Degenerates Evolving, with Dick
This installation of my "Language Abuse -- No Biscuit!" tag concerns two opposing schools of thought defaming words to support their personal conceptual biases. What's interesting is not that people are doing this -- people do this all the time, every day, without giving it even a hint of critical thought. No, what's interesting here is how extremely polar these two camps are to each other, how little ground they hold in common -- and on this issue how very wrong I hope to show both camps to be.
Since I hold the least sympathy for them, we'll start with the Creationists and the word they've abused over the centuries distorting it out of all recognition:
Degenerate
Until very recently, this is a word I've personally given very little thought. I, like I suppose many of you out there, assumed a degenerate (as a noun, pronounced similar to Ellen Degeneris' last name) to be someone whose moral, cultural or intellectual being has suffered damage or a lack of development. It's an abusive word we hurl toward those we feel to be in some way inferior to ourselves. Similarly, as a verb, my desktop dictionary defines "degenerate" as to "decline or deteriorate physically, mentally or morally" (from the Apple Widget Dictionary).
At the bottom of the desktop definition, however, lies the rub:
ORIGIN late 15th cent.: from Latin degeneratus 'no longer of its kind,' from the verb degenerare, from degener 'debased,' from de- 'away from' + genus, gener- 'race, kind.'
How did a word that originally referred to things that may simply have wandered from their birthplace become synonymous with deterioration? I believe clues to the answer lies with the creators of those pseudo-sciences, Creationism and its legally-necessary bastard child Intelligent Design.
Skeptic magazine has a wonderful, in-depth explanation of the court cases that recently closed the curriculum door on Intelligent Design in Dover, Pennsylvania, written by members of the legal team representing the plaintiffs (Kitzmiller, et al.). In a supporting element of their case, they demonstrated that Intelligent Design was not a science, and that it therefore did not belong in a science classroom. They did this by demonstrating that Intelligent Design was, despite the contrary claims of ID supporters, nothing more than Creationism in a snazzy new suit [Creationism had already been proven non-scientific and, even worse, religious in origin, in the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard ruling (Skeptic, Vol. 12 No. 2, p. 46)].
To demonstrate this, they requested in the discovery phase of the trial all the background info on the "textbook," Of Pandas and People, the American Taliban members of the Dover school district had proposed be introduced as factual to their students. Thus obliged to comply, the owners of the book, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) sent early drafts of Pandas.
Big mistake. Those drafts should have gone straight to the shredder after the Edwards decision.
Let's read from a Creationism text, Biology and Creation (1986), and learn how "creation" is defined:
Creation mean that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc. (Skeptic, ibid. p. 47)
Now let's see how they defined Intelligent Design a year later -- and after the Edwards decision:
Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc. (Skeptic, ibid.)
What do you think? Big change?
The judge didn't think so either.
Back to the degenerates. Note the common section in both the above citations that reads ". . . the various forms of life began abruptly . . . ." This, it turns out, is key to determining what insult is meant by calling someone a degenerate.
In the beginning, as everyone familiar with the Genesis I story of Creation knows, God created. This process took six days and earned Him a day off. Biblical scholars, extrapolating upon the original, somewhat sketchy text, have made the determination that once created and declared "Good," whatever created was at that moment at the pinnacle of its quality. The closer you are to God, the better, right?
After the Fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden things started to go, as Londoners are wont to say, pear shaped. This is where you find concepts of Original Sin and the Mark of Cain mentioned in the good ol' book. Keep reading, and Sodom and Gomorrah make an appearance.
Meaning the farther one gets from the Creation, the more the human race and the world they inhabit degenerates, gets farther from their original source -- God.
To those that consider themselves Godly, this is no small accusation. We are not here discussing a mere deterioration of behavior, intelligence or physical acumen, as the modern definition of the word implies.
Go back in history and many horrible deeds can be found, many of them logically vindicated by the concept of degeneration. Ever wonder how a supposedly Christian slave owner can justify both a Christian charity toward others and the ownership of humans as labor and property? By regarding his own people, those of Europe, as the pinnacle of modern creation in the world, and by regarding his slaves as degenerates. Such "people" to the slaveholder have strayed so far from God's word and way that they cannot be considered worthy of Christian charity.
