I'm rereading some books I should have read more closely in college, and I am blown away by Hannah Arendt.
In the introduction to On Revolution, Arendt talks about how excuses to justify war change over time. "Conquest, expansion, defence of vested interests, conservation of power in view of new and threatening powers, or support of a given power equilibrium - all these well-known realities of power politics were not olnly actually the causes of the outbreak of most wars in history, they were also recognized as 'necessities', that is, as legitimate motives to invoke a decision by arms. The notion that aggression is a crime and that wars can be justified only if they ward off aggression or prevent it acquired its practical and even theoretical significance only after the First World War had demonstratd the horribly destructive potential of warfare under conditions of modern technology."
The reasons listed above seem immature to our modern sensibilites, considering the inherent horror of war, e.g., going into Iraq to free the Iraq's people is infinitely more just than invading the country in order to hoard their resources. Freedom does not fall easily into the traditional justifications of war. And with the advent of the nuclear bomb and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, "To sound off with a cheerful 'give me liberty or give me death' sort of argument in the face of unprecedenteed inconceivable potential of destruction is not even hollow; it is downright ridiculous. Indeed it seems so obvious that it is a very different thing to risk one's own life for the life and freedom of one's country and one's posterity from risking the very existence of the human species for the same purpose that it is difficult not to suspect the defenders of the 'better dead than red' or 'better death than slavery' slogans of bad faith."
This quote is especially poignant because I am here as a direct result of so many people who stood up and said that they would be better dead than slaves, but as Arendt goes on to mention, these people fought with the thought that their fight would lead to a generation who would not be in their position. The fighters may die, but they knew that civilization would survive. Even those who believe the opposite, "Better slavery than death," submitted still believing that freedom would not vanish from the earth forever, and that freedom would just arise in a more timely and prudent occasion.: the possibility for complete world annhialation changes this.
Ardent uses the first World War as the harbinger of change, 1) the distinction betwen soldiers and civilians was no longer respected because it was inconsistent with the new weapons then used...it is the function of the army to protect and defend the civilian population. In contrast, the history of warfare in our century could almost be told as the story of the growing incapacity of the army to fulfil this basic function, until today the strategy of deterrence has openly changed the role of the military from that of protector into that of a belated and essentially futile avenger."
2) No state or form of government, will be strong enough to survive a defeat in war. Total war is not a football game where if you lose one game, you have a week to heal-up and go again and hope to see your opponent again in the play-offs. It's total war and unconditional surrender mean that not only did we bomb Hiroshima, we told Japan that they cannot maintain a standing army. Hitler knew that total meant exterminating the Jews. "no government, no matter how wel established and trusted by its citizens, could withstand the unparalleled terror of violence unleashed by modern warfare upon the whole population...under the conditions of modern warfare, that is since the First World War, all governments have lived on borrowed time.
3) The armament race as a strategy of deterrence, which aim at avoiding rather than winning the war it pretends to be preparing. After reading, "On the Beach" a handful of years ago, I don't want to fight or win a nuclear war. And as the pertains to the changing role of the military, "the military are no longer preparing for a war with the statesmen hope will never break out; their own goal has become to develop weapons that will make war impossible."
4)The interpretation between war and revolution. War happens with another for traditional reasons, Revolutions occur within one nation for only one reason, freedom. These are both violent apolitical(not-prepolitical) movements, which exist as the asymptote of politics.
Arendt has a deep appreciation for the Greeks, but the Greek polis, the city-state, defined itself explicitly as a way of life that was based exclusively upon persuasion and not upon violence. "(That these were no empty words, spoken in self-deception, is show, among other things, by the Athenian custom of 'persuading' those had been condemned to death to commit suicide by drinking the hemlock cup thus sparing the Atehnian citizen under all circumstances the indignity of physical violation.)" Arendt argues from the point of view that communication is an essential and definitive human characteristic, not war, and that we have been weaned on too many lies about the beginning of man. "That such a beginning must be intimately connected with violence seems to be vouched for by the legendary beginnings of our history both biblical and classical antiquity report it: Cain slew Abel, and Romulus slew Remus...whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide, whatever political organization men may have achieved has its origin in crime. At the end of the introduction, Arendt offers another account for the beginning of human affairs that is no more or less self-evident and could act as our salvation, the first sentence of St. John, "In the beginning was the Word."
Child Ender is modern man. He doesn't fight Stilson for traditional reasons, goods, power, or gain. It's not an act of warfare as much as it's a revolution for freedom against an oppressor.
Despite his incredible analytic abilities, Ender has not reached the level of humanity necessary to persuade Stilson not to beat him up. Ender cannot act politically because he isn't talented enough, so he acts apolitically. He is a failure. This is even manifest in his unwittingly killing Stilson. You can map Stilson's death onto the way that US may bumble into a nuclear holocaust. What may begin as showing the world a lesson, showing the whip but not using it, could end in incredible and unforseen destruction.
[ December 24, 2003, 01:49 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
Wow. This is deep. And deeply cool.
Let me ruminate on this for awhile and see what I think. Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
The analogy breaks down because, though Ender killed Stilson, he didn't destroy the whole world.
Stilson would not have ceased to beat Ender up with any argument whatsoever outside of force. The Stilsons have no morals, no heart, no personhood to be appealed to. Or rather, they are persons but they refuse to see the personhood of the Enders, so that there is no possible argument the Enders could use aside from force which the Stilsons can hear.
This is because Stilson has free will. Ender can NOT make Stilson's choices for him. That is the fundamental block on the ability of Ender to shape his interactions with Stilson.
Any use of force involves the possibility of unforseen damage, collateral damage, unintended destruction.
Just because Stilson didn't realize beforehand that he was in danger from Ender, doesn't mean it isn't still his own doing that he died. He chose to engage in the battle. Not Ender. He CHOSE.
I have no sympathy for the whining Stilsons. Let them open their eyes and see, before it's too late, the humanity and personhood of the Enders. Let them see.
[ December 24, 2003, 04:11 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
Irami, please please read this. It is riveting. And speaks to this issue, as well.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"The Stilsons have no morals, no heart, no personhood to be appealed to. Or rather, they are persons but they refuse to see the personhood of the Enders...."
Anne Kate, there's an argument that neo-Peter makes in Children of the Mind that applies here: that merely by defining somebody else as "not a person," you are removing your OWN personhood. In other words, if YOU give up -- if you decide that the other person will never see you as a person, and behave therefore as if they are an unreasonable enemy -- then you yourself have eliminated your own personality.
Your phrasing above -- that Stilson is not a person because he does not recognize Ender as a person -- is an example of how seductive the easy path is.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Stilson would not have ceased to beat Ender up with any argument whatsoever outside of force. The Stilsons have no morals, no heart, no personhood to be appealed to. Or rather, they are persons but they refuse to see the personhood of the Enders, so that there is no possible argument the Enders could use aside from force which the Stilsons can hear.
I always thought that Stilson was a fat nine? year-old bully. Not incredibly bright, not incredibly caring, though he was terribly insecure. Dollars to doughnuts ( ) his parents didn't read to him. There is an argument to be made that he had more heart and moral acumen than Ender because Ender committed atrocities that Stilson wouldn't have. My analogy isn't perfect because both Ender, Stilson, and everyone watching the fight didn't die. But the unintended consequence owing to Ender's superior knowledge or technology is kind of the same in that Ender never intended to, and on many levels, intended not to, kill Stilson.
quote:Just because Stilson didn't realize beforehand that he was in danger from Ender, doesn't mean it isn't still his own doing that he died. He chose to engage in the battle. Not Ender. He CHOSE.
He chose to engage in battle, he choose to engage in a contest using the Marquis of Queensbury rules and the Geneva convention and all of the other dictums of traditional civilized war. It's kind of like how we expected our enemies in the Middle East to act, and why we were taken aback when two civilian towers were attacked. For months, we were screaming, "That's not fair!"
Stilson chose a battle where the loser is on the ground with a black eye, comes back perfectly healed, and tries it again the next week. Instead, Stilson ended up dead. He went to play soccer match and Ender used a knife and cut him. Stilson chose one game, it was Ender who chose another. That they were resolving their issues by violent games is already a break down of politics.
Stilson entered a traditional war for traditional reasons, a war as old as mankind and as old as the playground, a war for power, enlarging his kingdom, glory, pride. Those reasons aren't seen as necessities to us anymore. Ender on the other hand, Ender was fighting a revolution for his freedom, and our sensibilities deem that a reasonable impetus for violence. Then Ender brought out the nuclear bomb. Do I think it's unimaginative and leads to the indignity and degradation of the human soul, well, those weren't tears of joy Ender was crying after the incident.
Stilson was fat insecure and clumsy, but he wasn't looking to do murder or even horrendous violence. Stilson wasn't in some sort of religious frenzy, and was sort of blase about the entire affair, a routine whooping, and he obviously possessed a voice because he was taunting Ender. Given what I know of the first ten pages of that book, I cannot endorse Ender's actions, I can't even find them permissible, and you seem to be doing both which I find immature and not a little bit disturbing. I'll grab a copy of Eyes on the Prize.
[ December 24, 2003, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
This is a great topic, because it's so personal to both of us. Stilson beats up Ender because he can't recognize Ender's humanity or personhood. Because he is simply unable to understand what things are like from Ender's point of view, or to have any empathy with that, or to put himself in Ender's shoes. Therefore he recognizes for himself the RIGHT to persecute, humiliate, terrorize, and injure Ender for his own amusement, in perpetuity. That's the assumption we start out with, and Ender can try dozens of strategies to get Stilson to see that he's also a person, but all the non-violent ones don't have the slightest effect. Because the fact that they are coming from Ender makes them null and void to begin with, in Stilson's mind. No argument, no logic, no appeal to morals or decency, can possibly work, because it's only coming from Ender, whom Stilson has already negated in his mind as a non-person.
However, actual violence, physical pain, or the threat of physical pain, DOES work. It is to be hoped, of course, that the action required will serve to teach Stilson better, rather than destroy him, but you know what? There's always a risk in something like that. If Stilson gets destroyed, it's too bad, but it's just one of those things. He had a choice all along. He could have changed his heart, but he refused. There is a choice involved. Stilsons have free will. They can decide. They made their choice, and they stuck to it, and so I don't weep for them all that much. I weep more for the many many Enders who lived and died and never found the power or the ability to fight back.
Thank you for reading Eyes on the Prize. <<<<hugs>>>> I'd be delighted to know what you think about it.
[ December 24, 2003, 07:11 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
The fact that Stilson is only nine is very true. Stilsons are always crippled human beings. They are pathetic. But Ender was six. No matter how pathetic they are, they still wield life or death power over others.
Hitler was also pathetic.
It's all just a difference in scale.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Stilson would not have ceased to beat Ender up with any argument whatsoever outside of force. The Stilsons have no morals, no heart, no personhood to be appealed to.
How do you know that? We certainly never get to peek inside Stilson's head.
quote:That's the assumption we start out with, and Ender can try dozens of strategies to get Stilson to see that he's also a person, but all the non-violent ones don't have the slightest effect. Because the fact that they are coming from Ender makes them null and void to begin with, in Stilson's mind.
Again, how do you know this? Ender doesn't take the time to try other possibilities, and we have no idea what is going on in Stilson's mind.
There is only two relevant differences between Stilson and Ender in the situation: (1) Stilson started it, and (2) we get to see what Ender is thinking, but not what Stilson is thinking. I'm sure if OSC wrote the scene from the perspective of Stilson, it would be Ender who'd be called the heartless, immoral nonperson. After all, Ender is the one killing people, with little provocation - or at least provocation that normal kids would only respond to with crying or wild punching.
quote:Hitler was also pathetic.
