AUTHOR’S NOTE:

THIS POEM is really two poems by two authors.

The first part was sent to me by an aspiring new poet named Däanlea, whose work really deserves to be published in print one day.

The second part is my response.

This piece begins in a personal vein, and ends with an extension of the personal into the infinite.

We conscious and unconscious beings are all on a journey together. I hope this poem helps the reader capture some sense of that.

THE PINE

I

Cold winds howl down the steep slopes
Where a solitary pine stands tall
The clouds usher in the snowflakes to provide
a protecting layer against the dark, long nights.
Are you the pine or the snow?
When the sun emerges from behind the mountain
will the down covering melt?
The sun provides its warmth and allows
the tree to grow stronger and taller
with each passing day.
Shall we hike today to the hillside
of this tree and make our acquaintance?

II

I am the pine
I am the dissolved and renewed essence of the pines that were
I am the millionfold seeds of the pines to come
And what pines will become

Like you, I am awakened earth
Like you, I am cooled and crystallized starstreams
Unlike you, I think not in moments but in millennia

Whether you know it or not
You are related to me
Together we will act to birth new ages, new universes
Together we acted to birth this age
We were together at the beginning which was more than a beginning
We will be together at the end which is not an end

This earth with its snows and rivers and oceans
Is our gift to each other.
Come beneath me
And be healed.

Sir Charles Galton Darwin (grandson of Charles Darwin), who helped direct the Manhattan Project, saw eugenics as a logical outgrowth of evolutionary science and as the only way to better the human condition.

by Kevin Alfred Strom

I WAS INTRIGUED and then pleased and then astounded as I listened to National Public Radio yesterday morning. As soon as I switched on my Boston Acoustics radio, I heard the resonant, engaging, elegant, and intelligent words of Charles Galton Darwin — Charles Darwin’s grandson and Francis Galton’s godson and a distinguished scientist in his own right — reading a radio essay that he had recorded in 1953. Amazingly, though he openly stated that improvements in the lot of mankind could only be achieved through a eugenic application of the principle of heredity, there was no negative commentary from the “NPR Weekend Edition Sunday” program host, Liane Hansen. The Opponent will at least be writing angry letters over this; so we ought to tell NPR how appreciative we are to hear an alternative point of view amidst the sea of modern equalitarianism.

Charles Galton Darwin had a long scientific career, including being Managing Director of Britain’s National Physical Laboratory before and during World War II, President of the Physical Society from 1941 to 1944, President of the Eugenics Society from 1953 to 1959, and, near the end of his life in the early 1960s, Advisory Editor of the still-published Mankind Quarterly. He was also a major figure in the Manhattan Project. Here’s what he had to say:

‘I RECOGNIZE FULLY that the appeal of things in life will be different for different people, and I can only say what I have found the most important things in life for myself. I count as one of the most important things in the world the understanding of the world.

‘I have spent most of my time working at the physical sciences, and I count myself fortunate in having lived through the heroic age of physics when, what with relativity and the quantum theory, our understanding of the nature of inanimate matter has been as much revolutionized as it was 300 years ago in the days of Newton.

‘This has been the science I have mostly studied, but I have always had a lively interest in biological subjects too, and these have much affected what I believe. Among such subjects one is the question of human nature, and this has colored my view of what will happen to mankind in the future. I believe that a great deal of what is now being attempted for our betterment is doomed to fail, and so I don’t share the particular enthusiasms of many of the would-be benefactors of humanity.

‘It is true that there have been immense improvements in material conditions during the past century, but they are quite external and they leave man’s fundamental nature no better than it was before. So too the intellectual triumphs of recent years don’t signify that man has become any more intelligent than he was in the preceding dark ages. I see no safeguard for us against a relapse into conditions like those exemplified in the sad records of past history.

‘The main hope of bringing about any real betterment in mankind depends on a different thing; it must be based on applying the idea of heredity, a science that is already understood in its principles, though hardly yet in many of its applications. Holding this, I believe intensely in the importance of the family as the continuing unit of human life. When the science of eugenics has been more fully developed, there may be a hope on those lines of really bettering humanity.

‘These are the things that for me are consciously of chief importance. But underlying them, there are others. The great philosopher Kant once said that there were two things that continually filled him with wonder: the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him.

