany and after 4th grade we get separated in different high schools (for low, middle, and high achievers). I can tell you that we as teenagers very often start living in our bubble where we only meet people with somewhat of the same education. I am very grateful to have kept my best friend from elementary because she exposes me to her friends who are from a very different social class than me. Their lives, problem solving approaches, and ways of thinking are so vastly different from what I am used to that I always feel like a fish out of the water.
But to be clear:
Smart kids come from dumb parents when the parent isn’t involved as much in the child’s upbringing.
To me this does read like dumb parents can only raise smart kids if they keep out of their lives. And while I see why the conclusion “dumb parent raises dumb child” comes about, this is a very dangerous oversimplification. Yes, it has nothing (or little) to do with eugenics. But with language like this the way is paved to shame people that we perceive as dumb to be unfit parents. And while social programs as you mentioned would be the obvious way to tackle such nuanced issues, that kind of reasoning can quickly lead to a perception that only smart people (the “right people”) should be having kids. Because it seems like the easier, more straightforward solution (which it obviously isn’t, but that is how populist speech works).
As for the movie - the problem with the dude in the opening sequence is not that he is low class or dumb. The problem is that he is an inconsiderate asshole (who is, btw, not too present in his children’s lives).
How exactly do you want to define dumbness to begin with? A low IQ? So at what IQ should people have children, where is the cutoff? Are people who are street smart but bad in school and IQ tests dumb? Are these who have no street smarts at all but ace in school dumb? Are people who do not agree with your political reasoning dumb? (Like, I hate Trump with all my passion, but I would not say he is dumb. He is an awful and troubled human being but he is definitely not dumb in an IQ kind of sense.)
I don’t like to take Forest Gump as an example as he is not real (and since I don’t really like that movie) but it might fit here; would he be a dumb or a smart person? Is he fit to be a parent?
I think it is obvious that a good parent is a caring, loving, open person, not necessarily one that is smart or can teach their child how to live. This is what society should be for. But arguments like “dumb people raise dumb children unless they aren’t involved” are really just a step away from treating anyone who is not in the right 50% of the bell curve as an idiot who is undeserving of procreation. Which is why I found the statement above problematic.
Only if to take it to the most extreme possibility. For all the issues I have with how I was raised, I’m thankful my parents were too busy much of the time and left me to watch PBS or play in the woods. As an adult, when I heard one of my 5 year old relatives chant “No Thanks Obama, You Can Keep The Change!” and get praised for it, I wretched inside.
I’m not advocating for child abduction. There are already plenty of real world examples of how terrible that is. But that we should be 1) investing in public education more and 2) discrediting private/home schools. Also, we need better Publicly run and funded Homeschool options for kids who CAN’T be in a classroom, including livestreamed classrooms and/or a virtual space.
Also, what we’re calling “intelligence” is really social behavior. IQ tests are only really useful for comparing different groups within the same culture or the same group across time. Other then that, you can’t directly measure intelligence as different groups of people will need and value different traits and skills. The only real qualifier for intelligence is basic tool use and that’s so universal, are ape relatives have it.
The whole notion of intelligence being inheritable and letting the “stupid” (or rather: the poor) reproduce indiscriminately is basically the original idea of eugenics.
Intelligence doesn’t even have a proper definition in the biological domain. If you have any scientific proof that intelligence is inheritable, do show!
You can juggle words all you want: you’re describing eugenicist principles. Those aren’t only morally unjustyfiable: they’re simply wrong with an oversimplified understanding of evolution and intelligence.
I don’t know how else to phrase it: the claim that intelligence is breedable is a eugenicist foundation.
Evolution is a process, you’re confusing evolution with evolutionary science.
Your definition of intelligence is incredibly oversimplified. Intelligence is not an inheritable trait (as in: the difference in intelligence of human population does not significantly stem from genetic differences).
Genes make a substantial difference, but they are not the whole story. They account for about half of all differences in intelligence among people, so half is not caused by genetic differences, which provides strong support for the importance of environmental factors. This estimate of 50 percent reflects the results of twin, adoption and DNA studies. From them, we know, for example, that later in life, children adopted away from their biological parents at birth are just as similar to their biological parents as are children reared by their biological parents. Similarly, we know that adoptive parents and their adopted children do not typically resemble one another in intelligence.