Was Hitler an Ender or a Stilson?
Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
Hitler was a Stilson, of course. And I'm not talking about the specific Stilson so much as I'm talking about Stilsons as a type. I know them well. We meet them again and again in various circumstances, our whole lives long. In history and world events as well as just our experience of them from the playgrounds and highschools of our lives. How long do you think we should have to try before we can say they aren't ever going to listen? Is a decade long enough? 20 years? 40? Or should we wait for generations?
The amount of time you wait makes no difference. They aren't ever going to change until they are made to change.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I've met people that acted like Stilson, but I haven't met anyone with "no morals, no heart, no personhood to be appealed to." I've met many people with whom certain appeals to logic and decency don't work, but that's hardly grounds for saying such appeals could never work with them, that they could never learn, or that they have no personhood.
(I'll add that there have been those who have claimed you fall in that category - the Stilsons. There have been those who claim I'm in it, too. Given this, I do not like the suggestion that such people should give up on appeals to sensibility with us, destroy us violently instead, and then claim it was our own choice to be destroyed.)
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:That's the assumption we start out with, and Ender can try dozens of strategies to get Stilson to see that he's also a person, but all the non-violent ones don't have the slightest effect. Because the fact that they are coming from Ender makes them null and void to begin with, in Stilson's mind. No argument, no logic, no appeal to morals or decency, can possibly work, because it's only coming from Ender, whom Stilson has already negated in his mind as a non-person.
If Stilson had already so fully negated Ender as a person, why would he take the time to bully him. I don't have a copy of the book here, but wasn't Stilson embarrassed, threatened, or put-off by Ender sometime in class?
I definitely don't remember Ender running through the gamut of any non-violent methods, especially concerning the root of the issues between them, and I don't remember Ender thinking about anything as deeply as he reasoned the effectiveness of violence. He was worried about what would work, and what would work the best, and having that trumph any concerned with decency, dignity, or humanity.
Your apologies for his actions just sound like those apologies I hear from parents who yell and beat the tar out of their kids in order to get them obey. Ender's recourse showed his lack of savvy, and to the extent that non-violent communication is the an essential characteristic of humanity, a want of humanity. In his defense, he was six years-old.
I think we over-prescribe inhumanity to villians because it takes an incredibly keen eye, nimble mind, and deep reservoir of knowledge to deal with them appropriately. Shrinks over-prescribe drugs and surgeons over-prescribe surgery for similar reasons.
[ December 25, 2003, 11:37 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
This is what happens when we start looking outside the story to tell us what characters mean and are.
Ender isn't "modern man" or a metaphor for the modern military any more than Stilson is himself a metaphor for past history of foreign relations.
Ender is what he is. A vastly intelligent, somewhat wise, frightened, bullied, outnumbered, lonely little boy in elementary school. He wasn't just frightened and bullied in school either, he had the grinning goblin of Peter at home to contend with, as well as parents whom we now know did much less than they could've.
quote:Child Ender is modern man. He doesn't fight Stilson for traditional reasons, goods, power, or gain. It's not an act of warfare as much as it's a revolution for freedom against an oppressor.
Despite his incredible analytic abilities, Ender has not reached the level of humanity necessary to persuade Stilson not to beat him up. Ender cannot act politically because he isn't talented enough, so he acts apolitically. He is a failure. This is even manifest in his unwittingly killing Stilson. You can map Stilson's death onto the way that US may bumble into a nuclear holocaust. What may begin as showing the world a lesson, showing the whip but not using it, could end in incredible and unforseen destruction.
Freedom from oppression-or at least from external, foreign aggression, is a justification for war as old as the hills, Irami.
You who, as usual, sit On High in moral and ethical judgement...tell me, how else could Ender have ended his suffering at Stilson's hands? A method he could reasonably have been expected to know, I mean? His choices were, utltimately, twofold. Ender could either continue to endure Stilson and Stilson's little crew, or he could take some form of action to try and stop it. Ender knew-as do I, and you if you have any knowledge of bullies-that ignoring them, or waiting for them to stop bothering you simply doesn't work.
So Ender could tell a teacher or a parent. But this would only be partially effective. Teachers and parents are simply not there, and in fact they're not there in the times Ender is most vulnerable. Besides, telling a teacher or parent would've guaranteed further torment. He could've tried "statesmanship", although what bearing this word-even as an analogy-has on a schoolyard fight I don't know. What possible chance does this have of working? Stilson doesn't resent and envy and fear Ender for something Ender did to him. He feels those things for Ender because Ender is Ender!
Someone who resents you not for anything you did, but because of who you are, isn't going to be responsive to dialogue in the best of circumstances. Certainly not immediately before a fight, when dialogue appears-rightly-to be weakness. The point isn't that Ender isn't talented enough, the point is that no one is talented enough to "talk Stilson down" from thrashing Ender.
What could Ender have said to Stilson, Irami? Do you have an idea? Or not?
Ender is not a failure. He is a failure if you arbitrarily apply your moral and ethical landscape to him. When in fact Ender accomplished his goal-Stilson would never bully him again.
Now, then. This is seperate from Ender's excessive use of force, which was intentional. Ender cannot have been expected to know that it might result in Stilson's death. He is not a doctor. He's never beaten a foe or seen one beaten in such a fashion. He's never seen anyone die.
This is different from how so-called superpowers wage and prepare for war. We know what could happen, but like all previous generations we try not to think about it. Or when we do, we end up with things like MADD. Your metaphor fails for this reason.
quote:There is only two relevant differences between Stilson and Ender in the situation: (1) Stilson started it, and (2) we get to see what Ender is thinking, but not what Stilson is thinking. I'm sure if OSC wrote the scene from the perspective of Stilson, it would be Ender who'd be called the heartless, immoral nonperson. After all, Ender is the one killing people, with little provocation - or at least provocation that normal kids would only respond to with crying or wild punching.
Wrong. There are vastly more differences. Ender was the one accidentally killing people, when he is attacked without provocation first. Ender is not a "normal kid", either.
quote:I definitely don't remember Ender running through the gamut of any non-violent methods, especially concerning the root of the issues between them, and I don't remember Ender thinking about anything as deeply as he reasoned the effectiveness of violence. He was worried about what would work, and what would work the best, and having that trumph any concerned with decency, dignity, or humanity.
Of course he was, geeze. He didn't have time to ruminate on the morality of nonviolence and pacifism. It was fight now, or take a beating.
There is nothing wrong and ignoble of being concerned first with what works. There is something distasteful about armchair quarterbacking on Tuesday morning, examining with the clarity of hindsight in microscopic detail a person's behavior, and then sitting in judgement with the distance and safety of the passage of time and telling someone they did something wrong or right. It's not only distasteful, it's a flawed way to evaluate people. You'll always get bad results. You cannot judge people that way and expect to get anything accurate or truthful from the judgement. You have to judge them by what a reasonable person could be expected to know at the time the thing was happening.
Ender cannot have reasonably been expected to know intuitively the finers ethical points of nonviolence and pacifism as such a young child, particular given his experience with Peter, much less reasonably be expected to have had all of that flash through his mind at the same time as fear and adrenaline.
quote:Your apologies for his actions just sound like those apologies I hear from parents who yell and beat the tar out of their kids in order to get them obey. Ender's recourse showed his lack of savvy, and to the extent that non-violent communication is the an essential characteristic of humanity, a want of humanity. In his defense, he was six years-old.
Wow. You finally mentioned it. And you'll have to go a lot deeper to compare Ender to violent parents. How, exactly, do those apologies sound like theirs?
Incidentally, Stilson is a person. Even craven bullies are people. Humanity includes both the pinnacle and the pits of emotions and morality. But humanity has nothing to do with whether someone will survive unscathed or survive injured or die when they attack someone else, inviting a response.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Well put, Jeff.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Since you asked, if I'm Ender, and I can't come up with a reasonable solution, and no, I do not consider his actions a reasonable solution, I try the next best diplomatic solution, fail, fight, and go home with a few scrapes and bruises and spend the next week spending my considerable cognitive powers studying on how to imbue a sort of civic responsibity either into Stilson or into all of those onlookers who watched the fight happen without having the gumption or the sense of duty to step in. If three people stood up in that crowd told Stilson that he was better than bully, the entire dynamic is different.
This could be the overarching moral of the four book story. Of course, beating Stilson to a blood pump as a public display of your monsterous inclinations works too, but I like the other way.
__________________
quote: There is something distasteful about armchair quarterbacking on Tuesday morning, examining with the clarity of hindsight in microscopic detail a person's behavior, and then sitting in judgement with the distance and safety of the passage of time and telling someone they did something wrong or right. It's not only distasteful, it's a flawed way to evaluate people. You'll always get bad results. You cannot judge people that way and expect to get anything accurate or truthful from the judgement. You have to judge them by what a reasonable person could be expected to know at the time the thing was happening.
We are talking about the murder of a nine year old boy by a six year old boy, maybe a little armchair quarterbacking is called for.
[ December 25, 2003, 01:13 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Irami,
One thing, since time is short. It was not murder. Murder requires intent. And if you want to armchair quarterback, do it properly. Don't sit there in your ivory tower dispensing moral judgements with a set of facts and beliefs you have but Ender could not have reasonably be expected to have.
Then again, ivory tower judgement seems to be your forte, so take that for what it's worth.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
You are talking about fictional characters coming from the mind of one man who created each dilemma and choice and course of action each character took.
If three people in the crowd told Stilson he was better than bully, he would either ignore it, become defensive about it, become angry, or change his ways. His choice and action wouldn't be his choice--it would be the authors. Characters have no free will. The most truthful characters do have hte illusion of free well, and perhaps as they are written, their choices and actions seem to flow out from them. But that comes from the written character. Stilson's character was the bully. Changing that character would change the drive of the entire novel.
Ender had to face adversity in his young life when he has no concept of life and death. Six year olds don't yet have that capacity. Sure, they do have morality in terms of knowing right from wrong as they are taught by family and their culture. If Ender or the crowd had changed Stilson's character into a redemptive character, then how could Ender's character keep his consistency in using brutal force because it was what he knew to escape his oppression and excel and beat the game, when his first lesson in that would instead be "Use of proper words and negotiation techniques could easily bring about change."
Then how easily would it have been to talk to the buggers?
That didn't happen till later, when Ender became an adult capable of the emotional grasp needed to fully understand death and its ramifications on the dead and the living. So he then spends his life making up for that, wishing he had known as a child.
But because he WAS a child, he didn't know.
But his author DID know. Ender isn't some outward overarching symbol of anything. If he is, it's because someone has imposed this role onto his character. Ender made the choices he did and took the role he did because it was written that way.
If Stilson were a real boy?
In a crowd of children watching a fight, none among them would have the notion to tell Stilson that he is better than bully. Why? They don't want to get the crap beat out of THEM. Because fight watchers generally want to see a fight, not to have someone talked out of it. Because kids generally don't think or talk that way in elementary school. They start thinking and talking like that in adolescence, as their brains continue to develop. If three kids had said, "You're better than bully," most likely Stilson would have gotten defensive with his weakness called out in front of others. Defensiveness would bring out anger to cover fear of weakess being exploited, and Stilson would have gone on to prove that he is strong in his OWN mind, strong in terms of his own connotation of strong.
Ender did not premeditate Stilson's death. He DID plan to fight him to free himself from the oppression. How Ender was written, he also had Peter's oppression coupled onto Stilson's oppression, and his fighting tactics got nasty because his emotions got the best of him. But he's six and most six year olds, even despite great intelligence, have little capacity to truly regulate strong emotions. Ender may have committed manslaughter, but until he reached adolescence, he wouldn't have a true concept of what he'd done. As written, his understanding happened very early, but as said, he IS a fictional character and each nuance of his personality controlled by the man who wrote it.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
See, I do think this is where it gets mixed up. Ender and Stilson are little boy characters written by a fully grown and mature man.
