Eugenics in Disguise

Many times, people interpret evolution and natural selection as processes that are "supposed" to happen. They think they're natural occurrences that shouldn't be messed with. But from a secular perspective, no one has told us what we're "supposed" to do! We aren't born with instructions on how to operate society! The point: just because natural selection and evolution occurred in the past does NOT mean they need to continue. This might sound like an argument against eugenics. Well, that's because it is!

The Circle seems to espouse several ideas that eugenics also holds: settling for nothing less than having the most, knowing everything, and reaching "completion." The Circle leaves no room for imperfection. Eugenics allows nothing but "perfect" genes and effectually reaching "completion" of removing "bad" genes. While the aim of these principles is to improve society, they fail to view the issues from alternative perspectives. Society functions best with moderate principles that result from a give and take of two sides (The push/pull of democrats vs. republicans, capitalism vs communism). I disagree with the "Secrets are lies, sharing is caring, privacy is theft" mantras of the Circle because of the imbalances that ensue and their inherent immorality.

Often times, extreme ideologies (such as the Circle's mantras) work well on paper, but ignore the complexity of reality. Eamon Bailey states, "I truly believe that if we have no path but the right path, the best path, then that would present a kind of ultimate and all-encompassing relief" (Eggers 293). This statement assumes that humans taking the "right path" in every situation would create the ideal world. However, in a crime and corruption-free world, what is good if there is no evil to compare it to? Does anyone truly know joy if they have not known suffering? This philosophical idea-  that good can only exist when juxtaposed with evil- is what the Circle ignores with its mantras.

If we were to completely disregard my assertion that the mantras ignore said philosophical idea, we could still assert that the mantras simply lack morality. Let's examine what these statements imply. "Privacy is theft" implies that having privacy steals something from someone. That "someone", we can assume, is society. Thus, it implies that society deserves to own someone's privacy more than the person deserves to. Therefore, we conclude that this mantra is built on the assumption that society's progress is more important than the individual. As we can observe with other ideologies that are built on the same assumption (i.e eugenics), valuing society over the individual is simply immoral. In a world built off of this assumption, an individual's happiness and well-being matters less than society's advancement.

The conception of perfection deceives. Perfection requires sacrifice and immorality, and can often achieve the opposite of what it aims to. I am against the Circle's mantras due to the disparities they encourage and their negligence of perfection's evils. On paper, these mantras seem to work perfectly, but as is the case with most ideologies, their downfalls appear when they are put into effect in the real world.