Improving Humanity

If we can imagine perfecting society through utopian thinking does this include perfecting humanity? There may be ways of doing this that are indeed utopian and progressive, including improving health outcomes or eliminating the stresses of poverty and violence. But some utopians imagined ways of perfecting humanity that included selective breeding, culling the weak or disabled, or genetic manipulation. In these cases the impulse to create a perfect humanity crosses from utopian into dystopian as solutions dovetailed into the realm of eugenics. The history of utopian thought is intertwined with the history of eugenics in both ideology and practice. Like a lot of science fiction, Star Trek has grappled with the question of eugenics in different ways - some of them satisfying and some of them leaving new sets of troubling questions.

In previous newsletters I wrote about humanity and Data’s efforts to both emulate and achieve some degree of humanity. In the last newsletter I talked about the legal hearing involving Data in “The Measure of a Man” and what it meant for defining humanity in a utopian view of the future. Data was a superior being to humans in many ways, but he strived to be more human. This often obscured the miracles of his creation and many of his astounding abilities. But Star Trek writers kept these abilities in view in various ways and used them to suggest that they could come with a dark underside. What if Data used his powers for personal gain, either his or somebody else? What if he was simply evil? Data could be a monster or a miracle.

The idea of an artificially created being turning into a monster is an old one. Mary Shelley created the archetype of a monstrous creation who terrorized its creator and all of humanity. What makes us human instead of a monster? What is our biological and existential essence as humans? Are we both at the same time?

In attempting to answer some of these questions, Star Trek deviates a bit from future utopian ideas to connect back to historical science fiction archetypes about the duality between humanity and monstrosity. The Next Generation did this in a very classical way by creating a mirror of Data - his twin brother Lore. Also created by the brilliant scientist Noonien Soong, Lore was a prototype Android created before Data and with many glaring personal flaws Data did not possess. Lore had an ego, emotions, and personal ambitions that differed greatly from his younger brother. Dr. Soong gave Lore an emotion chip, something Data was created without, and the ability to experience the range of human emotions drove Lore mad. In short, he was the evil Data, the Frankenstein created by Dr. Soong and quickly neutralized to prevent his darker nature from being unleashed. Of course it was unleashed in several episodes of The Next Generation, and Data struggled with Lore for most of his 30-year development as an Android.

Lore was just one cautionary tale for the dangers of seeking perfection. The history of eugenics incorporated into the Star Trek universe was another caution. In many ways, Star Trek had no choice but to grapple with the legacy of eugenics. Produced in the late 1960s, the horrors of the Second World War and Nazi racial ideology were still very recent memories. Racial ideology also defined the American twentieth century. Any vision of the future proposed by Star Trek would need to at least suggest how humanity had escaped these legacies.

Part of the trajectory that Star Trek imagined for humanity’s path to the stars traveled through a dark period of eugenic experimentation and struggle. Identified alternately as World War III or The Eugenic Wars, this dark era occurred in the period between our present and the 23rd Century. It produced horrific outcomes for humanity as it traveled a pathway of human experimentation and augmentation.

The term “eugenics” is relatively modern. It was first coined by Francis Galton in 1883 to refer to the idea of improving human genetic stock through selective breeding. This would eliminate “undesirable” characteristics in the human race.

For the next fifty years, eugenic ideas influenced both utopian literature and social policy. The idea of eugenics advancing human utopia appears in the work of H.G. Wells, Edward Bellamy, Aldous Huxley, and George Bernard Shaw amongst many others. It’s also much older than the term coined by Galton. The idea of perfecting human stock appears in writing going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle and accompanied nearly every era of prognostication about the future of humanity. In the modern era some utopian writers embraced the notion of using genetic manipulation, and others presented this possibility as a cautionary tale that could lead humanity into the realm of dystopia.