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
quote:spend the next week spending my considerable cognitive powers studying on how to imbue a sort of civic responsibity either into Stilson or into all of those onlookers who watched the fight happen
You're a scared little boy, who is being threatened. You're not a sociologist trying to understand the way things work. Are you really sure this is what scared little boys, no matter how smart, are capable of doing?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
See, even if you were a trained sociologist, you're still a human being first. That means you have considerable emotions and first reactions and being able to take a beating and walk away and spend a week analyzing it...
You're one exceptional human being.
And I really mean the exceptional part.
[ December 25, 2003, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: mackillian ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Actually, you'd have to be Bean.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: We know what could happen, but like all previous generations we try not to think about it. Or when we do, we end up with things like MADD.
Hee.
Sorry. Please return to your regularly scheduled thread.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:See, even if you were a trained sociologist, you're still a human being first. That means you have considerable emotions and first reactions and being able to take a beating and walk away and spend a week analyzing it...
You're one exceptional human being.
Or you are just an adult. I don't know what kind of lives people live to allow them to throw tantrums every time they are beaten, or allow them even to run away everytime they are beaten, but that's an incredible sense of entitlement. Contrary to what Rakeesh thinks, I don't live my life in an irovy tower. I work overtime at a regular job and live a regular life. I tend to find trouble slightly more often then most, but I think that's because I don't live my life ignoring or running away from it, and the same sense of duty and responsibility I talk about on Hatrack is made manifest in my everyday actions and interactions. At this stage, I'm beaten more than I win, but it's a big and cunning world and if I can hit .320 with a hand full of homeruns and stolen bases, I'm living pretty well. But I don't that that lacking the sort of entitlement described above is exceptional. Then again, I don't have bloodlust.
[ December 26, 2003, 11:11 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I wouldn't call it throwing a tantrum or running away. Sure, running away would be one option open instead of taking a beating. The other would be to defend yourself. Humans have a fairly strong instinct for self-preservation. So as a human being coming against something that threatens you, it's really going to be hard to overcome that instict and let yourself get beaten up.
That's why suicidal folks ARE ill, because that instinct has gotten messed up.
That's why Ghandi was such an extraordinary individual. He didn't fight for that self preservation on an instinctual level.
I suppose, compared to Ghandi, the rest of us are just children and have a lot of growing up to do.
That's fine. I'd rather fight back enough so I don't get the crap beaten out of me anymore. I've had that happen enough times.
You can't reason with a drunk man, whether with power or with liquor.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:So as a human being coming against something that threatens you, it's really going to be hard to overcome that instinct and let yourself get beaten up.
I think there is a false dichtomy, doing violence and doing nothing. It's a strangely American approach, though not uniquely American. There is an entire realm of action between violence and impotence where most good people live. Ghandi did fight, but unlike Ender and those ladies in the Chicago's cell block, he just didn't narrow or degrade his soul by killing. His being able to short-circuit his self-preservation instinct in the name of independence between India and Britain and peace between India and Pakistan, when I'm sure that at any one point in time all three parties "had it coming," is a lovely display, but not that uncommon. Firefighters do it. Cops do it. Soldiers do it. Teachers do it. Anyone who chooses not to live in a gated community does it. It's no strange feat to place your morals above your health. Though I do wish that more people took the time to think about the whys and the hows.
[ December 26, 2003, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
You put it all on Ender, but why not ask why Stilson made the choices he did? Why does he choose to beat up little kids? What is it about him that causes him to fail to empathize with others? Or to get his jollies from putting people into great distress? Why is that fun for him? Why, when it's been explained to him again and again, when he's been taught the concept of justice and fairness, when he's been cajoled and requested and begged and reasoned with, does he refuse to see? Why is he filled with delight at the prospect of tormenting someone helpless, and watching them suffer? What sort of human being is he?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I think it serves as evidence that Stilson's death is ultimately a monstrous and inexcusable mistake committed by a young boy who, even by the age of six, has been so manipulated by authority that he cannot conceive of any other response to bullying than overwhelming violence that OSC -- the person who wrote that particular scene -- has decided to completely ignore Stilson's murder in the screenplay treatments he's written up so far. Because, let's face it: giving that killing the screen time it would deserve would in fact present Ender as a brutal little monster, since we don't have the benefit of internal exculpatory narration in film.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:You put it all on Ender, but why not ask why Stilson made the choices he did?
1) Stilson didn't kill anybody.
2) It's easier to believe Stilson acted out of ignorance, where a better argument could be made that Ender should have known better.
It took a few posts to get him to be considered a person, so this is a step in the right direct.
quote:Why does he choose to beat up little kids? What is it about him that causes him to fail to empathize with others? Or to get his jollies from putting people into great distress? Why is that fun for him?
It doesn't sound like he has a whole lot of skills. It could be the only thing he does well. Some people can knit beautiful afgans or play quidditch.
quote:Why, when it's been explained to him again and again, when he's been taught the concept of justice and fairness, when he's been cajoled and requested and begged and reasoned with, does he refuse to see?
I'm not ready to take this as a given. Most of the people I know who have been in and out of jail or have picked up too many bad habits, have done so expressly because they were not taught the concept of justice and fairness, or begged, requested, or reasoned with, I'm skipping "cajole" because of the bad connotations. And if they were taught, the criminals weren't taught by an able teacher.
It's one of the reasons that I liberally apply moral arguments to everyday human relations, because I don't take for granted that people have been exposed to, or thought through, the morality of their actions. It's easy to believe that Stilson just hasn't thought about it. Ender, on the other hand, from all of the pomp surrounding his uncanny precociousness, and the level of thought he took in his actions surely was on a different level. It's reasonable to assume that when he consciously chose to break with standard playground protocol, he realized that the reason the standard playground protocol had evolved was to avoid serious injury. That's why it's easy to portray Stilson's death as Ender's negligence.
[ December 26, 2003, 02:03 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Irami, I'm very glad you are in the world.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Irami,
Point taken. You think in an ivory tower, and dispense judgements from there.
quote:Then again, I don't have bloodlust.
Sure you do. It's in everyone. Statements like, "I don't have bloodlust" invalidate your own capability of making moral judgements. Maybe you've repressed that so-called baser impulse, or maybe you've reasoned against it to a point where it's no longer an impulse, but it's certainly still there. And refusal to condemn violent response to bullying is hardly "bloodlust", it's simply practicality. In fact, condemning a violent response to bullying as bloodlust is self-righteousness.
But you might agree with that.
Violence in self-defense isn't "throwing a tantrum", either. You're going to have to do better than painting those who disagree as impolite children and yourself as the learned adult.
quote:I think there is a false dichtomy, doing violence and doing nothing. It's a strangely American approach, though not uniquely American. There is an entire realm of action between violence and impotence where most good people live. Ghandi did fight, but unlike Ender and those ladies in the Chicago's cell block, he just didn't narrow or degrade his soul by killing.
Certainly there are more responses than violence and nothing. Similarly, violence is not always barbaric bloodlust. And someone's going to have to refute the stupid comparison between Ender and the female cast of Chicago. They were first-degree murderers killing unexpectedly other human beings out of revenge. Ender was a frightened, outnumbered, alone child who responded to bullying with violence and went too far-unintentionally.
quote:His being able to short-circuit his self-preservation instinct in the name of independence between India and Britain and peace between India and Pakistan, when I'm sure that at any one point in time all three parties "had it coming," is a lovely display, but not that uncommon. Firefighters do it. Cops do it. Soldiers do it. Teachers do it. Anyone who chooses not to live in a gated community does it. It's no strange feat to place your morals above your health. Though I do wish that more people took the time to think about the whys and the hows.
I'm surprised that when you were creating that list you missed the most obvious point. That being that the people you mentioned are trained to do that. They have indoctrination that teaches them why overcoming the instinctive self-preservation is important or even necessary. And it doesn't always work even with their training. Desertion is a crime for a reason, after all. Gandhi had a long-term goal in mind that included self-preservation of his nation. He reasonably and ricorrectly expected that, given a medium-term effort that included personal physical risk, the long-term benefits would be enormous.
These people are entirely different from Ender. Ender wasn't a third as old as the youngest of the people you mentioned. Ender was alone. Ender had no training. Ender had not nearly the depth of experience those people had. Ender had no ideology making self-sacrifice important or even reasonable. Ender had no expectation of anything more than further torment. After all, his other experience with bullies was with his brother who was not, at that time, the flawed savior of humanity we come to know in Children of the Mind.
You don't mention this until quite a bit later, and his age has gotten less than a cursory nod from you...but Ender was alone, outnumbered, outweighed. He was not a cop, or a soldier, or a teacher (?), or a Gandhi or a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A scared, panicked, alone, and outnumbered little boy with the strong belief that he's going to get his tail kicked cannot be expected to behave in the same fashion as those types of people.
Intelligence or "uncanny precociousness" isn't the same as being level-headed in a crisis, being able to manage one's fear, being able to harden into a diamond under pressure instead of crumbling into coal dust...these things have little or nothing to do with high intelligence.
You're sitting calmly in your room, at your desk. You're warm, under no threat of physical violence. You're not alone, or at least if you're alone you don't feel lonely while reading. You're calm, there's no adrenaline. No instinctive fear coursing through your mind and body. Your brain isn't remembering the only other experience with bullies you have, of the superbly cruel and cunning Peter who doesn't stop, just perhaps delays (at best).
None of this, though, stops or even slows down your rush to judgement. It is sad that I am not blessed with your apparent abilities in crisis-management and ignoring fear to think rationally under great stress. I could be an ER surgeon while defusing a bomb and landing a jet on an aircraft carrier at night if I had a tenth of what you're requiring of Ender, for God's sake! And Ender was only six!
quote:I think it serves as evidence that Stilson's death is ultimately...
Once again you use exactly the correct word, Tom. Ultimately the mistake does belong to Ender's puppetteers. They knew exactly what the reaction would be when Ender's monitor was removed, particularly when it was removed later than usual. It was, as we know, another of their "real-life" tests of Ender. They waited longer to take Ender to Battle School to see how he'd perform.
quote:1) Stilson didn't kill anybody.
2) It's easier to believe Stilson acted out of ignorance, where a better argument could be made that Ender should have known better.
It took a few posts to get him to be considered a person, so this is a step in the right direct.
Well, it's taken some time for you to use the word "kill" instead of "murder", so indeed progress is being made.
Why should Ender have known better? His brilliant intelligence? How intelligence will respond is shaped by its experience with similar past events. The only similar experience Ender had was with Peter. Peter, who he could never escape. Peter who knew him so well and was thus able to inflict great cruelty. Peter, who was unbeatable in every way to Ender. Suddenly Ender is faced with a group of bullies he can defeat, but faced with them in the place he is free of Peter. And you're expecting him to do what? Just take his licks there? Is he not permitted to wish for one sanctuary free from torment, Irami?
Apparently not. Whether or not Stilson is a person is irrelevant. Personally I think he is. Nor did he deserve to die. At the same time, Ender did not intend to kill him. Nor can anyone reasonably examining what happened expect Ender to have understood that what he was doing when he was doing it might kill Stilson.
quote:It's easy to believe that Stilson just hasn't thought about it. Ender, on the other hand, from all of the pomp surrounding his uncanny precociousness, and the level of thought he took in his actions surely was on a different level. It's reasonable to assume that when he consciously chose to break with standard playground protocol, he realized that the reason the standard playground protocol had evolved was to avoid serious injury. That's why it's easy to portray Stilson's death as Ender's negligence.
