The term “thinning the herd” used to be a serious one.
Ranchers would cull out the weaker examples of whatever animal it was they were raising, and when those animals didn’t reproduce, the overall quality of the herd would improve.
It doesn’t apply as well to human beings. Much of the genocide that has taken place throughout history had at its root the desire to see one particular race or ethnicity assert itself over another. It all goes back to one of the most erroneous assumptions people make — that one race or ethnicity is better than another.
Where assumptions aren’t incorrect are when we protect less intelligent people from the results of their own actions.
In Mike Judge’s black comedy “Idiocracy,” the premise is that for the last 40-50 years, smarter people have been reproducing in smaller numbers than dumber people. Add to that the fact of all the precautions now being taken to protect the less intelligent from themselves.
I never wore a bicycle helmet when I was a kid. I didn’t know anyone who wore a bicycle helmet, and I never knew anyone who had a head injury from not wearing a helmet.
I never knew anyone electrocuted by sticking a fork into a wall socket.
I can give all sorts of other examples, and while I would never deny that those things happened, they didn’t happen to people who grew up to be Albert Einstein, Brad Pitt or Beyonce Knowles.
It’s a cruel term in this context, but it was a form of thinning the herd, the idea that the strong survive and the weak fall by the wayside.
Now the weak not only survive in greater numbers, they reproduce.
The point of this isn’t to say anything about the pros and cons of this, or about ways to deal with overpopulation. Mostly it’s to object to describing humanity as “the herd.” We’ve been hearing that quite a bit in the year or so of the pandemic, with people questioning when we would reach “herd immunity.”
It’s a demeaning term. Herd immunity means enough members of whatever herd we’re discussing have been exposed to something and developed immunity to it that they don’t pass it along. It implies a sort of mindless way of dealing with the problem, since an intelligent person would take precautions instead of just hoping.
So forget “herd immunity.” It’s a fantasy, a pipe dream, especially if more than a third of all Trumpanzees aren’t going to get vaccinated.
Fight the pandemic yourself, and hope that if the herd does get thinned, it’s the people we can afford to lose.
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy said he and his wife were attending birthing classes, and the teacher actually told the class that once the mother’s water breaks, she and her husband should refrain from having sex.
Foxworthy’s question to the teacher.
“Has this been a problem?
These days, everything that requires intelligence and/or common sense is a problem.
Forget thinning the herd.
How about educating the herd?
In the long run, that might pay off more.