In the realm of social theory, eugenics gained increasing purchase in the twentieth century, particularly when paired with ideologies of white supremacy. White supremacy is the essence of eugenic thinking. It accompanies it everywhere from North America to Europe and often walked hand in hand with capitalist or fascist ideology. The clearest and most extreme example was Hitler’s final solution that accelerated the Jewish holocaust to nightmarish proportions. But in other, less extreme settings, the intent followed a similar logic. The euphemistic language of utopian thinkers about “improving human stock” in the abstract became social policies that were specifically aimed at protecting white dominance. This was particularly true of settler colonies like Canada.

One of the clearest examples of eugenic ideology put into practice in the real world comes from my own back yard. Alberta is ignominiously the centre of Canada’s history of eugenic policy and legislation. In the 1920s, “progressive” reformers in Alberta adopted eugenic ideas about a threat posed to the gene pool by immigrants, Indigenous people, and people identified as having lower intelligence or intellectual disability. Alberta Premier Robert Brownlee introduced The Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928. The legislation delegated decisions about sexual sterilization to an Alberta Eugenics Board. Over the next five decades the board approved the sterilization of nearly 5,000 Albertans. Although the Act was resisted by some, it garnered the support of some of the most prominent political voices in Alberta, many who assumed a shockingly authoritarian position on the rights of the sterilized. United Farm Women of Alberta president Margaret Gunn stated, “democracy was never intended for degenerates.” Premier Brownlee echoed the same authoritarian theme, stating, “the argument of freedom or right of the individual can no longer hold good where the welfare of the state and society is concerned.” It was an era where progressives felt comfortable crossing into the discourse of fascist repression and these attitudes prevailed well beyond the Second World War.

The horrors of the Jewish holocaust caused the decline of openly embraced eugenic social policies in North America. However, the Canadian example at least illustrates that the sustaining racial ideology that disproportionately targeted people of colour and Indigenous people survived deep into the late twentieth century. The legacy of eugenic thinking was difficult to disrupt from western liberal thought. For example, the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act was finally repealed in 1972 and the legacies of its harms continued to be felt in the province for decades beyond that.

This brings us back to how the original Star Trek writers of the 1960s grappled with the eugenic legacy of the twentieth century when writing a speculative future history of Earth. In Star Trek we see a critical distinction between fictional utopian views of eugenics and the actual history of eugenic policy. Throughout history utopian writing focused on the outcomes of utopian ideas about selective breeding. This usually involved an improved human stock and in some fictional accounts the possibility of super humans. The real history of eugenic ideas is that it is used as a tool of racial oppression.

Rather than focus on the oppressive outcomes of eugenics, Star Trek imagined a different side of the possibilities of a human race augmented by eugenic manipulation. At last this brings us to Khan, the most famous of the “Augments” in the Star Trek universe.

The Enterprise encountered Khan adrift in space aboard the SS Botany Bay (say it in Chekov’s voice) in 2267. Khan and his crew were discovered adrift, asleep for nearly 300 years. Brought aboard the Enterprise, Dr. McCoy gradually realizes that Khan is an Augment, a member of a “master race” who tried to unite or subject humanity (depending on your interpretation) under their rule. With the assistance of Starfleet historian Marla McGivers, the Augment is identified as Khan Noonien Singh, a brutal twentieth-century tyrant. Khan was finally defeated and exiled from Earth with his followers, thus ending the Eugenic Wars.

The Enterprise so dramatically underestimates Khan’s abilities that he soon takes over the ship and begins to execute members of the crew. This sets up a struggle between Kirk, a human of regular strength and ability and Khan, an Augment with superhuman intelligence and strength. Of course, Kirk prevails. The message is to present a cautionary tale about the dangers of human experimentation and augmentation. But this is partly what Star Trek gets wrong about eugenics. The danger is not that eugenics will create a race of superhumans. It is that eugenics reveals the inhumanity of racist ideologies wedded to science and the ultimately empty promises of white supremacy.

At the end of their encounter with Khan, Captain Kirk decides to maroon him and his followers on an empty moon where they can make a world in their own image. For a character who was conceived of as a Hitler allegory this feels like a curiously lenient punishment and fraught with potential for dangerous outcomes down the road. The Enterprise crew never asks a few critical questions. What about the tyranny Khan still exercises over his followers? What if they encounter other space travellers who stumble upon their isolated moon? What if Khan escapes?