I mean, it’s not nice to joke with eugenics but I think it was no more than that and besides the movie explicitly mentions that research of important topics halted in favour of projects with a more promising outpay and that education became worse and worse by the year, which are both very real threats.
We’re talking about that movie where a man of below average intelligence goes to the future and saves the world by teaching them the value of education, right?
Yeah! Poor dumb people should have been banned from reproducing ages ago! It’s not like there’s a economic-political system continuing to knowingly destroy the planet in service of number go up!
See, now I didn’t say anything about eugenics for the poor or dumb. I just said I supported the idea of eugenics. I would be very happy to start with the wealthy and powerful first. (Although one might make a good argument that there is a significant overlap between the rich and the dumb)
Idiocracy is propaganda for eugenics.
Edit: woah, I guess I overestimated some people’s media literacy. Here’s a video explaining what I’m talking about
Everyone always jumps to eugenics to explain Idiocracy, but I don’t ever remember hearing genetics mentioned in the movie. The movie merely states that dumb adults raise dumb children. I don’t know about you, but I see that everyday. This doesn’t need to be explained by genetics. Children mimic the ways the adults in their lives act to model themselves on as they mature. You can counter this with things like public education or community involvement, but if the parents are involved and interact with their child, they’re going to mimic them. If you know a smart person who was raised by dumb people, chances are the parents weren’t really involved with the kid as they grew up.
This isn’t even a obscure fact. What do you think those Jesus Camps are for? Why do you think rich people send their kids to elite schools?
It’s eugenistic because the movie argues idiot parents have idiot children while smart parents have smart children. For every example you can find of this being true you can find another of it being false.
This still comes down to a nature vs nurture argument, and the movie tends to fall back on things like education being the primary issue.
Idiots raising idiots isn’t necessarily an argument based in eugenics. Parents who never learned are not going to be able to teach their children. If there isn’t something like a decent public education system, then what chance do the children of idiots really have?
Are we talking about the same movie?
The movie’s “happy ending” is literally that the “smartest person” becomes the boss of all the stupid people. I think y’all don’t really know too much about eugenics.
Yes, everyone knows about this scene. This still isn’t claiming that intellect is a genetic trait that can only be inherited. It’s claiming that intellect is no longer a valued societal trait that people find necessary to procreate.
I think the problem with your interpretation is it is focusing on biological evolution, when in reality the satire is based on societal evolution. Idiocracy is only set like 500 years in the future, not exactly enough time to see humans biologically adapt in any significant way.
I don’t know what I can say. The movie literally focuses on the biology. It’s literally in the text and you claim otherwise.
Edit: I noticed that my timestamp didn’t work. It’s pretty open at 1m58s
At 1m58sec they are talking about medical advancements…not genetics. Again, I think you are jumping to conclusions. Medical advancements that allow people to procreate at a faster rate is not biology, it’s sociology.
It kinda seems you are dismissing the possibility of nurture attributing to the equation at all, which in and of itself is a eugenics based argument.
The joke is “this could have been prevented, if that guy became infertile, but unfortunately, modern medicine saved him”. That’s not jumping to codclusions, that’s the literal text of the movie.
Seriously, what’s wrong with your media literacy? It’s so obvious.
Nice try. I’m simply interpreting the text of the movie.
Does the movie touch on an “intelligence gene” that’s passed down?
I don’t believe it does, in which case, is it eugenics if no genes are involved?
r u serious?
Yes, goddammit. The idea is older than the discovery of genes. 🙄
I thought the movie was more nuanced than that—the “smart parents” of Idiocracy did not have smart children—they had zero children. The smart couple in fact were the ones doing “self-eugenics” to their own detriment.
Eugenics or not, evolution favors the population that produces the fittest offspring for the environment–not the smartest.
So the movie isn’t eugenic because it showed people doing eugenics wrong?
It’s more “tragedy of the commons” eugenics than “evil corporate-governmental-white supremacy” eugenics.
So the movie isn’t prophetic, and people constantly harping about how it’s coming true are fucking morons?
