No I'm not a fascist (at least I hope not...)
I'm trying to understand why we've normalised the idea of eugenics in dogs (e.g. golden retrievers are friendly and smart, chihuahas are aggressive, etc.)¹ but find the idea of racial classification in humans abhorrent.
I can sort of see it from the idea that Nurture (culture and upbringing) would have a greater effect on a human's characteristics than Nature would.
At the same time, my family tree has many twins and I've noticed that the identical ones have similar outcomes in life, whereas the fraternal ones (even the ones that look very similar) don't really (N=3).
Maybe dog culture is not a thing, and that's why people are happy to make these sweeping generalizations on dog characterics?
I'm lost a little
1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/74/f7/df74f716c3a70f59aeb468152e4be927.png
Because dog breeds are not comparable to genetic differences in humans. They've been actively bred for certain characteristics, going through a lot of generations extremely fast in controlled environments in a way that's impossible in nature. All humans are essentially mongrels. The reason we don't do racial classification of personality traits in humans isn't just because it's morally abhorrent, but also because it doesn't work, while because of the selective breeding of dogs, there can be big differences in their behaviour due to their breed.
It's also important that while a dog's breed does have an influence on it's behaviour, it's not absolute, and you can't actually predict a dog's behaviour through its breed alone.
just because it’s morally abhorrent, but also because it doesn’t work
wait, why? In dogs it took 5-6 generations to see general behavioral characteristics. Why can't the same be true in humans?
Because humans haven't been selectively bred for specific traits.
I don't know that we do, nobody who looks at a pug can continue on with their faith in eugenics un-shaken
How can we reconcile eugenics in dogs but not humans?
That's the neat part, you don't.
If humans were genuinely good eugenics might be just another tool for improvement.
But humans are awful, so eugenics always becomes a tool for racists to enact their racism, a justification for the violation of human rights, and a form of violence against an outgroup. Just like other modes of so-called "meritocracy" and other fascist pablum.
hmm! So we accept it in dogs, because dogs don't have an idealogy of the "perfect breed" so to speak, and so we still selectively breed them for characteritics that we desire, but there's not one ideal that can rank one dog over another.
I think you just cleared up a lot of it for me: there's no dog politics in dog breeding, they're just diverse.
Well, not quite. Many people find the extreme trait selection present in, eg. French Bulldogs, to be horribly unethical. I'm of the opinion that animals have natural rights as well, and one of those is to not be born into a world of pain for someone else's amusement. It can be a very political topic! It just doesn't usually lead to genocide.
Political at the human-level, yes - but at the dog level - they just see themselves as different, not ranked. They don't themselves subscribe to the idealogy of archetypes.
A well-bred dalmation from a long stock of desirable characteristics (from a human perspective), would still probably breed with a "lesser breed" (again, from a human perspective) because the dogs don't actually care; their owners do.
