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Old 01-09-2015, 04:56 PM   #1
Sindri
 
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Default Designing a Secret Eugenics Society

I'm thinking about how a secret society practicing classical positive eugenics in a low-tech world might function. The aim is to get something somewhat like the Bene Gesserit; an organization that uses normal breeding, that focuses on (in their view) producing superior specimens rather than eliminating inferior ones, whose methods involve results that may not be ideal for the people involved in their breeding program but aren't deliberately malicious and who, while capable of making mistakes, still approach their goal as rationally as they can rather than letting their methods be clouded by ideology. Significant differences would be that they don't need to be a single sex organization and that they are limiting themselves to normal breeding because of limited technology rather than religious beliefs.

Appearing as a religious organization to the outside world is probably a good idea. That gives a good excuse to keeping secrets about the organization that are revealed as people reach greater levels of initiation. It also helps with the funding situation through tithes, fees for priestly services or whatever depending on which is more common in the regions the organization has influence in. The rest of the funding could come from owned lands, selling high quality education, donations from those on the inside and investments. It would probably be useful to have a small sacred island that they can operate out of.

The inside organization might be led by adopted children who do not show promise as breeding members made eunuchs and educated in the importance of their mission and how to lead so that they owe the organization and can maintain neutrality in regards to other members and do not have a dynasty to consider. The rest of the organization would probably be composed of hereditary members, promising orphans and the occasional carefully selected member of the laity.

They have a dedication to understanding heredity and will try to amass a lot of records but the also have no understanding of anything like DNA perse which will make their job hard. I imagine that they will come up with a set of traits they aim to improve and which they at least attempt to test for which will probably get revised as they accumulate more data. Then they will try to improve each trait in parallel slowly raising the bar with each generation with any above average but below bar individuals or bloodlines that haven't shown improvement in a while bred with counterparts in the other trait breeding programs.

They will want access to as much genetic stock as possible. Measuring those on the outside won't be easy. Perhaps they can use a combination of their educational services for mental abilities, regular religious festivals for physical abilities and if nothing else very limited guesswork by members nearby. When a useful addition to the program is found they might be selected to join the organization, a member might use seduction, they might try to set up a generous arranged marriage or if a member is trusted they might try to play matchmaker with another useful addition to the program. Dabbling in politics might even be useful occasionally.

Any ideas or comments?
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Old 01-09-2015, 05:08 PM   #2
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Default Re: Designing a Secret Eugenics Society

The success of any such program is going to be heavily dependent on how it intersects with the open rules of the host society: political power, economics, inheritance, etc. Manipulating the lower classes (however defined) won't be hard in most hierarchical societies, but that presumes the ruling class sees some benefit in it for themselves. The ruling class itself will be difficult to manipulate unless the eugenicists are (say) arbiters of marriage or succession, or power passes primarily through non-hereditary means.

Examples from fiction (Bradley's Darkover novels and Stross' Corporate Wars series come to mind) usually focus on one specific, beneficial trait that confers a significant advantage to its inheritors: usually some form of psychic aptitude.
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Old 01-09-2015, 05:23 PM   #3
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Default Re: Designing a Secret Eugenics Society

The real challenge here is that breeding programs need to do lots of breeding. Hard to keep that secret.
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Old 01-09-2015, 05:37 PM   #4
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Default Re: Designing a Secret Eugenics Society

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The success of any such program is going to be heavily dependent on how it intersects with the open rules of the host society: political power, economics, inheritance, etc. Manipulating the lower classes (however defined) won't be hard in most hierarchical societies, but that presumes the ruling class sees some benefit in it for themselves. The ruling class itself will be difficult to manipulate unless the eugenicists are (say) arbiters of marriage or succession, or power passes primarily through non-hereditary means.

Examples from fiction (Bradley's Darkover novels and Stross' Corporate Wars series come to mind) usually focus on one specific, beneficial trait that confers a significant advantage to its inheritors: usually some form of psychic aptitude.
The organization has social power through it's role as a religion though I don't see it as having managed to gain full control over marriage or succession. However when you want to keep your aims a secret manipulating members of the upper class is only slightly more difficult than manipulating members of the lower classes as long as you actually have members of the upper class to work with.