‘Like him I, too, continually wonder at the moral law within me, which dictates my conduct, or perhaps I ought to say the ideals of conduct, which I wish I could fulfill. But I am entirely lacking in the thing which so many people seem to regard as their mainstay in life, a mystical sense of religion. This I lack, and I am perfectly content to be without it.’

Though Charles Galton Darwin devoted a large part of his life to promoting the ideals of a humanity improved by selective reproduction of the best and most fit, he was pessimistic about the prospects for eugenics. When asked what might practically be done in the post-WWII West, he said “very little indeed … for the simple reason that most human beings do not care in the least about the distant future.”

C.G. Darwin's 1953 book, The Next Million Years

As he said in his radio speech, Darwin had little use for the world-improvers whose endless crusade to transfer wealth to the “wretched refuse” of the Earth he saw as not only destructive but pointless and doomed to failure: “…the policy of paying most attention to the inferior types is the most inefficient way possible of achieving perfectibility of the human race… this preoccupation with the weaker members is part of the present menacing trend of political thought which insists on absolute equality.”

C. G. Darwin was no black sheep of the Darwin family in his support of racial betterment. His father (Charles Darwin’s son, the mathematician George Howard Darwin) supported the Eugenics Society, his mother was a member from about 1915, and five of his six aunts and uncles were members too.

He restated the perennial problem of the dysgenic effect of civilized society, implying that the genetic doom entailed by “social democracy” was almost upon us: “…the well-to-do are rather more likely than others to possess hereditary ability … but the more prosperous members of the community are not producing their share of the next generation … The whole thing is a catastrophe which it is now almost too late to prevent …”

Darwin knew that superior men and women might arise from the lower classes, and he was well aware that existing Western societies were far from perfect meritocracies. In fact, he helped to shift the Eugenic Society’s focus from negative eugenics (discouraging the reproduction of the unfit) to positive eugenics (encouraging — through rewards, taxation, and state policies — the reproduction of the best among us).

Nevertheless, he felt that success did very roughly correlate with genetic fitness and that therefore it would be good if ways could be found to encourage the successful to have more children, which surely they could afford more easily than the perversely more fecund lower strata of society. “There is no better rough and ready way of estimating a man’s value than by the amount he is paid,” he said, “… our national organisation ought to be such that the number of children would bear some close positive relation to income.” He advocated what he called “eugenics by taxation” but despaired of its enactment in the age of equality, saying that trying to turn his tax plan into law was probably “hopeless because it would never get votes in a democracy.”

Listen to Charles Galton Darwin’s statement (1953; mp3)

Articles on eugenics

TODAY I WILL step back from the minutiae of social and political issues, and attempt to answer what are really the ultimate questions. Why should we or anyone else make sacrifices for our nation or our race? Why is it important for our race to survive? What is our basis for saying that some acts are right and good and others are wrong?

I can think of no better way to introduce this subject than with an essay written by Mr. Martin Kerr entitled, “White and Proud”:

“There is a lot of talk these days about Black pride, Jewish pride, Hispanic pride, even gay pride. In fact, there is only one major segment of the population which is not encouraged to take pride in its heritage and in the achievements of its ancestors. That group is the White race.

“The lack of White pride is truly a sad and strange thing because no group has more to be rightfully proud of than the White people of the world. The glories and greatness that the men and women of our race have won over the centuries should serve as a source of eternal pride and inspiration to White people everywhere.

“Since the dawn of history we have been a mighty race of builders, explorers, artists, warriors, inventors, philosophers, and cultivators. We have sailed the seas, tamed vast wildernesses, scaled towering mountains and journeyed to the depths of the ocean and into the cold void of outer space. We have built great civilizations, created breathtaking works of beauty, and made the deserts bloom. The technological achievements of our people — from the megalithic calendar of Stonehenge to the moonwalk of the Apollo astronauts — are unequaled. We have devised sublime philosophies, conquered deadly diseases, and performed soul-stirring acts of heroism and self-sacrifice.

“We are the race of Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, and Homer. We are the sons and daughters of Leif Erikson, Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, and Magellan. We are the folk of Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Washington, and Robert E. Lee. We are the descendants of Pythagoras, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, and Darwin. Just to list the great accomplishments of our race would require the work of a lifetime. No one has more to be proud of than we do.