Such blatant racial prejudice carried over into every walk of life, including the sciences. Steven Jay Gould dedicated an entire book of essays, The Mismeasure of Man, to the errors and bald manipulations that led prominent scientists to examine racial differences and declare Europeans to be at the apex of creation and everyone else to be, well, less so.
In fact, have you ever wondered why we whiter skinned folk of European origin are sometimes called "Caucasian," named for a mountain range in Western Russia? Thank German taxonomist J. F. Blumenbach. He somehow reached the conclusion that the people of the Caucasus Range are the most attractive in the world, which earned them the perfect ten spot on the scale of creation:
Blumenbach believed that Homo sapiens had been created in a single region and had then spread out over the globe. Our racial diversity, he then argued, arose as a result of our movement to other climates and topographies, and our consequent adoption of different habits and modes of life in these various regions. Following the terminology of his time, Blumenbach referred to these changes as "degenerations" -- not intending, by this word, the modern sense of deterioration, but the literal meaning of departure from an initial form of humanity as the creation (de means "from," and genus refers to our original stock). (Gould, I Have Landed, Three Rivers Press, 2003, p. 362.)
So we have those that consider themselves closer to God casting aspersion downwards by calling others "degenerates." What of the other crowd, those that don't necessarily believe being closer to God a positive or even necessary element in one's life?
Here in Seattle, you find lots of folks like me. Years ago, before it had degenerated deteriorated into something far too common to be catchy, I sought out and proudly mounted one of those Darwin fish on my car. I thought that was the best icon ever, one that used Xian imagery to proudly proclaim my lack of Xian faith and adherence to that very unXian tenet of evolution.
But here's a fun fact: Darwin himself didn't use the term "evolution."
It's true. Comb Uncle Charlie's original work on natural selection On The Origin of Species. You will not find the ubiquitous term of today.
Why? There was and still is a conceptual barrier to Darwin's theory, properly referred to as "natural selection."
Evolution as it was defined prior to Darwin's 1859 publication of On The Origin of Species referred to "an unfolding in time of a predictable or prepackaged sequence in an inherently progressive, or at least directional, manner" (Gould, ibid, p. 243). Think of a jack-in-the-box. You turn the crank, listening to the tune, and know that eventually the Jack pops out of his box. Darwin's contemporaries simply, because they are human, had trouble adapting to a the natural selection worldview that removed humanity as something other than the randomly mutated but highly adaptable nexus of the generations:
If scientific discoveries enjoined an evolutionary reading of human superiority, then one must bow to the evidence. But Darwin's contemporaries (and many people today as well) would not surrender their traditional view of human domination, and therefore could only conceptualize genealogical transmutation as a process defined by predictable progress toward a human acme -- in short, as a process well described by the term "evolution" in its vernacular meaning of unfolding an inherent potential. (Gould, ibid, p. 245)
You see, folks, we as humans did not climb the evolutionary ladder as many of us were led to believe. Chance mutations randomly occurring that did not kill creatures before they could reproduce accumulate in genetic code. If the sum of these mutations proves an advantage to the creatures' offspring, there is a chance the offspring will flourish and further spread the mutations. There is no ascendence of the generations, no increase in intelligence/beauty/physical prowess, no march of progress and improvement.
Which leads me to the second abuse of the English language currently in vogue:
Evolution
Specifically, bumperstickers and the sentiments that match this image (from the back of my neighbor's car).
Now, people do evolve. The genetic code each of us carries unfolds as we age, the days and years turning our preset jack-in-the-box cranks. But what that code carries for each of us is to be a mystery until such time that it reveals itself, if indeed we live long enough for it to do so. This is hardly a matter of choice. A play on the admonission "Oh, Grow Up!" misses the point: individuals cannot choose the genetic unfolding that was provided them at the moment of conception. This bumper sticker wishes individuals would somehow gain in intelligence and cultural refinement similar to the way, I suspect, the bumper sticker owners see the human race as gaining in refinement -- even though, strictly speaking, natural selection in no way guarantees such an ascendancy.
What does natural selection suggest for us? I'll let Mr. Dick have the last word.