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The real challenge here is that breeding programs need to do lots of breeding. Hard to keep that secret.
Well you don't necessarily have to keep that breeding is going on a secret for your aims as a society to remain secret.
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Old 01-09-2015, 05:58 PM   #5
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Well you don't necessarily have to keep that breeding is going on a secret for your aims as a society to remain secret.
Indeed: being a religion of matchmaking and families could work well, especially if they produce more successful families, on the average.
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Old 01-09-2015, 06:05 PM   #6
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Indeed: being a religion of matchmaking and families could work well, especially if they produce more successful families, on the average.
Or even if you just get a rep as the best geneologists, the better to support claims to land and title.
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Old 01-09-2015, 06:20 PM   #7
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Or even if you just get a rep as the best geneologists, the better to support claims to land and title.
The British spent centuries breeding for enormous tracts of land, and eventually it worked quite well.
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Old 01-09-2015, 06:25 PM   #8
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Default Re: Designing a Secret Eugenics Society

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They will want access to as much genetic stock as possible. Measuring those on the outside won't be easy. Perhaps they can use a combination of their educational services for mental abilities, regular religious festivals for physical abilities and if nothing else very limited guesswork by members nearby. When a useful addition to the program is found they might be selected to join the organization, a member might use seduction, they might try to set up a generous arranged marriage or if a member is trusted they might try to play matchmaker with another useful addition to the program. Dabbling in politics might even be useful occasionally.

Any ideas or comments?
I think you underestimate the difficulty. There are a number of examples of that sort of thing. Feminine examples would include Imperial concubinage contests, and male examples the Janisaries. Nor do they have to be involuntary; if the group has enough prestige, common folk would actually compete for places. Examples of that would be Chinese Mandarins, Medieval low level Churchmen, Lamas, and court eunechs in some empires. The concept of the ruling class combing the lower for useful servants for various tasks is well known.
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Old 01-09-2015, 06:29 PM   #9
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Well you don't necessarily have to keep that breeding is going on a secret for your aims as a society to remain secret.
Sorry, posted on a phone from work, so I couldn't elaborate. Obvious, selection works and was known in ancient times for the breeding of beasts, even if you don't know about DNA. (On the other hand, you run a real risk of breeding in flaws you can't see with the traits you want, for instance, larger beasts without correspondingly larger hearts.)

Selection takes time, though, multiple generations, and involves a lot of guesswork. Every newborn has a chance to be a step toward what you're looking for, but if it's a trait that involves multiple genes, the chance can be very low. Even if the chance of success for any attempt is low, you can make it a virtual certainty with a large enough number of attempts. You get a large number of attempts by having women have babies as fast as they can, as young as the can, in combination with different candidate fathers. If you get a hit, you require her to have more babies with the same father. This leads to first, a lot of babies, which is to say expense. You can't dispose of the rejects unttil you can be sure there are rejects. And there's the moral dilemma of disposing of people or turning women into factories in the first place. Assume that they don't go so far as murder, that they want to find a productive role for all the misses, it's still a lot of kids. Say a hundred candidate females (with maybe 30 candidate males), you get 500 kids age 0 to 5 over 5 years.
This church will have to control a heckuvalotta resources; if it has them, how are they not an utterly dominant political force? And what better use for all the rejects than war?

Take that cohort of 500 kids. If the trait you want is single-gene recessive, and if each candidate parent is 50% likely to have it, then you'd have about 70 kids who manifest that trait. If it requires two recessive genes, then you get less than 20 successes. If it requires unknown special environmental characteristics to manifest, you may only get 1.

Say you get 20 successes, though. On a trait that's not sex-linked, that means 10 are girls. So, you can start churning out 10 special kids a year, right, by breeding them with the 10 males? All partners involved have two copies each of the required recessive genes, no possibility of contamination. The problem is that a breeding pool of 20 is not near enough genetic diversity. They might not call it that, but they'd know of the danger from animal breeding.

Do I gather that there's no magic/psi to sidestep the issues of low tech?
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Old 01-09-2015, 06:35 PM   #10
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Default Re: Designing a Secret Eugenics Society

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The British spent centuries breeding for enormous tracts of land, and eventually it worked quite well.
The Habsburgs are more famous for that. "What Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee."
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