“In order for an individual to be psychologically healthy, he or she must have a clear-cut sense of identity and self-worth. And for our race as a whole to be strong and healthy, White people everywhere must develop a sense of racial identity and racial worth. There is no better way to obtain this very necessary level of racial awareness than in having pride in your people and their accomplishments.

“So take pride in your race, pride in what we have achieved in days gone by — and pride in what we will yet accomplish as we reach for the stars.”

There is something about our race which makes us indisposed to brag or talk very much about our accomplishments. We feel it is “bad form,” or bad manners, and furthermore we see it as a sign of weakness. Our instinct tells us that the inferior man will flap his gums and tell the world how “great” he is to cover up his lack of real achievement and character. The superior man has no such need. And we often apply this principle to our race and our nation as well as to individuals. We see excessive chauvinism or nationalism as ungentlemanly and somehow suspect.

This reticence, which may be allied to our race’s inborn tendency to seek out objective truth and discount subjective feelings, seems a fine and noble thing, and it has served us well and made life more tolerable during the millennia that our people lived almost exclusively among our own kind. But in the distinctly unnatural environment in which White Americans now find themselves, where we are mixed with and jostled by a thousand different tribes and peoples in what used to be our country, this reluctance to “blow our own horn” can work against us. An unspoken, instinctive acknowledgment of our own preeminence is no longer enough. Our instinctive pride of race and nation is now attacked on all sides by peoples who have no such reticence and among whom the virtue of humility is unknown.

An entire generation of Americans has grown up in an environment in which the news media, the entertainment and music industries, the major publishing houses, and the public school system have all spoken with one voice and that voice has said: “White people are the cancer of the Earth. They have enslaved and killed and polluted and destroyed everything they have touched. There are no differences between the races except skin color. White people have no right to keep their nations White. White people have no right to live and work among their own kind. There is no reason for the White race to survive. Racial mixing is the inevitable wave of the future. White racial feelings are a manifestation of ultimate evil. It would be better if all the races mixed so there would be an end to the White race and thus to White racism.”

It is vital that our young people be given an antidote to this alien poison. It is vital that they be given back a pride in their people, and the will to survive as a people in the dangerous, hostile world into which they were born. That is the mission of this program.

I know that Americans are reluctant to speak about race. I know that they look over their shoulders and lower their voices when about to utter an unapproved opinion. But we must overcome this reluctance. In our present situation it can only be described as suicidal.

We must succeed in the mission of this program because we must survive as a people. In ages past no one needed to explain that. We knew it in our hearts, in our souls. We knew we must survive. It was the unspoken assumption that made our work worthwhile, our cooperation necessary, and our patriotism vital and alive.

In today’s urbanized, globalized, money-oriented, multiracial society, though, we have lost touch with our souls, with our true inner spirit, with our instincts. We are more… “rational.” We demand answers and reasons for everything.

Western man stands at a point of crisis brought on partly by his own spirit of reason and partly by the aliens and traitors who have purposely shaken his will to live. For today we ask ourselves, “Why should we survive?”

And the answers given to that question, even by the most sincere, are usually incomplete and unsatisfactory. Often they depend on an interpretation of ancient religious writings, the relevance and meaning of which are subject to endless debate and disagreement.

There must be an answer to that question which does not contradict our true spiritual feelings and which also does not contradict the observed facts of Nature.

“Why should we survive?” implies another deeper question –- “Why are we here?” In a way, that latter question answers itself, as I’ll show.

Why are we here? Why are we alive in this incomprehensibly vast universe, on this mote of dust that we call Earth that hangs suspended near the trailing edge of one among billions of galaxies which each contains a billion suns? What is it all about?

I said that, in a way, the question answers itself. Now I am not saying that we have complete and specific answers to every aspect of that question. Many gaps remain in our knowledge of the evolution of matter and of life, for example. But we have achieved, through uncounted eons of upward development and struggle, the ability to understand ourselves and to understand the processes of life and of the universe to an almost infinitely greater degree than any other creature on this planet.

For all of our hard won knowledge, however, the best men among us know all too well that we cannot at this time fully answer the question which I posed a moment ago — “Why are we here? What is it all about?” Our quest to understand the majesty and the meaning of creation has left us with a profound realization of our own limitations. If they are honest, our most advanced scientists will admit this, as will our profoundest philosophers and theologians.