Sure Stilson thought about it. He thought he liked it. It is clear he thought that much. You think bullies don't enjoy the power they feel when they're doing it? You're deluding yourself. Whether or not they're not also in pain or would enjoy something else more-acceptance, for instance-is something else.
Nor is it reasonable to expect that when Ender chose to break with "standard playground protocol", he should've known life-threatening injury would result. What experience does he have with life-threatening or even serious injury? Has he ever seen someone seriously injured? It's obviously never happened on the playground. The closest he's gotten to it is perhaps to have read of it. It's easy to portray Stilson's death as Ender's negligence only if you're typing on a computer, a grown adult, thinking and writing in safety, unthreatened and unaltered by the changed brain chemistry resulting from fear.
It's very easy then.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
The thing about firefighters, cops, soldiers, and even teachers, is that when they're fighting and putting their own health aside for someone else's, they're doing so from a position of power. By their status in society, firefighters and cops hold power. Soldiers hold power by right of their weapons and training. Teachers hold power over their students in many ways--grades, wisdom, age. When you are in a position of power, it's SAFE to put your own health aside for others. You don't NEED to fight for yourself. You are already taken care of.
Stilson is in a position of power, Ender is not. Despite Ender's brilliance, he is just a six year old boy who does not understand the concept of life and death. Because Ender has no leverage other than his ability to stop Stilson from beating the crap out of him, Ender fights. Yes, Ender does take it too far and when he's old enough to understand just what he did, he's shocked, appalled, mortified, disgusted. But that realization comes when Ender is an adult. The same thing happens when Ender writes about Peter.
But Ender could only recognize those things when he is: 1) an adult 2)in a position of power.
Stilson holds the power. The responsibility is not Ender's to take the beating and figure out a way to eventually get Stilson to get over himself. Ender's job is to keep Ender alive and well. It is Stilson's job to recognize his abuse of power. But will he? Most likely not, because it's that power that he lusts after and relishes and makes him who he is, for the time being. Sure, maybe Stilson bullied because it's what he's best at. That still makes him a bully. Sure, Ender defended himself and killed his tormenter because that's what he's best at. That still makes him a killer.
When you hold power, it's your responsibility not to abuse it and oppress those who are under you. Oppression brings out the nastiness in human beings on both sides.
But it still remains that Ender and Stilson were written from a grown man's perspective. Their characters are six year old little boys who would only know what happens to them in the present. For a six year old, a week is FOREVER. They're just beginning to learn to regulate strong emotions and tempers and such. They don't know what life and death really mean. They don't get the concept of mortality.
Ender knew he had to face a bully at the end of his school day. It was either he gets beaten up, or he stops the bully from doing so. For a normal six year old, a fight would ensue and one child would win and one would lose and both would still be alive. A normal six year old would be content with stopping the bully and going home unbeaten. A normal bully would leave that kid alone after that--continued attempts to beat the kid up would allow others to see the bully's weakness and remove him from power.
Ender is not a normal six year old and neither is Stilson. Ender DOES defeat Stilson--then he takes it one step further and makes sure to end all bullying.
A six year old wouldn't have that concept.
Stilson would have left Ender alone after that, were he a normal six year old.
But he wouldn't have.
Stilson and Ender were written by a grown man, so they have cognitive abilities beyond the range of a six year old.
Were Ender and Stilson two grown men, Ender would have much more to drawn upon for problem solving through his situation. He would have access to power and not be as powerless when facing Stilson.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Ender didn't know he was killing Stilson. Graff and his program did their best to create this person and condition him to use deadly force unwittingly.
It is more analogous not to general policy, but the training of people to deploy a WMD without hesitation.
Edit: Also, a reason Card refused to make Ender's game into a teen hearthrob vehicle was because it is important that he be a child. Children are very malleable.
[ December 26, 2003, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: pooka ]
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:Irami wrote: Stilson chose a battle where the loser is on the ground with a black eye, comes back perfectly healed, and tries it again the next week. Instead, Stilson ended up dead. He went to play soccer match and Ender used a knife and cut him. Stilson chose one game, it was Ender who chose another.
Irami uses the word loosely, but I think the word "game" illuminates an important point. Bullies think it's a game. Stilson probably either thinks it is extremely likely that he won't get hurt, or he doesn't think about getting hurt at all. Whatever he's thinking, Stilson clearly enjoys the power of being a bully, especially after the extended period of time when Stilson was not able to get away with hurting Ender because of the monitor.
Ender sees things differently. He sees a threat. Most of the time, his violent encounters have been with Peter, who often threatens to kill him. For Ender, the threat of violence is a threat to his survival.
The natural instinct for mammals is to choose fight or flight. This would be the same instinct influencing his opinion when he first chooses to defend himself against Stilson's imminent attack. This is different from the choice he makes after Stilson is on the ground. But getting Stilson on the ground makes further violence easier with the increased heart rate and adrenaline.
When Ender sees the threat of violence from Stilson, the psychology of his past with Peter is affecting his thinking (as has been mentioned at least twice already). He wants escape (he agrees to go with Graf to Battle School to escape Peter), not just from Stilson, but from any other bullies in the crowd of onlookers. He is being held at first by other members of the crowd. He feels desperate, cornered. The one, consuming thought in his brain is avoidance of further beatings. (Like Irami said, we know what Ender is thinking. He does not consider non-violent means.) His intelligence shows in his thought of preventing future violence by this lesson that he doesn't fight by the rules, and therefore is to be feared and avoided. This separates him from the other children, not only in his ability to think that he could break the rule of not beating an opponent while that opponent was helpless, but also in his willingness to do so while knowing that it would further alienate him from the rest of his peers. He condemns himself to a life of solitude, further enhancing a theme that crops up again and again in the book.
Ender does not know that Stilson won't come back, "perfectly healed" as Irami put it, but less likely to hurt Ender again. In fact, he's told that Stilson is in the hospital when Graf come to get Ender for Battle School. When does he find out Stilson died?
As human beings mature during adolescence they try to figure out how things work, most often by experimentation and observation. Ender had already observed how effective violence was for Peter. There was no mention in the book of Ender ever observing effective non-violent means. Ender was experimenting with preemptive violence as a solution. It made him sick, and think he was being like Peter. But it worked. The children who had been holding him did not come after him when Stilson had been beaten to a pulp. Of course it wasn't the only solution, and may not have been the best solution. But it was a logical choice for Ender to make.
quote:Irami wrote: I always thought that Stilson was a fat nine? year-old bully. Not incredibly bright, not incredibly caring, though he was terribly insecure.
The book just says that Stilson "wasn't bigger than most other kids, but he was bigger than Ender." It makes no other mention of Stilson's physical attributes, intelligence, or age.
quote:Irami wrote: If Stilson had already so fully negated Ender as a person, why would he take the time to bully him. I don't have a copy of the book here, but wasn't Stilson embarrassed, threatened, or put-off by Ender sometime in class?
It wasn't directly addressed in the book. However, there are Ender's stigmas of being a Third, having a monitor and always knowing the right answer in class. These things make Ender an obvious target for a bully. I highly suggest finding a copy and rereading those first ten to fifteen pages. Looking at the book, I can understand much better why OSC had Ender put Stilson down so violently.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I'm not arguing, by the way, that Stilson's death was unnecessary from a literary standpoint; more than anybody here, I was disappointed and almost outraged by OSC's decision to downplay that killing in his screenplay.
In my opinion, the death of Stilson is the single most obvious example of two of the novel's major themes: the callousness of authority in war, and the justifications often provided for violence.
Posted by Javert Hugo (Member # 3980) on :
quote:I could be an ER surgeon while defusing a bomb and landing a jet on an aircraft carrier at night if I had a tenth of what you're requiring of Ender, for God's sake! And Ender was only six!
Exactly.
Irami's argument rests on abilities and skills he thinks Ender should have had. In that case, it's another situation entirely, and he's using the names of Ender and Stilson to inspire interest in entirely different scenario.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Looking at Ender as a moral agent at all at that point in the story (or arguably anywhere in Ender's Game) might be a mistake. Graff and the other military men built him into what he was. Part of the book's point for me was that they, and not Ender, were the authors of his crimes.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
quote: But it still remains that Ender and Stilson were written from a grown man's perspective. Their characters are six year old little boys who would only know what happens to them in the present. For a six year old, a week is FOREVER. They're just beginning to learn to regulate strong emotions and tempers and such. They don't know what life and death really mean. They don't get the concept of mortality.
See I disagree with you here Mack. The reason why so many people here on Hatrack do identify with Ender is because they are like him, and felt the way he felt at the ages that OSC wrote him being. Many educators got outraged when OSC wrote Ender as being as he was because they said kids don't develop that way. But some do. I think Ender was Extremely Aware of his own mortality. This is why he reacted so violently. The time thing is somewhat of a valid point. However at about the age of 6 or younger when I was doing multiplication I realized that time moved slower as you got older because one year as a fraction of your age became less and less. So I was very cognizant of the passing of time. I had already also learned not to cry regardless of what criticism leveled at me. By six I was already recieving military style dressing downs (minus the cuss words) and I DIDN'T CRY.
Ender hadn't actually studied self-defense at the time. So while still being knowledgable, his killing of Stilson is far more innocent than what happened with the Bonzo Madrid in Battle school, simply because he hadn't made a study of lethal techniques used in killing. He was using advanced logic in wanting a complete victory over Stilson so the rest of the kids didn't bother him. There are six year olds that are more than capable of that kind of logic, and I think you are underestimating them Mack.
AJ
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:I realized that time moved slower as you got older because one year as a fraction of your age became less and less.
You mean the reverse, right? That time is perceived as moving faster as you grow older for that reason?
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Noemon, I don't know if we are saying the same thing from different angles or not.
A single day is much more meaningful in a six year old's life than in a 25 year olds life because a six year old has far fewer days lived.
To me days with more meaning are "fast" days and less meaning are "slow" days. But I can see it from the direction you are coming from as well.
AJ
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:But because he WAS a child, he didn't know.
But his author DID know. Ender isn't some outward overarching symbol of anything. If he is, it's because someone has imposed this role onto his character. Ender made the choices he did and took the role he did because it was written that way.
Two questions: 1) Does this mean OSC is guilty of murdering Stilson? 2)Does this mean that if I do something wrong, it is God's fault for having me do it?
quote:You put it all on Ender, but why not ask why Stilson made the choices he did? Why does he choose to beat up little kids? What is it about him that causes him to fail to empathize with others? Or to get his jollies from putting people into great distress? Why is that fun for him? Why, when it's been explained to him again and again, when he's been taught the concept of justice and fairness, when he's been cajoled and requested and begged and reasoned with, does he refuse to see? Why is he filled with delight at the prospect of tormenting someone helpless, and watching them suffer? What sort of human being is he?
Stilson is a nine-year-old human being, that's what - although the mere fact that he's a human being should be sufficient to explain why he can't see the concept of justice and fairness very well, despite being taught it again and again.
As for why it is fun for him and why he gets joy out of it, we don't have any indication that that's the case. That's just the conclusion Ender jumps to, as a tormented six-year-old.
quote:Looking at Ender as a moral agent at all at that point in the story (or arguably anywhere in Ender's Game) might be a mistake. Graff and the other military men built him into what he was. Part of the book's point for me was that they, and not Ender, were the authors of his crimes.
But Ender is a person - how could he not be considered a moral agent?
[ December 29, 2003, 06:41 PM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:Many educators got outraged when OSC wrote Ender as being as he was because they said kids don't develop that way. But some do. I think Ender was Extremely Aware of his own mortality.