The majority of comedy works because there is truth in it. Sure, Idiocracy is prophetic, or we wouldn’t be discussing it today. Nobody discusses South Park’s “Bigger Longer Uncut” like Idiocracy because it doesn’t really engage this kind of truth.
What I cannot tell is if people have always been this moronic and we’re only more aware of it because of ubiquitous cell phone camera technology and the Internet’s capability to rapidly distribute awareness of dumbness that would have otherwise stayed regionally isolated.
And yet the movie ends on a hopeful note. I’m not entirely sure they were committed to the genetic explanation.
This movie came out when social media was in its infancy. Just replace eugenics with manipulation from social media and we’re headed down the same highway of doom! Toot toot
I don’t think the movie wqs intended as eugenic propaganda, but sure looks like it. Also all the memes and jokes about our future being this movie sure as heck don’t seem to care about the ending.
Stupid, ignorant people raise stupid, ignorant children.
The movie never adresses systemic failures in the educational system. It literally starts with “stupid people fuck too much”.
Yeah, because it’s an 85 minute long comedy. The people who think it’s about eugenics are reading more into it than is there.
It’s the literal premise at the beginning. That’s like claiming that the people who claim the Empire is evil read too much into Star Wars.
It’s a funny film about “what if stupid people ruled the world” with a 2 minute sequence at the beginning to get the audience up to speed, during which Judge manages to poke fun at both rednecks and middle class wasps.
If it was some polemic against modern society and how purging the undesirable from society through eugenics, don’t you think it would be a bit more obvious?
I don’t think you have a thorough grasp on what eugenics is.
Eugenics as a field actually “good intentions” at heart. It comes from people who were introduced to ideas of genetics and were afraid that without any natural predators, you would need to limit the reproduction of “undesirable” traits in humans, else the species would degenerate. It just turned out to be not only a wrong understanding of how evolution worked - let alone in a social species such as humanity - and also an excuse to do the most fucked up thing, humanity ever did.
But it had good intentions at the start. So, “eugenics” doesn’t necessarily refer to literal Josef Mengeles killing/sterilizing everything that’s not “Aryan”. It begins with: “intelligence is hereditary, so if stupid people breed too much, we’ll have a problem.”
Did you read my whole comment? Smart kids come from dumb parents when the parent isn’t involved as much in the child’s upbringing. The movie is simplify the concept because it’s a movie, not a lecture.
Ok, but what you are saying translates to if the parents are not smart enough they should better not be involved in their own children’s upbringing for their sake. That’s an awful take.
It’s not an awful take, it’s reality. Being dumb is not genetic and this has nothing to do with eugenics.
Also, they didn’t say parents don’t need to be involved at all. I think the idea is that the children get exposed to other people and ways of thinking and not JUST the things their parents decide for them. Otherwise it’ll be indoctrination -better or worse- but the kids won’t think for themselves.
For example, I think homeschooling is especially awful because parents just can’t teach all the things that being in a classroom will. I don’t know why it is legal in the USA, they should just have separate classes for kids with special needs imo, like in Europe.
I see where you come from and I agree - things like homeschooling should not be legal. A society should absolutely be involved in raising children and help to fulfill everyone’s potential.
Well said, but in that case it doesn’t matter whether your parents are smart or dumb. You should always be exposed to other people and encouraged to get out of your small oyster. Especially in a social sense; I live in Germany and after 4th grade we get separated in different high schools (for low, middle, and high achievers). I can tell you that we as teenagers very often start living in our bubble where we only meet people with somewhat of the same education. I am very grateful to have kept my best friend from elementary because she exposes me to her friends who are from a very different social class than me. Their lives, problem solving approaches, and ways of thinking are so vastly different from what I am used to that I always feel like a fish out of the water.
But to be clear:
To me this does read like dumb parents can only raise smart kids if they keep out of their lives. And while I see why the conclusion “dumb parent raises dumb child” comes about, this is a very dangerous oversimplification. Yes, it has nothing (or little) to do with eugenics. But with language like this the way is paved to shame people that we perceive as dumb to be unfit parents. And while social programs as you mentioned would be the obvious way to tackle such nuanced issues, that kind of reasoning can quickly lead to a perception that only smart people (the “right people”) should be having kids. Because it seems like the easier, more straightforward solution (which it obviously isn’t, but that is how populist speech works).