Therefore, if we are to understand the purpose of our lives, if we are to answer my question “Why are we here?” then we most urgently need to surpass ourselves, to increase our understanding and our knowledge a hundred fold, a thousand fold, a million fold. Merely because the best men of our race represent the highest development of consciousness on this planet at this time is no reason to believe that a higher development is not possible.

Aware of our limitations and of our inability to honestly and completely and certainly answer the ultimate question of meaning and purpose, we can see now with unblinking eyes the certainty that at our present stage of development, our mission, our purpose, must be to do whatever is necessary to continue this process of increasing knowledge, of increasing consciousness, of upward development. Our purpose must be to make possible the answering of those ultimate questions. By laying the groundwork for a higher humanity, a higher consciousness, which will be able to answer those questions, we are fulfilling the highest purpose that Man can conceive at  his present stage of development.

To successfully pursue this mission we will need better scientists, more profound philosophers, more creative inventors, and more responsible leaders than have ever existed before on planet Earth.

I ask you, ladies and gentleman, is that the direction that America is taking today? Are we still advancing, still heading for the stars?

Or are we headed for the gutter?

At the beginning of this program I asked another important question: What is our basis for saying that some acts are right and good and others are wrong? In other words: What is the basis of morality? Our answer to this question must not be at variance with our inborn moral sense nor must it be based on any absolutist dogma which cannot be carried out in the real world. For morality to have any meaning at all it must be a realistic guide to action. If you believe, as we do, that our purpose on this Earth is to continue on the upward path, to advance, insofar as it is in our abilities to do so, in our struggle for a higher, nobler consciousness — then the answer to that moral question becomes obvious.

First, we must realize that, despite all its imperfections and shortcomings, the gene pool of our race represents the highest development that Nature has yet produced on Earth. It is our most precious possession. Our present stage of development was reached by countless generations of struggle and natural selection — but it can be destroyed beyond any hope of repair or restoration by a single thoughtless and selfish generation. We must never allow our gene pool to be corrupted. Nature’s gift to our people must be jealously guarded.

Secondly, we must recognize that these gifts of mind and spirit and beauty which mark us as a race apart from the rest of mankind were obtained only as a result of a relentless winnowing of our people over hundreds of thousands of years in accord with Nature’s unalterable law of survival of the fittest.

We must also recognize that our civilization and our technology have over the last few millennia largely shielded us from a continuation of this winnowing process, thus slowing or even reversing our upward development at the genetic level.

Armed with a love for our people, with the will to fulfill our destiny, and with our scientific knowledge, we can return our people to the upward path and become conscious agents of our own evolution.

In short, the answer to our moral question is this: Whatever is good for our people, for our race, in the long term, is good. Whatever will advance our race toward ever higher levels of physical and spiritual development, whatever brings us closer to that destiny which our Creator intends for us, is good. And whatever threatens the survival of our people, or which puts us on the downward path, is evil.

This moral standard must be relentlessly applied to every individual, to every institution, to every organization, to every religion, to every proposed program or course of action, and to every expenditure of money in our entire society.

When seen through the lens of a true morality the scales fall from the observer’s eyes and the hypocrisy and treason and criminal waste of our time and our inheritance become painfully, almost unbearably, obvious.

I’m sure that you’ve said to yourself, “White Americans don’t stick together anymore.” We are a divided people and the enemy’s strategy of divide and conquer is working very well. Our people think of themselves as Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, Christians or free thinkers, Baptists or Catholics. The fallacy of that line of thinking is that it gives primacy to what a person believes. If a person shares our beliefs, it is thought that he is “one of us” — if a Hottentot or Jew professes a love for the Bible or the Constitution then he magically becomes a Christian or an American.

Rather than giving primacy to what a person believes, however, we ought to give primacy to what a person actually is. Our race and our nation are one, and every member of our people, regardless of the brainwashing to which he has been subjected and the alien belief system which has been stuffed down his throat, is one of us. And within our souls lie the same spiritual urges which motivated the greatest men of our race to give their all so that our world could be born.

Let us not shirk our responsibility to pass on that heritage increased, not diminished, to the next generation of our people.