Philip K. Dick wrote a wonderful story of evolution natural selection in 1953 called The Golden Man, a science fiction yarn set 60 years after a nuclear war. The radiation from that altercation has accelerated genetic mutation, leading to the occasional appearance of "deeves," or deviants. Sometimes they are benign, such as the eight breasted women. Other times they live in abandoned coal mines as vicious nocturnal beasts. Whatever the case, the DCA was formed to track, evaluate and destroy -- "euth" -- them.
All was working well in containing mutations -- until the DCA meets Cris Johnson.
Cris has no developed pre-frontal intelligence like everyone else. He doesn't need it. Cris is able to see into the future -- into every possible avenue the future presents at any given time, but only about a half-hour into the future. Therefore, he can see every danger to himself and react to protect himself accordingly.
Oh, and he is gorgeous, a literally golden god of a man.
It's the ultimate slam against the Panglossian view, against those that feel man evolved to our current state of perfection. Imagine, an incredibly attractive hunk of a man who need not talk, who cannot talk. He can see in advance exactly which of his actions will lead him to comfort, safety, and the willing embrace of a fertile woman. The ultimate reproductive advantage.
In the notes to The Golden Man (the most extensive notes to any story in the book), Dick says;
In the issue of If that followed the publishing of The Golden Man appeared a two-page editorial consisting of a letter by a lady school teacher . . . she upbraided me for presenting mutants in a negative light and she offered the notion that certainly we could expect mutants to be (1) good; and (2) firmly in charge. . . .
My theory as to why people took this view is: I think these people secretly imagined they were themselves early manifestations of these kindly, wise, super-intelligent Ubermenschen who would guide the stupid -- ie. the rest of us -- to the Promised Land. A power phantasy was involved here, in my opinion. The idea of the psionic superman taking over was (an old role). "We are persecuted now," the message ran, "and despised and rejected. But later on, boy oh boy, will we show them!" (1978) (The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Citadel Twilight, 1987, p. 412)
My thoughts exactly. Just as the Creationists wrongly dismiss those they feel inferior as having fallen too far from their God to be worth anything but perhaps salvage, the Evolutionists feel they have somehow already climbed the ladder of perfection and, with pithy bumper stickers, implore the rest of us to give up our evolutionary youth and join them at the peak of clear-headed perfection. Two very different justifications; one very similar smug and self-satisfied sentiment.
And what happens when a superior view over others prevails within a culture unchecked? I'll let Mr. Dick have the last word:
Here I am also saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries . . . . We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as to where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't. (1978) (Dick, ibid)
Since I hold the least sympathy for them, we'll start with the Creationists and the word they've abused over the centuries distorting it out of all recognition:
Degenerate
Until very recently, this is a word I've personally given very little thought. I, like I suppose many of you out there, assumed a degenerate (as a noun, pronounced similar to Ellen Degeneris' last name) to be someone whose moral, cultural or intellectual being has suffered damage or a lack of development. It's an abusive word we hurl toward those we feel to be in some way inferior to ourselves. Similarly, as a verb, my desktop dictionary defines "degenerate" as to "decline or deteriorate physically, mentally or morally" (from the Apple Widget Dictionary).
At the bottom of the desktop definition, however, lies the rub:
ORIGIN late 15th cent.: from Latin degeneratus 'no longer of its kind,' from the verb degenerare, from degener 'debased,' from de- 'away from' + genus, gener- 'race, kind.'
How did a word that originally referred to things that may simply have wandered from their birthplace become synonymous with deterioration? I believe clues to the answer lies with the creators of those pseudo-sciences, Creationism and its legally-necessary bastard child Intelligent Design.
Skeptic magazine has a wonderful, in-depth explanation of the court cases that recently closed the curriculum door on Intelligent Design in Dover, Pennsylvania, written by members of the legal team representing the plaintiffs (Kitzmiller, et al.). In a supporting element of their case, they demonstrated that Intelligent Design was not a science, and that it therefore did not belong in a science classroom. They did this by demonstrating that Intelligent Design was, despite the contrary claims of ID supporters, nothing more than Creationism in a snazzy new suit [Creationism had already been proven non-scientific and, even worse, religious in origin, in the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard ruling (Skeptic, Vol. 12 No. 2, p. 46)].
To demonstrate this, they requested in the discovery phase of the trial all the background info on the "textbook," Of Pandas and People, the American Taliban members of the Dover school district had proposed be introduced as factual to their students. Thus obliged to comply, the owners of the book, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) sent early drafts of Pandas.
