Talk:Social degeneration

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 April 2020 and 9 June 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ewenokur.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Lamarck

I would like to note the new research in Genetics, epigenetics. Perhaps it is not widely recognized yet, but it appears that the behaviour of people can have genetical consequences for the children and for a few generations. It appears that genes can be set on or off, and this setting can be inherited. This is not knowledge that can be used in favour of advocates of the degeneration theory. On the contrary, the genes basically hardly change, it is only the working of the genes. It means that the bashing of individuals with undesired behaviour can be stopped and that attempts should be made to cure behaviour in order to let future generations have a better life. Of course this has to be researched first.--Daanschr 17:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

This article really needs some boosting up:)

I provided the citation needed on eugenics in the USA. But the footnote, which should be 3, appears as 1.

Carlos Ramirez-Faria 08:32, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Carlos Ramirez-Faria

I don't believe this article should include any reference to epigenetics. Best to write about the idea's emergence in the 19th century rather than retrospectively ally it to more recent research. The whole article needs a rewrite from top to bottom. FiachraByrne (talk) 15:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Potentially useful quote

I noticed an IP recently removed a quote from the "Development" section. I think this is an improvement, though the quote may still be useful later on, if someone decides to reincorporate it into the body with context to justify it. Here's the quote:

"Sexual contagion: In other words, while degeneration was technically a medical term, and denoted a particular sub-category of organic disease, this disease wrought moral effects by inducing in the human organism a 'morbid deviation from the original type' whose offspring were congenitally prone ... to sinful behaviours ..." ―Kelly Hurley (1996), The Gothic Body

Just in case. Not sure if the italicization was intended to be there, but that's how I found it. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 05:52, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory has an RFC

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page.--Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:12, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

"Degeneration" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Degeneration. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 8#Degeneration until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:09, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

dubious racial terms; incoherence

"those afflicted with degeneration were thought to represent a return to an earlier evolutionary stage. This can be seen socially when mixed race marriages started becoming more frequent as the 19th century progressed. Such mixed marriages, all but unthinkable in 1848 but now on the rise among Indo-European and even full-blood European women with native men, were attributed to the increasing impoverishment and declining welfare of these women on the one hand an "intellectual and social development" among certain classes of native the other. The issue, however, was rarely addressed since the gender hierarchy of the argument was contingent on assuming those who made such conjugal choices were neither well-bred nor deserved European standing.[18]"

"mixed marriages . . . among Indo-European and even full-blood European women with native men"

1) "Indo-European" is a linguistic term that has zero relevance here.

2) "even full-blood European women"? This language of "blood" is out of date and has problematically racist implications, but the writer does not show any effort to distance themself from this phrasing. In actual fact, of course, no humans have ever been "full-blood[ed]" anything; there are no "pure" ethnicities of any kind at the biological level.

3) "native men"?! Native to where? All I can think is that this was written on the subcontinent by people who did not understand that they were writing an article that be read by people very far away from India and Pakistan who might have no idea what "natives" were being talked about. Besides, who is "native" anywhere, actually? People whose roots are in Northern India themselves descend from ancient immigrants (Indo-Europeans) who drove the "natives" (presumably Dravidian speakers) to the south.

4) "the gender hierarchy ... was contingent on assuming" something about being well-bred or deserving European "standing." Again, the writing is provincially colored. But also, "gender" is an alien concept here -- there has been no talk of gender and none appears after this either.

2fennario (talk) 05:03, 11 February 2022 (UTC)2fennario

Strange former paragraph... - make new sub-heading a la "Fin de siècle" for it maybe?

The poetics of degeneration was a poetics of social crisis. In the last decades of the century; Victorian social planners drew deeply on social Darwinism and the idea of degeneration to figure the social crises erupting relentlessly in the cities and colonies. Heightened debates converged with domestic and colonial social reform, cementing an offensive of a somewhat different order. It targeted the "dangerous" in paupered residuum and the growing population impoverished Indo-Europeans, the majority of whom were of mixed but legally classified as European. The world, being more globalized than ever before, continued to have more "crises" similar to these had by the leading classes, deterring the other as the enemy or downfall of society. Biohistorian15 (talk) 04:45, 3 July 2024 (UTC)