As for the movie - the problem with the dude in the opening sequence is not that he is low class or dumb. The problem is that he is an inconsiderate asshole (who is, btw, not too present in his children’s lives).
How exactly do you want to define dumbness to begin with? A low IQ? So at what IQ should people have children, where is the cutoff? Are people who are street smart but bad in school and IQ tests dumb? Are these who have no street smarts at all but ace in school dumb? Are people who do not agree with your political reasoning dumb? (Like, I hate Trump with all my passion, but I would not say he is dumb. He is an awful and troubled human being but he is definitely not dumb in an IQ kind of sense.)
I don’t like to take Forest Gump as an example as he is not real (and since I don’t really like that movie) but it might fit here; would he be a dumb or a smart person? Is he fit to be a parent?
I think it is obvious that a good parent is a caring, loving, open person, not necessarily one that is smart or can teach their child how to live. This is what society should be for. But arguments like “dumb people raise dumb children unless they aren’t involved” are really just a step away from treating anyone who is not in the right 50% of the bell curve as an idiot who is undeserving of procreation. Which is why I found the statement above problematic.
Only if to take it to the most extreme possibility. For all the issues I have with how I was raised, I’m thankful my parents were too busy much of the time and left me to watch PBS or play in the woods. As an adult, when I heard one of my 5 year old relatives chant “No Thanks Obama, You Can Keep The Change!” and get praised for it, I wretched inside.
I’m not advocating for child abduction. There are already plenty of real world examples of how terrible that is. But that we should be 1) investing in public education more and 2) discrediting private/home schools. Also, we need better Publicly run and funded Homeschool options for kids who CAN’T be in a classroom, including livestreamed classrooms and/or a virtual space.
Also, what we’re calling “intelligence” is really social behavior. IQ tests are only really useful for comparing different groups within the same culture or the same group across time. Other then that, you can’t directly measure intelligence as different groups of people will need and value different traits and skills. The only real qualifier for intelligence is basic tool use and that’s so universal, are ape relatives have it.
Yes, and I simply disagree. If what you are saying was true, humanity as whole would still be farmers, hunter and gatherers.
Did we watch the same film?
“natural selection” doesn’t have to be explained by the genome.
Neither does eugenics.
Right. The solution to ignorance is education. Not selective breeding programs.
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The whole notion of intelligence being inheritable and letting the “stupid” (or rather: the poor) reproduce indiscriminately is basically the original idea of eugenics.
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Intelligence doesn’t even have a proper definition in the biological domain. If you have any scientific proof that intelligence is inheritable, do show!
You can juggle words all you want: you’re describing eugenicist principles. Those aren’t only morally unjustyfiable: they’re simply wrong with an oversimplified understanding of evolution and intelligence.
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I don’t know how else to phrase it: the claim that intelligence is breedable is a eugenicist foundation.
Evolution is a process, you’re confusing evolution with evolutionary science.
Your definition of intelligence is incredibly oversimplified. Intelligence is not an inheritable trait (as in: the difference in intelligence of human population does not significantly stem from genetic differences).
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Yeah. That is a fundamentally eugenicist idea.
You repeatedly claim that it’s a satire. What is the target and the purpose of that satire?
Article: Is Intelligence Hereditary? - Scientific American
That’s not really a study, nor does it cite any.
I mean, it’s not nice to joke with eugenics but I think it was no more than that and besides the movie explicitly mentions that research of important topics halted in favour of projects with a more promising outpay and that education became worse and worse by the year, which are both very real threats.
We’re talking about that movie where a man of below average intelligence goes to the future and saves the world by teaching them the value of education, right?
No, a man who is average in every measure
We’re talking about this movie
Well, watching the world burn and 8 billion people contributing to that, I can get behind some eugenics.
Yeah!
Poordumb people should have been banned from reproducing ages ago! It’s not like there’s a economic-political system continuing to knowingly destroy the planet in service of number go up!It’s the
poordumb people!/s
See, now I didn’t say anything about eugenics for the poor or dumb. I just said I supported the idea of eugenics. I would be very happy to start with the wealthy and powerful first. (Although one might make a good argument that there is a significant overlap between the rich and the dumb)