Big mistake. Those drafts should have gone straight to the shredder after the Edwards decision.
Let's read from a Creationism text, Biology and Creation (1986), and learn how "creation" is defined:
Creation mean that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc. (Skeptic, ibid. p. 47)
Now let's see how they defined Intelligent Design a year later -- and after the Edwards decision:
Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc. (Skeptic, ibid.)
What do you think? Big change?
The judge didn't think so either.
Back to the degenerates. Note the common section in both the above citations that reads ". . . the various forms of life began abruptly . . . ." This, it turns out, is key to determining what insult is meant by calling someone a degenerate.
In the beginning, as everyone familiar with the Genesis I story of Creation knows, God created. This process took six days and earned Him a day off. Biblical scholars, extrapolating upon the original, somewhat sketchy text, have made the determination that once created and declared "Good," whatever created was at that moment at the pinnacle of its quality. The closer you are to God, the better, right?
After the Fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden things started to go, as Londoners are wont to say, pear shaped. This is where you find concepts of Original Sin and the Mark of Cain mentioned in the good ol' book. Keep reading, and Sodom and Gomorrah make an appearance.
Meaning the farther one gets from the Creation, the more the human race and the world they inhabit degenerates, gets farther from their original source -- God.
To those that consider themselves Godly, this is no small accusation. We are not here discussing a mere deterioration of behavior, intelligence or physical acumen, as the modern definition of the word implies.
Go back in history and many horrible deeds can be found, many of them logically vindicated by the concept of degeneration. Ever wonder how a supposedly Christian slave owner can justify both a Christian charity toward others and the ownership of humans as labor and property? By regarding his own people, those of Europe, as the pinnacle of modern creation in the world, and by regarding his slaves as degenerates. Such "people" to the slaveholder have strayed so far from God's word and way that they cannot be considered worthy of Christian charity.
Such blatant racial prejudice carried over into every walk of life, including the sciences. Steven Jay Gould dedicated an entire book of essays, The Mismeasure of Man, to the errors and bald manipulations that led prominent scientists to examine racial differences and declare Europeans to be at the apex of creation and everyone else to be, well, less so.
In fact, have you ever wondered why we whiter skinned folk of European origin are sometimes called "Caucasian," named for a mountain range in Western Russia? Thank German taxonomist J. F. Blumenbach. He somehow reached the conclusion that the people of the Caucasus Range are the most attractive in the world, which earned them the perfect ten spot on the scale of creation:
Blumenbach believed that Homo sapiens had been created in a single region and had then spread out over the globe. Our racial diversity, he then argued, arose as a result of our movement to other climates and topographies, and our consequent adoption of different habits and modes of life in these various regions. Following the terminology of his time, Blumenbach referred to these changes as "degenerations" -- not intending, by this word, the modern sense of deterioration, but the literal meaning of departure from an initial form of humanity as the creation (de means "from," and genus refers to our original stock). (Gould, I Have Landed, Three Rivers Press, 2003, p. 362.)
So we have those that consider themselves closer to God casting aspersion downwards by calling others "degenerates." What of the other crowd, those that don't necessarily believe being closer to God a positive or even necessary element in one's life?
Here in Seattle, you find lots of folks like me. Years ago, before it had degenerated deteriorated into something far too common to be catchy, I sought out and proudly mounted one of those Darwin fish on my car. I thought that was the best icon ever, one that used Xian imagery to proudly proclaim my lack of Xian faith and adherence to that very unXian tenet of evolution.
But here's a fun fact: Darwin himself didn't use the term "evolution."
It's true. Comb Uncle Charlie's original work on natural selection On The Origin of Species. You will not find the ubiquitous term of today.
Why? There was and still is a conceptual barrier to Darwin's theory, properly referred to as "natural selection."