I think the educators got outraged with Ender's apparent cognitive abilities. The reason why I don't think Ender WAS aware of mortality (not just HIS) is because he was able to kill Stilson and not know that his blows would kill. Were he aware of mortality, he, being Ender, would have stopped just short of killing Stilson. Ender also killed all the buggers...all of them. And the reason why a child had to be the commander was because they hadn't yet developed that sense of mortality, of finality. Ender comes to the realization sooner than most at the end.
quote:I had already also learned not to cry regardless of what criticism leveled at me. By six I was already recieving military style dressing downs (minus the cuss words) and I DIDN'T CRY.
That's more common than you'd think.
quote:There are six year olds that are more than capable of that kind of logic, and I think you are underestimating them Mack.
No, I think I understood and read the book differently at that point. What I saw is that Ender not only had to knock him down, but had to knock him OUT, so that Stilson and his buddies would know that Ender had taken them out completely and could call any bluffs. Ender didn't KNOW he had killed Stilson until much later in the book. His intent was to beat Stilson so that he could avoid further torment. Because he hadn't studied lethal techniques, he didn't know he'd kill him. He just thought he BEAT him. And he did, in the way that was Ender's throughout the book. He took his enemies apart completely. Part of that ability I think came from his having no real knowledge yet of mortality.
quote:1) Does this mean OSC is guilty of murdering Stilson? 2)Does this mean that if I do something wrong, it is God's fault for having me do it?
Don't be silly.
1. You can't be guilty of murder of a fictional character. 2. God didn't write your book. You have free will. God's just read ahead of you and knows how it will end not matter what choice you make. Your book of life is a choose your own adventure.
quote:As for why it is fun for him and why he gets joy out of it, we don't have any indication that that's the case. That's just the conclusion Ender jumps to, as a tormented six-year-old.
That's the way of bullies, Tres.
quote:But Ender is a person - how could he not be considered a moral agent?
As a character, Ender does question his part of being a moral agent for what he did in his childhood.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I think you excuse Stilson too much, Irami. He wasn't actually involved in a give and take situation. It's not just normal playground rivalries, and may the best man win.
No, Stilson specifically does NOT pick on people his own age and size. Stilson is picking on Ender BECAUSE he is so small and seemingly helpless that Stilson can get a bit of fun without putting himself in any danger at all, so he thinks. He doesn't want anything like a fair fight, no. If he did, he'd be fighting the other nine year olds.
Stilson enjoys toturing the helpless. He gets joy from it. It makes him feel good. He revels in it. He's done it for years and he would have continued to do it for years more, but for the mistake he made about Ender.
Yes, it was a shame he had to die to learn that lesson. Yet I will not blame Ender. The fault for Stilson's death is still squarely on Stilson's shoulders. When you corner a wild tiger and make it fight for its life, whose fault is it if you are killed? The tiger's? No, it is your own fault, even if you mistook the tiger for a helpless kitten.
There are no accidental deaths, in our laws, that occur while committing a felony. If you break and enter into someone's home and they shoot you dead, whose fault was that? Theirs for using unnecessary force? Because you would not have killed them? How could they know that? If you would be safe from such as this, then it's quite easy to do. Don't break and enter someone's home. Similarly, if Stilson would be safe from being killed by Ender, then he could have done so in a manner which was quite simple. He could have left Ender alone.
I cry no tears for Stilson.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I cry no tears for Stilson."
It's easy to say that, Anne Kate, when you dehumanize someone.
Are you so willing to be a monster yourself?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
These things I will do without apology.
I will shoot someone dead who breaks into my home.
I will fight back against those who would hurt the helpless, not using undue force, but worrying more about stopping the harm done to the helpless than what possible harm might befall those who are doing the hurting.
I will defend myself from aggression.
I will attack any hijacker of a plane I am flying on, seeking to disable or kill them.
I don't initiate battles, but neither do I shy away from those started by others, if I judge that fighting can achieve something worthwhile.
I do see the humanity of the aggressors, yet when choosing between the life of the aggressor or of the victim, I choose the life of the victim.
If that makes me a monster in your eyes then so be it.
[ December 29, 2003, 09:29 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
You know what bullies ALWAYS say when they find out they have accidentally taken on someone who will fight back? "It's not fair!" "She hurt me!" "Waaaaaah!"
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:If that makes me a monster in your eyes then so be it.
No, it doesn't, but it may make you a Stilson in your eyes - or at least, in the eyes of another Anne Kate who sees your actions but not the motivations behind it.
quote:You know what bullies ALWAYS say when they find out they have accidentally taken on someone who will fight back? "It's not fair!" "She hurt me!" "Waaaaaah!"
Actually, I think the most common response is viewing the person fighting back as a bully, and hating them.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote: I think the most common response is viewing the person fighting back as a bully, and hating them.
...
You're kidding, right?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
No, aside from fiction stories, I can hardly think of a bully I know who didn't react like that.
[ December 29, 2003, 09:54 PM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
You can read bullies' minds?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:But Ender is a person - how could he not be considered a moral agent?
Because he's not autonomous. He's not acting on his own behalf. If someone else is manipulating you, they are the agent in charge of your actions, and so they're the one responsible (sorry about the indefinite 'they' -- feeling a little grammar-weary tonight). Take Estella in Great Expectations. She's not responsible for her actions. She was raised to be who she is by Miss Havisham.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:You can read bullies' minds?
Not any more than you and Anne Kate can (which seems to be some, since you claim to know how much they enjoy what they do).
However, I have spoken to bullies, and am friends with some, and this is that consistent response to people fighting back at them. Ask them yourself if you want - you'll find they think people who stick up to them are being mean to them.
[ December 29, 2003, 10:02 PM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Ah. But the victim's meanness isn't unprovoked. The bullies meanness to the victim IS unprovoked.
And I know what I know from research, working in the field, classes, and my own experience with bullies. The subject of bullies is quite well-researched.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I think maybe some of us are finding themselves caught on one side of this argument because they can't forget that this is Ender we're talking about. Abstract away from the fact that this kid is the hero of your favorite (2nd favorite in my case) series of books. If your little boy killed a bully at school, what would your reaction be?
"Good work, little Andrew. That was just one of the Stilsons you sometimes run into in this life. I know it was hard, but you did the right thing."
Huh?
I've had a pretty unexciting life, but even I have run into worse bullies than Stilson. One time somebody picked me up by the throat in a locker room. I'm sure I could've figured out some way to kill him, people aren't that hard to kill if you know what you're doing. But I had at least the minimal amount of human empathy and decency required to spare his life.
Ender does awful stuff. That's part of the point of the book: is he responsible for the evil that he wreaks, or was it the fault of the people who brought him up this way, to be used as a weapon?
It was also about how war and conflict alters the way we view others. It makes us look at them as embodied threats, without concern for the fact that they're people, and our only goal is to get them out of our way. That's one of the prices we pay when we fight each other. I can't tell you how surprised I am that OSC, who helped teach me how to recognize this fighting attitude, seems so eager to adopt it these days.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Except the bully thinks the reaction was unprovoked, and often that his original attack WAS provoked. This I know, first and foremost, from my two brothers and my younger cousins - if one was messing with the other, and the other fought back, the first always refuses to believe he did anything wrong to provoke it. Furthermore, the original culprit always says the other deserved the original attack - if only because he was being annoying.
Hatrackers do the same thing, by the way.
[ December 29, 2003, 10:14 PM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Yeah, Tres. You really ARE a big bully.
You're talking about perception. I'm talking about behavior.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Perception determines behavior though, and how we judge that behavior. If both parties percieve the other as mean and inhuman, then we pretty much know what's going to transpire between the two of them, and that feud is what we're hoping to prevent.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Perception doesn't entirely determine behavior. Also included are wants, needs, and desire. Studies have found that bullies crave the power found by bullying, often to cover up their own weaknesses. When a bully is confronted by a victim, of COURSE they're going to think the victim is being mean. They're calling the bullies' bluff.
Posted by Shan (Member # 4550) on :
And I have yet to see any approach work for "bullies" to get them to stop bullying other than a taste of their own medicine. Sad, but true (IMHO) -
I think it's just one of those "the burnt hand teaches best" and no matter how much time we spend trying to analyze the motivations behind the behavior, there are two important points:
Everyone has the right to be safe from violence (of any sort) and everyone has the right to protect themselves from being violated.
Nice little conundrum, isn't it?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Destineer, this isn't Ender and Stilson we're talking about. It's ourselves. <laughs> At least I know it is for some of us. Or at least our younger selves. Talk about caught on one side of the argument, yes!
[ December 30, 2003, 12:43 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Shlomo (Member # 1912) on :
I was Ender once...
In 7th grade I was being bullied. I usually didn't fight back because I had anger problems and was afraid I would end up mauling someone. Anyways, this time I fought back...it wasn't much...I slapped him across the face about 10 times in a 2 to 3 second period. Then I walked away and, well, cried. My favorite teacher (in retrospect-I didn't know he was my favorite at the time) told me he was proud of me for walking away. When asked by the principle to explain my actions, I said that I was sick of getting picked on, and that the school bullies needed to know that I wasn't toothless. The principle said that while my strategy could be effective (that ended up being the case) and she understood my reasoning, she had to give me a disciplinary referral because it was her "policy" to give referrals to people who fight. I asked why she had such a policy. She dodged the question.
More background: I was a veeeeery skinny and relatively weak child for as long as I can remember. I started developing into a teenager before most of my friends did, so during that school year I went from being one of the weakest to being among the strongest. The bully was still stronger than me, though. Also...there's tons of backstory on this...suffice it to say that my school has conservative views, and at the time I was in idealogical revolt against everything that everyone said at any time.
There. I've added my material to the discussion. Draw what conclusions you wish.
Evene though the thread has turned more to individual behavior, I like to advise caution when drawing parallels between individuals and countries. ...and when attempting to "decode" a text that the author might never have encrypted.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I've had the same experience of bullies. That nothing whatsoever will stop them, no means at all, other than force or credible threat of force.
I'm reading now about the civil rights movement, and thinking about that in the context of this discussion, too.
There were several facets to the struggle. 1) The legal arm. The supreme court declared integration to be the law of the land. 2) The direct action arm. People had to be willing to defy custom, convention, brutality, death, and local law to test the power of the federal law. 3) Then there was the essential enforcement. Three presidents had to be willing to send out the 101st Airborne Infantry (in Little Rock), or other troops to enforce the law. Otherwise, law or not, integration would never have happened. One president was assassinated over it, one presidential candidate, and many many great leaders of our people and of our democracy. (Integration STILL is very provisional and incomplete, particularly in the North.) 4) There was the backlash. There were people who killed, assassinated, bombed, etc. to maintain the status quo. 5) Then finally there was the backlash against the backlash. The mainstream of America who finally, finally, way later than they should have done, took a stand against the bombers and the hatemongers and in favor of law and order.
Did the bullies (the segregationists, bombers, and lynchers and so on) ever give up before they were forced to by overwhelming force? I would say they did not.
I think non-violent struggle can be a huge part of an overall struggle. But there must be a struggle, a fight. There must be force involved. Power must be revealed. Goodness can never prevail without a struggle.
[ December 30, 2003, 10:47 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Javert Hugo (Member # 3980) on :
Stilson was a bully. Irami, it disturbs me that you consider preying on those weaker than you to be normal and excusable behavior.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I think it just disturbs him that some consider killing to be a normal and acceptable response to such behavior.
I'm certainly not willing to say the Columbine killers were justified in trying to shoot those who bullied them at their school.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I'm not talking about myself, just to be clear. I was three years advanced in school; tiny, scrawny, passive-aggressive: an intolerable know-it-all who routinely got hijacked on the way home by kids resentful of the fact that I was younger and did better on tests and didn't want to have anything to do with them.
