How does evolution drive the advancement of society?

How does evolution drive human beings to advance ourselves and our cultures? What is social evolution?

Well, I think that you are talking about eugenics... haha I just had to write a report for school about this... :P so I shall paste it now. Well basically its selective breeding for humans, to try and have a smarter, healthier advanced human race. But there was a lot of uproar about it, because people were told that they weren't allowed kids if they weren't of a certain standard. If this isn't what you're talking about, erm, then sorry... but it sounds like it.

This is my report on eugenics. The first thing that people should know is that it is a method which involves controlling the breeding of humans to try to achieve traits in the future generations that are desirable, in a scientific point of view.
It was in the first half of the 20th century that eugenics was at its peak, although, many people abandoned the idea of it at the end of World War II. An important thing to know is that eugenic was not only present in once country or culture, there were many places around the whole world where it was practiced. It was not seen as anything negative either, in fact, people that promoted the idea of it included: governments, influential individuals and also institutions.

The idea of it was to improve the human hereditary traits by promoting the reproduction of certain people and traits, and also the reduction of reproduction of certain people and certain traits. However, today this concept is not accepted, nowadays people think that is brutal and that is massively violated human rights of millions of people.

This movement was based on the classification and identification of individuals and their families. This also included the poor, the mentally ill, the blind, homosexuals and entire racial groups. Eugenicists violated privacy, attacked people’s reputations and violated the right to life, today, all of these offenses are violations of human rights.

It is since the post-war period that it is the view of both the public and scientific communities that eugenics is associated with Nazi abuses, such as enforced racial hygiene, human experimentation and killing of population groups that are not wanted. Although, developments in genetic and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century, have made people question what the meaning of eugenics actually is and what its ethical and moral status it is in nowadays.

Actions taken included some programs, these included: genetic screening, birth control, promoting differential birth rates, marriage restrictions, segregation (racial and also the segregation of the mentally ill from the rest of the population), compulsory sterilisation, forced abortions and forced pregnancies, as well as genocide.
There were many people who gave theories to support this practice, or found out things to support the act, such as Galton. Galton claimed that the less intelligent the human, the more fertile the human. However, Galton did not propose any selection methods; instead he hoped for a solution, he wanted people to be aware of the importance of breeding.

Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler was infamous for the eugenics programs that he attempted in an attempt to maintain a “pure” German race through a series of programs that came under the title of racial hygiene. The Nazis experimented a lot on live human beings to test their genetic theories, ranging from the simple measuring of physical characteristics to experiments carried out by Josef Mengele for Otmar von Verschuer on twins in the concentration camps.

It was during the 1930’s and 1940’s that the Nazis began forcibly sterilised hundreds of thousands of people who they viewed as mentally and physically unfit, there were an estimated 400,000 people between 1934 and 1937 who this was done to. The scale of the German regime prompted American eugenics to expand the program, one of them complaining that “the Germans are beating us at our own game.” However, it seems the Nazis went even further, they killed tens of thousands of disabled people through compulsory “euthanasia” programs, the victims had no say in it.

In America, the theory behind it was taught in college and high school classrooms. In 1896, many states made marriage laws with certain eugenic criteria that prohibited anyone who was epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded from marrying.

It was soon proved by Alexander Graham that deafness was hereditary and so deaf parents were more likely to produce deaf children. So it was during th 20th century that researchers became interested in the idea that mental illness could run in families and there ere a lot of studies that took place to document the heritability of such illnesses as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

The last known forced sterilisation in America was done in 1978.
In Japan, in the beginning, Japanese governments limited the birth of children with “inferior” traits, as well as trying to protect the life and health of mothers.
Also, according to the Eugenic Protection Law (1948), sterilisation could be enforced on criminals; patients with genetic diseases such as total colour blindness, hemophilia, albinism and ichthyosis, as well as mental infections such as schizophrenia, manic-depressiveness and epilepsy, mental illnesses were added in 1952.

I have summed up all of the information I have given above, and it is my conclusion that the process of eugenics should not be carried out, in my opinion, it is a violation of human rights, and can lead to violence or forcing people to do things they do not agree to. Even though, it would lead to a stronger, healthier human race, everyone has the same rights, no matter what they look like or their mental and physical health. If I developed a disease in ten years time and was told that I would not be allowed to have children, because I am not of a certain health standard, I would not at all be happy. I do not think anyone would.

- Jess