No I’m not a fascist (at least I hope not…)
I’m trying to understand why we’ve normalised the idea of eugenics in dogs (e.g. golden retrievers are friendly and smart, chihuahas are aggressive, etc.)¹ but find the idea of racial classification in humans abhorrent.
I can sort of see it from the idea that Nurture (culture and upbringing) would have a greater effect on a human’s characteristics than Nature would.
At the same time, my family tree has many twins and I’ve noticed that the identical ones have similar outcomes in life, whereas the fraternal ones (even the ones that look very similar) don’t really (N=3).
Maybe dog culture is not a thing, and that’s why people are happy to make these sweeping generalizations on dog characterics?
I’m lost a little
1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/74/f7/df74f716c3a70f59aeb468152e4be927.png
To be clear I agree with this 100%, but I also want to mention that personality disorders (and other neurodivergent traits) are very inheritable. Being raised in a nurturing environment that takes steps to help a child understand their non-typical traits can make a massive difference in how those traits are displayed in all but the most extreme cases, though.
To be clear, personality is incredibly heritable, even beyond personality disorders. People arrive here with all sorts of proclivities related to mood, intelligence, empathy, and more, which is then filtered and changed through their experiences. Everyone has a different starting place related to personality. Twin studies have shown this over and over