Of course, all of these were good “what if” questions that would form the basis of a Star Trek feature film. Fifteen years after “Space Seed,” all of those questions were answered by Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Khan did encounter some lost Starfleet travelers, he did escape, and Kirk was once again pitted against his superior genetic makeup. But The Wrath of Khan isn’t about the dangers of genetic engineering or eugenics, it is about Kirk’s own humanity and mortality reflected back to him through his struggle with Khan and then the death of Spock. But the eugenic themes of “Space Seed” are largely forgotten as Khan ascends into supervillain status - a singularly pissed-off bad guy. This is a shame in some ways because the film might have closed the circle on the Eugenic Wars and an entire period of Earth history. In a smaller way, it uses Khan to define what humanity is by defining what it means to Kirk. Kirk learns about the meaning of his own fragility and the value of a life lived well (both his own and Spock’s) and the value of a particular utopian vision for humanity’s future. This vision is the direction chosen after the Eugenic wars, after Khan.

However! Khan was not the last of the Augments. Their legacy continued to reverberate throughout Federation history well into the 24th century. Deep Space Nine returned to the theme of eugenics a few different times, most famously through the station doctor, Julian Bashir. Dr. Bashir started Deep Space Nine as a young wonder - a uniquely gifted doctor who wanted to practice “frontier medicine” aboard Starfleet’s most remote outpost. In “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” his back story is deepened to reveal that Bashir is an Augment - genetically modified by his parents in childhood and forced to keep the secret of his unique abilities. But the secret comes out, and Bashir grapples with his outsider status and the fact that Augments are not permitted to serve in Starfleet.

The interesting thing about Bashir’s story is the obviously eugenic intentions that led his parents to genetically modify their son. The episode reveals that a young Jules Bashir was intellectually disabled and physically underdeveloped. Worried for his future, his parents sent him to a clinic for treatments that dramatically and rapidly improved his physical and intellectual abilities. The utopian view of human disability in the Star Trek universe needs to be explored at greater depth. But Bashir’s backstory reveals an uncomfortable truth about nearly every character in Starfleet - they are all supremely able-bodied and intelligent. Without examination this seems like a comment on the enlightened evolution of humanity in the 24th century. But from another perspective it also feels like Starfleet must necessarily select the best of the best, and this could never include an individual like Julian Bashir had he not undergone genetic modification.

So why exactly is genetic modification illegal in the 24th century? Certainly because of Earth’s bloody history from the era of Khan and the eugenic wars. But there’s also a presumption here of basic genetic meritocracy at play. No individual should enjoy undue genetic superiority. It’s still not clear to me where this leaves disabled people in the Star Trek universe. Geordie LaForge is blind, but able to see and thus serve in Starfleet because of the technological modification in his visor. He is “modified,” but not genetically modified. If his visor didn’t exist, he could not serve. This brings us to where eugenics and disability cross over in the Star Trek universe but with echoes of the twentieth century as well.

At the end of “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” Bashir’s father admits his contravention of Federation laws against genetic modification and is sentenced to a two-year prison sentence. Bashir is allowed to keep his commission. Once again in Star Trek the victim of future eugenics is not a population who was selected out of the human gene pool but an individual who achieved the astounding abilities promised by eugenic utopian thinking. But the revulsion of Federation society towards Augments creates an obstacle. Can a superhuman co-exist with humans who view their vulnerability and fallibility as an essential and defining characteristic? The human prejudice about Augments is also used to explore humanity’s struggle to grapple with its eugenic past.

Ultimately Star Trek takes the correct position on eugenics even if it cannot identify the exact structural reasons that it so dominated and disrupted the twentieth century. Khan and the Eugenic wars is an attempt to grapple with the history of eugenics by creating an alternative history that is even more destructive and horrific – a literal world war fought over the product of eugenic thinking.

Finally, here’s a very dumb skeet I wrote that I thought deserved more love. I guess you have to be a fan of two different shows to get the joke, but I truly did ponder it while I was writing. Thanks for reading, friends. LLAP.