And, sure, I learned to pick my battles -- to fight back some times, and to take a beating and walk away other times.
I'm not even commenting on the wisdom or lack thereof of Ender's decision; he was manipulated into being a monster by people who expected nothing less.
I AM, however, commenting on Anne Kate's assumption that bullies are these cruel, inhuman, power-obsessed monsters who will never see reason and, inexplicably, deserve to die.
This is, as far as I can tell, considerably more evil than being a bully; most bullies, in my rather extensive experience, would never -- EVER -- have contemplated actually killing me. I see nothing to suggest that Stilson was any different.
Years later, I wound up friends with a handful of the people who used to beat me up; some of them actually apologized for it, and others just never brought it up -- and I let it slide, because I understood what it's like to feel different and want to hurt somebody, even if I'd never made that choice myself.
To think that I might have lashed out and killed somebody who turned into my best friend -- and that Anne Kate would have considered this to be a wise and understandable course of action -- makes me a little sad.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:Goodness can never prevail without a struggle.
You mean without overwhelming violence.
________________________________________
quote:I will shoot someone dead who breaks into my home.
I'm sure you will tell his/her family about it unabashed when we find out that the burglar was unarmed. It's tough talk and it sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to my ears, and I do think it would take a toll on the shooter, as well. ________________________________________
Chapter One:
Arendt's starts her book on comparative revolutions using the American and French Revolutions as examples of the new phenomena. She argues that the material success of the colonies, Locke's theories that man is blessed with an abundance of resources as opposed to cursed to a scarcity, and Adam Smith's principles shifted the value of work from the duty of the poor, as a punishment for not having property, to the fundamental source of all wealth, thereby making it more socially expected to work at every income level. She argues that these weren't prevailing social attitude before colonial America. "America had become a symbol of a society without poverty long before the modern age in its unique technological development had actually discovered the means to abolish that abject misery of sheer want. which had always been held to be eternal."
In America, at least on the surface, the "natural" order of have's and have not's seemed to not be proved eternal and essential to society, flying in the face of the traditional belief that every society must have a class the shiftless rich and the working poor.
This American individual entitlement involved the neutering of class distinctions, for they were no longer perceived as necessary for society to attain "surprising prosperity", but rather, those class distinctions were indulgences for the rich. She goes on to talk about the Christian influence in secularizing America, and it's interesting to think of the Civil right's movement and the women's movement as casting off or sharing the same burden that the lower classes carried during in France. She also argues that the America didn't have a revolution, more of a comeuppance because the Old regime that was being cast off was never really entrenched. The American Civil War and the French revolutions were more complete revolution.
[ December 30, 2003, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Shlomo (Member # 1912) on :
quote:I think non-violent struggle can be a huge part of an overall struggle. But there must be a struggle, a fight. There must be force involved. Power must be revealed. Goodness can never prevail without a struggle.
AK, I can just picture Sam saying that on Mount Doom or something. You can't win without a struggle. "Goodness" cannot prevail without people dying. While this logic works fabulously in stories, it doesn't translate too well into real life. Here's why:
The logic only works if you demonize the opposition. It only works if your opponents are not human. This rarely happens. Also, in real life it's a lot harder to tell what on earth "goodness" is. Except that it's always your side. The idea that there's good and evil, black and white, has killed and continues to kill a LOOOT of people. It's also horribly, horribly wrong. I find your civil war example to be off the wall. Both sides need to pummel each other into exhaustion before peace can be made? That's true if primates are fighting over a meal, but I would have thought that mankind evolved in that respect. The idea that the other side is evil and that war is the only option should have died THOUSANDS of years ago. It hasn't. Can you say, "Ooga mooga booga?"
Personally, I'd prefer to keep it in the Stone Age, and talk about the problem until a manageable solution has been reached. But that's just me.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
The other problem I see here is comparing childhood bullying to social violence against oppressed minorities. There are some parallels, certainly, but in a lot of cases a bit of bullying is normal little-kid behavior -- a bit of deviancy on the way to developing into a social adult. I don't think it deserves comparison with racial violence.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I agree, Destineer.
Posted by Shan (Member # 4550) on :
Comparing the two is certainly a long-shot unless you have some longitudinal studies to back it up with - however, bullying is NOT normal kid behavior. (Coming from the early childhood education standpoint - let it go on unchecked for years and then you have other issues)
Nor should it be treated as such.
Children imitate what they see - let's start there. And it's our job to model appropriate behavior and to "discipline" (as in guide/teach/lead/nurture) appropriate methods of dealing with feelings, and how we treat others - particularly when we are angry or scared -
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Tresopax,
quote:1) Does this mean OSC is guilty of murdering Stilson? 2)Does this mean that if I do something wrong, it is God's fault for having me do it?
One: Certainly not. Quite silly. Two, also not, if you believe in free will respected by God.
quote:Stilson is a nine-year-old human being, that's what - although the mere fact that he's a human being should be sufficient to explain why he can't see the concept of justice and fairness very well, despite being taught it again and again.
As for why it is fun for him and why he gets joy out of it, we don't have any indication that that's the case. That's just the conclusion Ender jumps to, as a tormented six-year-old.
Certainly Stilson is a human being. I have to wonder, frankly, at anyone being so judgemental and unforgiving as to say he's not a human being...and then to ask them what the qualifications for that title (or condition) are. But no one is saying Stilson gets pure, unadulterated joy out of bullying Ender. No one, either, is not saying he couldn't be happier doing something different. But he certainly enjoys it. Or have you no experience with bullies? Or rather is this another perspective on good and evil, in which no one really chooses to do something evil, they just convince themselves it's good? ---- Banna,
quote:I think Ender was Extremely Aware of his own mortality. This is why he reacted so violently.
It's clear Ender is aware he can be hurt, that he is not as some people subconciously believe the sacrosanct superstar of their own life-long movie. But that's different from being "Extremely Aware of his own mortality". For Ender to have that kind of wisdom is for him to be within a hair's breadth of understanding other people's mortality extremely well...and nothing written to that point lends credence to this idea. This is all guessing what Ender should have known, and then evaluating his morality on that basis.
quote:Ender hadn't actually studied self-defense at the time. So while still being knowledgable, his killing of Stilson is far more innocent than what happened with the Bonzo Madrid in Battle school, simply because he hadn't made a study of lethal techniques used in killing. He was using advanced logic in wanting a complete victory over Stilson so the rest of the kids didn't bother him. There are six year olds that are more than capable of that kind of logic, and I think you are underestimating them Mack.
Well...Bonzo was surely going to kill Ender in the bathroom. Ender did not intend to kill him, either. That was also an accident-an unintentional act-taken in desperation, because he was within an inch of losing the fight...and then, for all he could reasonably be expected to know, die.
Yes, there are perhaps some six year olds who are capable of that kind of logic. But then ask how many of them are capable of that kind of logic under great stress and fear for one's well-being. Then ask how many of them are capable of that kind of logic under those circumstances in such a short time. Then ask yourself how many would be capable of such logic under such conditions in such limited time if their only experience with something similar was Peter.
This sort of thins the contenders, don't you think? I also think-and I mean no specific criticism-that far few people were such precocious children than they think they are. Time has a way of forgetting childhood, as does adulthood.
---
quote:I do see the humanity of the aggressors, yet when choosing between the life of the aggressor or of the victim, I choose the life of the victim.
If that makes me a monster in your eyes then so be it.
Yet you do not weep for the violation of not just their own humanity, but that of their victims? Is it not a sad, tragic thing when someone becomes so misguided / wicked / stupid (your mileage may vary) that they become a villain, a harmer of the innocent?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not the sort to philsophize thus when an innocent is being bullied (at least, I think I'm not). In the short-term, by all means stop the behavior. But even I, who am known for an utter contempt and disgust for bullies and a willingness to endorse massive, painful force against them to stop their behavior...even I don't just write them off. ----
quote:I'm sure you will tell his/her family about it unabashed when we find out that the burglar was unarmed. It's tough talk and it sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to my ears, and I do think it would take a toll on the shooter, as well.
Here's where your argument breaks down. You want people to risk their lives, and thereby that of their families, before taking lethal action...when the situation that precipitated the decision was completely not their fault, and in fact a violation of their rights as a human being.
That's just nonsense. This is why I said you think in an ivory tower, because you're expecting people to have more regard for the personhood of someone who breaks into their home at night than for the personhood of their own loved ones and themselves. You want the benefit of the doubt to go to the one threatening rather than the one threatened. This assumes, of course, that it's not a well-light room where the burglar's hands are exposed and clearly unarmed-as if such an ideal situation would ever occur anyway.
Posted by Shlomo (Member # 1912) on :
...or, you could try to remove the threat to your life with as little damage as possible. It all depends on the exact situation, but I feel that if it came to a shooting I would shoot to wound, and not kill. After all, the target is a person, even if he/she's been acting animalistic lately.
Posted by Javert Hugo (Member # 3980) on :
quote:This is why I said you think in an ivory tower, because you're expecting people to have more regard for the personhood of someone who breaks into their home at night than for the personhood of their own loved ones and themselves. You want the benefit of the doubt to go to the one threatening rather than the one threatened.
This I agree with.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
It has been years since I've read Ender's Game, and time has skewed my memory of the first chapter, but I've have a book now, and the Stilson described is a insecure bully. Here is the moment:
quote:But they let go of him. And as soon as they did, Ender kicked out high and hard, catching Stilson square in the breastbone. He Dropped. It took Ender by surprise-he hadn't thought to put Stilson on the ground with one kick. It didn't occur to him that Stilson didn't take a fight like this seriously, that he wasn't prepared for a truly desperate blow.
For a moment, the others backed away and Stilson lay motionless. They were all wondering if he was dead. Ender, however, was trying to figure out a way to forestall engeance. To keep them from taking him in a pack tomorrow. I have to win this now, and for all time, or I'll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.(Emphasis added)
Stilson is on the ground and death is on the table, in the minds of all of the onlookers. If Ender has the savvy to repeatedly kick Stilson, he has the savvy to take better advantage of the situation. He has a captive audience, a rostrum, and a classmate who everyone wonders could be dead. He could start barking orders, sending two onlookers to the teacher for help, unbuttoning Stilson's shirt to check out the bruise, and having another cronie make sure Stilson is still breathing. That way, when all is told, four people have a share in "saving Stilson's life," while Ender assumes the magnanimous position of a person who was more concerned with Stilson's health than his own vengeance.
The only down side is that Stilson could still resent Ender for being a do-gooder, but now that Ender has co-opted a portion of Stilson's crew, the dynamic has changed.
________________________
Back to Arendt:
Arendt goes on to trace the origin of the term revolution back to the Greeks ascribing the orbit of the stars and the sun, whose paths were impervious to human volition or violence. And in 1688, William and Mary's Glorious Revolution described the power of the monarchy which would ascend it's rightful place despite any human's violent acts.
This irresistability of revolution as a political force was exemplified in 1789, at the storming of the Bastille "The famous dialogue that took place betwen the king and his messenger is very short and very revealing. The king, we are told, exclaimed, 'C'est une revolte', and Duc de La Rochfoucauld-Liancourt corrected him: 'Non, Sire, c'est une revolution.' Here we hear the word still, and politically for the last time, in the sense of the old metaphor which carries its meaning from the skies down to the earth; but here, for the first time perhaps, the emphasis has entirely shfted from the lawfulness of a rotating, cyclical movement to its irresistibility. The motion is still seen in the image of the movements of the stars, but what is stressed now is that it is beyond human power to arrest it, and hence it is a law unto itself."