Evolution as it was defined prior to Darwin's 1859 publication of On The Origin of Species referred to "an unfolding in time of a predictable or prepackaged sequence in an inherently progressive, or at least directional, manner" (Gould, ibid, p. 243). Think of a jack-in-the-box. You turn the crank, listening to the tune, and know that eventually the Jack pops out of his box. Darwin's contemporaries simply, because they are human, had trouble adapting to a the natural selection worldview that removed humanity as something other than the randomly mutated but highly adaptable nexus of the generations:
If scientific discoveries enjoined an evolutionary reading of human superiority, then one must bow to the evidence. But Darwin's contemporaries (and many people today as well) would not surrender their traditional view of human domination, and therefore could only conceptualize genealogical transmutation as a process defined by predictable progress toward a human acme -- in short, as a process well described by the term "evolution" in its vernacular meaning of unfolding an inherent potential. (Gould, ibid, p. 245)
You see, folks, we as humans did not climb the evolutionary ladder as many of us were led to believe. Chance mutations randomly occurring that did not kill creatures before they could reproduce accumulate in genetic code. If the sum of these mutations proves an advantage to the creatures' offspring, there is a chance the offspring will flourish and further spread the mutations. There is no ascendence of the generations, no increase in intelligence/beauty/physical prowess, no march of progress and improvement.
Which leads me to the second abuse of the English language currently in vogue:
Evolution
Specifically, bumperstickers and the sentiments that match this image (from the back of my neighbor's car).
Now, people do evolve. The genetic code each of us carries unfolds as we age, the days and years turning our preset jack-in-the-box cranks. But what that code carries for each of us is to be a mystery until such time that it reveals itself, if indeed we live long enough for it to do so. This is hardly a matter of choice. A play on the admonission "Oh, Grow Up!" misses the point: individuals cannot choose the genetic unfolding that was provided them at the moment of conception. This bumper sticker wishes individuals would somehow gain in intelligence and cultural refinement similar to the way, I suspect, the bumper sticker owners see the human race as gaining in refinement -- even though, strictly speaking, natural selection in no way guarantees such an ascendancy.
What does natural selection suggest for us? I'll let Mr. Dick have the last word.
Philip K. Dick wrote a wonderful story of evolution natural selection in 1953 called The Golden Man, a science fiction yarn set 60 years after a nuclear war. The radiation from that altercation has accelerated genetic mutation, leading to the occasional appearance of "deeves," or deviants. Sometimes they are benign, such as the eight breasted women. Other times they live in abandoned coal mines as vicious nocturnal beasts. Whatever the case, the DCA was formed to track, evaluate and destroy -- "euth" -- them.
All was working well in containing mutations -- until the DCA meets Cris Johnson.
Cris has no developed pre-frontal intelligence like everyone else. He doesn't need it. Cris is able to see into the future -- into every possible avenue the future presents at any given time, but only about a half-hour into the future. Therefore, he can see every danger to himself and react to protect himself accordingly.
Oh, and he is gorgeous, a literally golden god of a man.
It's the ultimate slam against the Panglossian view, against those that feel man evolved to our current state of perfection. Imagine, an incredibly attractive hunk of a man who need not talk, who cannot talk. He can see in advance exactly which of his actions will lead him to comfort, safety, and the willing embrace of a fertile woman. The ultimate reproductive advantage.
In the notes to The Golden Man (the most extensive notes to any story in the book), Dick says;
In the issue of If that followed the publishing of The Golden Man appeared a two-page editorial consisting of a letter by a lady school teacher . . . she upbraided me for presenting mutants in a negative light and she offered the notion that certainly we could expect mutants to be (1) good; and (2) firmly in charge. . . .
My theory as to why people took this view is: I think these people secretly imagined they were themselves early manifestations of these kindly, wise, super-intelligent Ubermenschen who would guide the stupid -- ie. the rest of us -- to the Promised Land. A power phantasy was involved here, in my opinion. The idea of the psionic superman taking over was (an old role). "We are persecuted now," the message ran, "and despised and rejected. But later on, boy oh boy, will we show them!" (1978) (The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Citadel Twilight, 1987, p. 412)
My thoughts exactly. Just as the Creationists wrongly dismiss those they feel inferior as having fallen too far from their God to be worth anything but perhaps salvage, the Evolutionists feel they have somehow already climbed the ladder of perfection and, with pithy bumper stickers, implore the rest of us to give up our evolutionary youth and join them at the peak of clear-headed perfection. Two very different justifications; one very similar smug and self-satisfied sentiment.
And what happens when a superior view over others prevails within a culture unchecked? I'll let Mr. Dick have the last word:
Here I am also saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries . . . . We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as to where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't. (1978) (Dick, ibid)