Name of short story in which aliens install suicide buttons in their children to improve their race

Question

Men and aliens are cooperating freely on some extraplanetary task. A human gets into a discussion with an alien colleague about how peaceful and mature his alien species is, as opposed to humans, who show too much violence and destructiveness at young adult ages. The alien imparts a secret to the man: some time back, his race began installing "suicide buttons" in every child -- buttons that couldn't be activated by accident, but if they ever got the urge to "end it all," they could reach around to their backs and press in a certain way, and end it all. The idea was to weed out the unstable before they hurt others... or reproduced and passed on this defect. This alien himself had lost two children to the button, but considered it a necessary price to pay for a peaceful society. The twist ending was that this racial experiment was scheduled to end in a very short time, and for some reason I don't recall, this terrified the politicians back on earth.

Answer 1

This is "The Common Denominator" by John D. MacDonald (the crime/mystery writer), available on Project Gutenberg and previously discussed here

Men and aliens are cooperating freely on some extraplanetary task. A human gets into a discussion with an alien colleague about how peaceful and mature his alien species is, as opposed to humans, who show too much violence and destructiveness at young adult ages.

"It was decided," Simpkin said firmly, "that the Argonauts are not a menace to us in any—"

"I know that, sir. Please look at the chart first and then, when you've seen it, I think you'll know what I mean."

"Go ahead," Simpkin agreed resignedly.

"I can be accused of adding apples and lemons in this presentation, sir. Note the blank chart. The base line is in years, adjusted to our calendar so as to give a comparison. Their recorded history covers twelve thousand of our years. That's better than four times ours. Now note the red line. That shows the percentage of their total population involved in wars. It peaked eight thousand years ago. Note how suddenly it drops after that. In five hundred years it sinks to the base line and does not appear again.

"Here comes the second line. Crimes of violence. It also peaks eight thousand years ago. It drops less quickly than the war line, and never does actually cut the base line. Some crime still exists there. But a very, very tiny percentage compared to ours on a population basis, or to their own past. The third line, the yellow line climbing abruptly, is the index of insanity. Again a peak during the same approximate period in their history. Again a drop almost to the base line."

The alien imparts a secret to the man: some time back, his race began installing "suicide buttons" in every child -- buttons that couldn't be activated by accident, but if they ever got the urge to "end it all," they could reach around to their backs and press in a certain way, and end it all. The idea was to weed out the unstable before they hurt others... or reproduced and passed on this defect. This alien himself had lost two children to the button, but considered it a necessary price to pay for a peaceful society.

"It is something so private with us, Man Lambert, that we seldom speak of it to each other," Soobuknoora said in Argonian. "It is not written. Maybe we have shame—a guilt sense. That is hard to say. I have decided to tell you what took place among us eight thousand years ago."

"In a moment of depression, I take these two smallest fingers of each hand. I reach behind me and I press the two fingers, held firmly together, to a space in the middle of my back. A tiny capsule buried at the base of my brain is activated and I am dead within a thousandth part of a second. Vonk Poogla is the same. All of us are the same. The passing urge for self-destruction happens to be the common denominator of imbalance. We purged our race of the influence of the neurotic, the egocentric, the hypersensitive, merely by making self-destruction very, very easy."

The twist ending was that this racial experiment was scheduled to end in a very short time, and for some reason I don't recall, this terrified the politicians back on earth.

Lambert thought some more. He said, "I shall go back and I shall speak of this plan and what it did for you. But I do not think my race will like it. I do not want to insult you or your people, but you have stagnated. You stand still in time."

Vonk Poogla laughed largely. "Not by a damn sight," he said gleefully. "Next year we stop giving the operation. We stop for good. It was just eight thousand years to permit us to catch our breath before going on more safely. And what is eight thousand years of marking time in the history of a race? Nothing, my friend. Nothing!"

When Lambert went back to Earth, he naturally quit his job.