____________________
Arendt also makes a distinction between liberty and freedom which I find terribly intriguing and pertinent. She sets the liberation of a people equal to the throwing off of an over-arching entity, either a government or a foreign oppressor, while freedom is inextricably tied to to a positive power of a citizen to affect public business. One can have liberty in a benevolent monarchy-- though not in a tyranny--, but one can not have freedom. She points to the freedom of assembly in the Bill of Rights, "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," as the most important positive right in regards to freedom.
We may have liberated Iraq's people, but they are not free in that their public business has just changed masters from Hussein's tyranny to our whatever we want to call it, somehow the US has become a dictator, though arguably benevolent, still an impinger of Iraqi freedom.
This idea of linking freedom to public business is terrifically compelling. Banks increase an enterprenuer's freedom by allowing him/her to take part in the public sphere.(When Arendt speaks about the public sphere she uses the Greek connotations where the distinction was between the public sphere and the household.) Our ability to enter into commerce, government, or interact at a wide range with whomever we desire with an incredible level of influence is where our freedom resides.
[ January 02, 2004, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Ender is a "third," a child who has been scorned and pitied by adults; taunted and teased by classmates; has a brother who he believes would likely kill him if not for the (now gone) monitor and the sister who protects him.
He has never, in his entire six years of life, had anyone who would LISTEN to him and do what he said -- except maybe Valentine, and that's because of love. And he is somehow supposed to become a leader in 30 seconds or less?
Look how difficult that was for him several years and quite a bit of training later!
You are overestimating his under-pressure reasoning and leadership abilities, and underestimating his sheer terror and desperation.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
The moment after the quote, Ender had the wherewithal to clearly and purposefully decide to kick Stilson repeatedly in his most sensitive areas when Stilson was in his most prone position for the express reason to scare any would be bullies away. I do think that if he can reason such a distinct solution to his problem, he had the ability to reason the other solution.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
He may have had the ability to think so, but that does not mean he would psychologically have been inclined to do so. He was not concerned with the welfare of others at this point in the book, only his own. That you think this morality is natural to smart people is shocking to me and seems a bit naive. Spend some time around little kids. They have to be taught to share and to care for the welfare of others above their own. If they don't have that example and teaching, then they will be more likely self absorbed. Kids are not born as Gandhis and then corrupted by the world. They are born as animals, and learn their humanity from their environments.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:He may have had the ability to think so, but that does not mean he would psychologically have been inclined to do so. He was not concerned with the welfare of others at this point in the book, only his own.
This is why I blame him.
quote: Kids are not born as Gandhis and then corrupted by the world. They are born as animals, and learn their humanity from their environments.
I've seen kids do some mighty altruistic deeds in the absence of compulsion.
[ January 02, 2004, 01:53 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Zotto! (Member # 4689) on :
Rakeesh has already made all the arguments I would have, although he does so much more eloquently than I could have. *throws two cents in* Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Tom, I'm not saying the outcome of killing Stilson was the best outcome, of course. I'm not saying Stilson is not a human being either. If I implied that by anything I said, I did not mean it. What I do mean is that Stilsons don't acknowledge the humanity of the people they bully.
They do definitely get enjoyment out of it, even if it's a sick twisted unhappy sort of enjoyment. They aren't doing it out of a sense of duty or anything. They are mostly doing it because they are bored and it's entertaining, or because they are miserable and it eases their misery to see someone else squirm under their hand. They're doing it, so far as I can tell, because they find that a pleasing way in which to use the power they are given.
And, yes, the essence of what I am saying was summed up by Jeff. You ask that we take MORE attention and care to preserve and consider the feelings and the life of the attacker than those of the attacked. I say that is nonsense. If the attacker would like to be safe, then he or she should consider not attacking others, not breaking into my home, not being the aggressor. If they do those things anyway, then I will think primarily of my own life, and that of my family, or that of the weaker person being attacked.
I will not seek to cause more harm than necessary, yet I will not apologize for accidentally causing more harm than necessary, or for causing more harm than it TURNS OUT AFTER THE FACT was necessary, when it's completely unclear at the time how much of a threat there actually is.
I do think that breaking into someone's house is a life-threatening act in itself. Anyone who trangresses all the laws and rules of our society, of justice, of right, to that extent, might do anything at all. They might be planning to rape and murder as well. They obviously are an enormous threat to me and my loved ones. I will not assume they aren't only to find out I was mistaken. How do I know for sure they aren't armed, or they can't overpower me with martial arts training even if unarmed? How do I know these things when they have already shown that they do not consider my humanity? Yes, I will shoot to kill, and not apologize to their family. They voluntarily incurred the risk when they chose to violate me in that way.
I believe also that a bully voluntarily incurs the risk of being hurt badly or even killed when he or she chooses to beat up someone for fun. They mostly stay clear of such risk by picking only on the helpless, in fact.
There was a story I read about in the news once where a kid took a gun to school and shot someone who had been beating him up him badly for a long time. I felt this was a good illustration of my point. The ender in this case told the stilson to stop bothering him many times, and he wouldn't. He finally told him if he didn't stop bothering him he would bring a gun to school. This brought only laughter and more of the same treatment. He actually brought the gun and showed it to the stilson and to his other "crabbe and goyle" cohorts. The bullies continued to just laugh at the ender and still beat him up. So then the ender shot the stilson dead. Again, I had no sympathy for the stilson. It's a sad situation but it's his own fault. Stilsons of the world, take note. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
[ January 02, 2004, 05:37 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"What I do mean is that Stilsons don't acknowledge the humanity of the people they bully."
The thing is, AK, by saying this, you dehumanize Stilson in exactly the way you are saying that you don't. He ceases to be a full human -- one worthy of your respect or concern -- and becomes one of the "Stilsons," a category of varelse deserving of violence.
I would like to submit that Stilson was, in his own way, even more aware of Ender's humanity than Ender was of his -- and that Stilson, if he's anything like the schoolyard bullies I grew up knowing, would never have even considered killing Ender.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Tom,
quote:The thing is, AK, by saying this, you dehumanize Stilson in exactly the way you are saying that you don't. He ceases to be a full human -- one worthy of your respect or concern -- and becomes one of the "Stilsons," a category of varelse deserving of violence.
Incorrect. Deserving of violence after they have done something violent, such as breaking or entering or bullying. This is not the same thing.
Questions of "full human being" status don't enter into it.
quote:I would like to submit that Stilson was, in his own way, even more aware of Ender's humanity than Ender was of his -- and that Stilson, if he's anything like the schoolyard bullies I grew up knowing, would never have even considered killing Ender.
What way is that? And I submit that Stilson would never have considered killing Ender not just because he was possessing of some human decency-although this is more than possible, it's probable-but because he would never have thought of it because he was stupid.
And nor did Ender consider killing Stilson. It was an accident, and however much Irami insists that Ender should have known things he had never known before with only a few moments to consider them, he nonetheless did not know them when he acted. His intention was to inspire a fear greater than the lust for bullying, simply to make Stilson and his group too afraid to try and bully Ender again. He never considered killing Stilson.
But given a good while to think about it, while he was six years old, he almost certainly would've. Among the tragedies of the story is that, as he grew older, the time needed to reach that thought drastically decreased.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Deserving of violence after they have done something violent, such as breaking or entering or bullying. This is not the same thing."
So, just to be clear, it's okay to use overwhelming -- even deadly -- force against bullies, because bullies don't think you're human?
I disagree with that latter assumption; I think the vast majority of bullies, with the exception of genuine psychopaths, are very aware of the humanity of the people they bully.
[ January 02, 2004, 10:17 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:I do think that if he can reason such a distinct solution to his problem, he had the ability to reason the other solution.
This is where the problem with attaching real world theories on fictional world children presents itself. Ender can reason this way because he was written to. Ender does not reason to the other solution because his writer chose not to in order to drive the story forward.
quote:He may have had the ability to think so, but that does not mean he would psychologically have been inclined to do so. He was not concerned with the welfare of others at this point in the book, only his own. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is why I blame him.
Ender is developmentally inconsistent, even within his own inconsistencies. Yes, Ender is a brilliant genius prodigy, but psychological and cognitive development does progress in a certain manner in stage years. The times of development of certain abilities can vary, but in most cases, within a span of a few years (a stage).
Ender's all in one stage and completely out of another and stage hopping all over the place.
Ender is six. Pretty much, his world is himself. Sure, Ender can be blamed for only thinking of himself. But when immediately threatened, you have fight or flight.
Ender chose to fight. Ender, as written, chose to fight.
We can throw this around all we want, but it still comes down to the fact that Ender is a fictional character written by an adult human being. Ender's thoughts and logic and actions don't exist. They are contrived situations written to fit a story (or, in a character driven story, the story is written to fit the character).
If we're going to apply these theories, why don't we apply them to a human being who lived and/or died in the real world?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
As I alluded to earlier, just because OSC wrote what ender chose does not mean Ender didn't choose them. Ender chose to fight Stilson just as much as you or I make choices.
And whether or not Ender's world is fictional and contrived makes no difference to our analysis. After all, it COULD happen in reality, and thus we can analyze it as if it did.
quote:Ender's all in one stage and completely out of another and stage hopping all over the place.
Oh come on... since when has there been a theory of cognitive development (or any psychological theory for that matter) that didn't have plenty of exceptions and variation?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:Ender chose to fight Stilson just as much as you or I make choices.
Well, I can't speak for you, but I know that I'm not written by some other adult human being other than myself.
quote:And whether or not Ender's world is fictional and contrived makes no difference to our analysis. After all, it COULD happen in reality, and thus we can analyze it as if it did.
No, it couldn't. That's why it's called science fiction.
quote:Oh come on... since when has there been a theory of cognitive development (or any psychological theory for that matter) that didn't have plenty of exceptions and variation?
All of them have exceptions and variations. But those are the ones you throw out--the anomalies. When you're analyzing, you look at the mean, mode, range. You look at where the strongest data is found and then you make your theory. If you have too many exceptions and variables, your theory falls apart. If you base a theory on one exception or variable, it isn't a solid theory.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Well, I can't speak for you, but I know that I'm not written by some other adult human being other than myself.
quote:No, it couldn't. That's why it's called science fiction.
You're overstating your knowledge of what's possibile in both cases, especially the second one. Some kid could very easily kill a bully tommorrow for exactly the reasons Ender did.
quote:But those are the ones you throw out--the anomalies. When you're analyzing, you look at the mean, mode, range. You look at where the strongest data is found and then you make your theory. If you have too many exceptions and variables, your theory falls apart. If you base a theory on one exception or variable, it isn't a solid theory.
But Irami is not giving a scientific theory about the likelihood of a kid with Ender's mental state arising. It's a moral theory about what such a person should do in such a situation. All that he needs to show is that the situation is possible, even if only as an anomaly.
[ January 03, 2004, 01:41 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:Some kid could very easily kill a bully tommorrow for exactly the reasons Ender did.
So this kid had an implanted monitor, had a tyrant for an older brother, a loving older sister, and was a government order Third child?
quote:It's a moral theory about what such a person should do in such a situation. All that he needs to show is that the situation is possible, even if only as an anomaly.
The situation so far is possible in fiction. So this moral theory (a theory is still a theory no matter what qualifier you put in front of it) is thus far applicable only to fiction. So why not expand to the real world and use human beings living or dead who HAVE fought against bullies and analyze actions and reactions that way?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:So this kid had an implanted monitor, had a tyrant for an older brother, a loving older sister, and was a government order Third child?
Sure, why not? There's no contradiction in the situation.
quote:So this moral theory (a theory is still a theory no matter what qualifier you put in front of it) is thus far applicable only to fiction. So why not expand to the real world and use human beings living or dead who HAVE fought against bullies and analyze actions and reactions that way?
