I just finished "Children of the Mind" the other day and I came away with a couple of thoughts/questions about what Ender did (among other things).
Has he found true immortality? Prior to creating a young man's body for himself (and a young woman too), he was only able to live a really long time by spending most of his life as an itinerant relativistic traveler, thus slowing down his natural aging process. Once he stopped and settled down, he aged normally and would have continued in that manner if he did not have Jane create a way for instantaneous travel. When he did that, he inadvertently created two new people, which eventually became his essence in the body they called Peter. When this body ages to a sufficient degree, or becomes otherwise damaged, will he try to do it again? If so, is this ethical (assuming the first time was not his fault )?
Did he want out of his marraige with Novenha? He could not divorce her, and she would only have him on her terms, and that was to be celibate. Andrew didn't want celibacy, but he loved Novenha and wanted to be with her at least, but now he couldn't maintain three bodies, and he really only wanted to maintain one. I got the sense that it was a conscious decision on his part to vacate the old body and move into the Peter body, and he worked with Jane (perhaps not consciously in that case) to get the essence of Val out of the Val body and into the Peter body. The only thing he waited for was Novenha's conscent. She had to let him go, let him leave his old body.
Posted by Maccabeus (Member # 3051) on :
I have trouble with the idea that Andrew is the new Peter, really. They have entirely different sets of memories. They don't act like the same person, and the change is totally discontinuous (ie, I can buy a gradual change in personality as someone learns and grows). Yes, I know that OSC states that they have the same soul, or aiua, but that's the point at which my suspension of disbelief fails.
Posted by unohoo (Member # 5490) on :
Maccabeas,
My take is that if one can buy into the idea of aiuas at all, then one has to buy into the idea that Peter will become Ender as he has Ender's soul or aiua. While he has new experiences that Andrew doesn't have, he also has Val's experiences that Andrew also doesn't have. I am willing to buy into the philotes and the aiuas as a concept in this universe, and therefore am prepared to accept Peter as uber-Andrew/Ender.
Posted by Maccabeus (Member # 3051) on :
Unohoo> My problem is that somewhere between a year and six months before reading COTM, I had come up with a concept of the soul strongly analogous to the auias, but not the same. (I do a lot of theological thinking in my spare time.) When things like this happen I want to suspend disbelief badly and can't. The sticking point here is that I had decided that a soul follows with its mind/memories rather than the other way around, if one is moved somehow.
My personal beliefs, of course, are irrelevant to the novel, but they make it difficult to suspend belief enough to reason about the matter.
Posted by unohoo (Member # 5490) on :
Lucky for me (or not, depending on your POV) I don't see things that way, so I can suspend my preconceptions. However, your line of thought, Maccabeus has caused me to look down some different paths.
Is is possible to think of aiuas as self, not just soul (I'm not sure I understand that concept at all), but an all encompassing self? Would that then give one who has to ability to tap into his/her aiua to pre-carnate ones self? Is that what Ender did?
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