Well I think the idea is that the situation is sufficiently similar to all those real life situations that we could apply the same conclusion. I mean, the whole idea of using examples to illustrate moral issues is that you can generalize a conclusion from that example to apply ro a wide array of real-life exampls. Presumably, if it's okay for Ender to kill Stilson in this example, we would be able to generalize and say in all situations of bullying, extreme acts to counter the bullying are acceptable. There's nothing unique about this example that would change the ethics of it from those other situations.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:Sure, why not? There's no contradiction in the situation.
Other than the fact that we don't have government ordered Thirds and monitors installed in children.
quote:There's nothing unique about this example that would change the ethics of it from those other situations.
Other than it being fiction.
Posted by Hazen (Member # 161) on :
None of the science fictional elements are crucial to this aspect of the story.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Y'all act as though it was some kind of fair fight. But it was NEVER meant to be a fair fight. Stilson was NINE, and he and his crabbe-and-goyles were willing to GANG UP in order to beat the tar out of a SIX year old. One who was SMALL for his age. You act like Ender could count on having the advantage again. Like Stilson and his crew wouldn't use any dirty trick in the book against him. Like this was just some ordinary give and take playground situation. That's never what it was. I'm NOT dehumanizing Stilson, but, let's face it, he's not a very nice kid at ALL. Ender isn't the first child he's done this to, and he wouldn't have been the last, either, except for Stilson's fatal mistake.
Remember what Christ said about it being better if a millstone were hung around your neck? He spoke the truth. Stilson got his come uppance. Most of his sort don't, but sometimes things work out and they do. I weep for all the many many Enders who aren't brilliant strategists, who instead are trapped by their circumstances and can't get away. Many of THEM are killed, far more of them in real life than in fiction. I weep not for the Stilsons. They are just reaping what they sow.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I weep not for the Stilsons. They are just reaping what they sow."
Anne Kate, this is dehumanization. Are you willing to admit to it yet, or do I need to keep reminding you?
BTW, have you ever actually been bullied? Because let me point out that very rarely do bullies choose to enter fair fights -- but the fact that it is or is not a fair fight does not mean that the person being bullied has the inherent right to escalate the violence.
What you're essentially trying to do, Anne Kate, is justify Columbine.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Stilson is a kid too. He IS human.
And the science fiction elements ARE crucial, because they are the elements that made up Stilson's case to bully Ender.
Was it moral for Ender to fight Stilson?
Yes. It's what he was WRITTEN to do.
Was Columbine moral?
Of course not. Those boys chose their own actions, no matter how they were driven.
Is it moral for an adult who was abused as a child to repeat the cycle with his own kids?
Of course not.
Is it moral for the small child to fight back?
Well, according to this theory, if the child is fighting against a bully, the child should have the ability to assess the situation and reason with the abusive parent.
The kid CAN'T. The bully is in a position of power. With that position of power comes control.
How about we drop the fictional analysis and look at some real life stuff? So far we've applied a moral theory to fiction book. Contrived characters in a contrived situation where they didn't have choices because it's how they were written. No, it wasn't moral for Ender to kill Stilson. Yes, it was moral for him to fight back and not get the crap beat out of him for verbally fighting back in the first place. No, Ender had no other choice of action because it's a critical plot point in his book.
Real life people have a vast selection of choices in every situation. When crisis situations present themselves, most often people either go into problem solve mode or revert back to fight or flight instincts.
If a woman is confronted with an attacker with a knife, is she supposed to reason with him, convince him not to rape her?
I wouldn't think so. So she fights back against this adult type of bully. In the scuffle, the knife goes astray. Fatally stabs the attacker.
Is she in the moral wrong?
No. Her intent wasn't to kill the attacker, her intent was to stop the attack. The attacker had the first choice of choosing to attack this woman. This woman had her own choices of run away from a biologically faster and more powerful man who was in a position of power and control or to fight back. She was forced to play her hand by the attacker.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
It's not dehumanization. I can imagine myself in the same circumstances, for instance, of reaping what I sow, and still see it as some form of justice, even if in this particular case it happened to go beyond what was necessary.
You don't understand. We don't dehumanize Peter. We love Peter. We don't care about beating Peter, we just want him to love us. All that is completely true.
I believe you guys are doing Stilson a great disservice by refusing to give him responsibility. And because of that, you end up joining Stilson in dehumanizing Ender instead.
And as for Columbine, the killers struck out at everyone. And they weren't responding to an immediate threat. They came to school that day having made the decision to kill everyone. That is not the same thing at all.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I do believe that Stilson has responsibility--he bullied Ender to the point where Ender had to show his cards.
Ender's intent wasn't to kill Stilson, it was to stop Stilson. I don't think Stilson deserved to die. But I don't think Ender had a moral responsibility to let Stilson beat the crap out of him.
Argh. But it's a contrived fictional circumstance!
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
For every action you make, there are negative and positive consequences. Stilson bullied Ender. The positive consequences for him was whatever he got out of continuing to bully. The negative consequences came when the victim fought back. To excuse Stilson from facing the negative consequences of his actions is to remove an ability for negative actions to stop.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Mac, would you say that an expected and deserved negative consequence of schoolyard bullying is death?
------
"And they weren't responding to an immediate threat."
Neither was Ender. The reason he continued to kick Stilson once Stilson was down was NOT because he thought Stilson was going to get up and continue to hurt him, but because -- even after his immediate safety was assured -- he wanted to become known for such outrageous violence that no one would ever dare hurt him again.
[ January 03, 2004, 11:36 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Yeah, let's talk about something real! What do you think about Rodion and the old pawnbroker woman? Did she deserve it in any way? Was he justified in any sense at all?
***
Wow, this thread is moving fast! I meant that to be a response to mac's remark a few posts up about it being a contrived fictional situation. Oh well.
[ January 03, 2004, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:Mac, would you say that an expected and deserved negative consequence of schoolyard bullying is death?
quote:Sure, Ender defended himself and killed his tormenter because that's what he's best at. That still makes him a killer.
Maybe I didn't speak clearly enough. Ender is NOT moral in killing Stilson. That is not a reasonable negative consequence for Stilson's actions. Ender fighing back, yes, that's a reasonable consequence. But Ender killing Stilson is not.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Tom,
quote:So, just to be clear, it's okay to use overwhelming -- even deadly -- force against bullies, because bullies don't think you're human?
This is just a personal opinion, but I'd say a qualified yes to the first one and a no to the second one. Just to be clear, I never said that use of violence in response to bullying had anything to do with whether or not a bully considers you a human being.
Qualifying the first yes. Let's say I'm being bullied, I get pushed off my bike, ganged up on, beat up, swirlied, whatever the case. Some rules can be bent. Others can be broken. The rule that says, "Be chivalrous in behavior at all times," can be bent if one's opposition has already outright broken that rule. I'm no one's chump. I'm not about to be Joe Chivalry when the other guy is Snidely Whiplash and shows no signs of stopping. Along with that goes things like, "Kicking a man when he's down."
I'm not going to fault someone else for doing that when it's obvious it's only going to get worse, that simply beating-in a brief skirmish, mind you-the head bully won't stop it in the future. Would I do that myself? I don't know. I flatter myself that I wouldn't, perhaps.
As for killing, that's not at issue with me since Ender didn't intend to kill Stilson and cannot, I believe, have been reasonably expected to know what he was doing in the circumstances would've killed Stilson.
As to how much bullies are aware of the humanity of the people they bully...I wonder why you think that, and what exactly you mean by it? I agree to the extent that I believe all but the most deranged or evil people are at least somewhat aware of teh humanity of the people around them-whether or not they choose to ignore it. Second, that they're aware of their humanity and derive some pleasure from exercising their will-forcibly-on another human being.
quote:Anne Kate, this is dehumanization. Are you willing to admit to it yet, or do I need to keep reminding you?
BTW, have you ever actually been bullied? Because let me point out that very rarely do bullies choose to enter fair fights -- but the fact that it is or is not a fair fight does not mean that the person being bullied has the inherent right to escalate the violence.
What you're essentially trying to do, Anne Kate, is justify Columbine.
How is it dehumanizing to say that there are potential natural consequences for one's actions? I don't understand how it follows that that is dehumanizing, Tom.
Why doesn't the person have the right to escalate the violence? Why is it you are insisting that the victim always be reactionary instead of proactive? Is it so crucial that the victim be blameless throughout a fight? I don't know if it is, I'm asking for clarification. For me, though, it's less important than the victim not getting his ass kicked any more than necessary.
And nonsense to the last, and offensive nonsense to boo.
The Columbine murderers (note that word cannot apply to Ender, there's the first reason it's nonsense) didn't just kill their bullies. Anne Kate addressed that. They also didn't just escalate the violence within the arena of injuring violence, they went from violence that bruises to violence that kills. Ender did not intend to, no matter what people may think he should have known. They had the option of exercising nonlethal force, and were educated enough to know that sometimes it works. You `rackers who want Ender to be aware of people like Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, well you can be sure those two knew about nonviolent resistance.
Ender did not want to kill. The Columbine killers did, and relished it-at least such as we can tell. Big honkin' difference, Tom. The underlying philosophies bear some resemblance, but that's all.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
How much damage do you think Ender meant to inflict, when he set out to inflict overwhelming, shocking damage to Stilson?
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
quote:he wanted to become known for such outrageous violence that no one would ever dare hurt him again
What's wrong with that, Tom?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I don't think he would've had a set level of injury, but the minimum injury necessary to make their fear greater than their desire to bully him in the future-as they undeniably would.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:I believe you guys are doing Stilson a great disservice by refusing to give him responsibility.
Why is refusing to heap overwhelming punishment on a person and/or refusing to call that person evil the same thing as refusing to give him responsibility?
Or is it that you want us to give him responsibility for Ender's choices as well as his own?
[ January 03, 2004, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Speaking for myself, I give Stilson responsibility for putting himself in harm's way by violating another human being's fundamental rights.
More simply put, you take your life in your hands when you pick someone to violate. They might be a sheep or they might be a ram.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Does that mean Ender didn't have responsibility for his choices, once he was attacked?
Posted by Boon (Member # 4646) on :
Personally, I can see both sides of this issue. Both children acted, not necessarily out of malice, but of the need to control their own, personal situation.
Stilson needed to prove his superiority over a "lesser" person, to help reinforce his dominance over the other boys of his group. Most animals are born with this instinct. Remember how young these children are. Most of us had to be taught how to act civilized.
Ender felt no need to assert his dominance, partly because he felt intellectually superior. (Remember the insult marching around the desk?) Once forced into fighting, though, he understood that if he didn't assert his own dominance, he'd have to keep fighting.
Neither boy really expected anyone to be seriously hurt, much less killed. They were six! How could Stilson honestly be to blame that no one had taught him that bullying wasn't right? How could it be Ender's fault that no one had told him that if he fought dirty, he might kill someone?
Okay, I'm tired now. Continue amongst yourselves.
Posted by Ryan Hart (Member # 5513) on :
Tresopax: Legally or Morally?
Leagally- No. Ender acted in self defense. With overwhelming force perhaps, but that is current US military policy too.
Morally- Not of murder, but of cruelty. He didn't mean to kill Stilson however he meant to cripple him politically beyond all hope of recovery. Machiavelli said that if you are to do injury to a man you must do it in such a way that he has no hope of recovery and retaliation. That is what ender did. Ender is rather Machiavellian. He did not try to defeat the buggers politically, make a treaty with them. Those were not his orders. The politicians had ordered extermination. Ender was a soldier, he followed orders.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Tresopax,
He has a responsibility for his choices, yes. But that responsibility only extends as far as he-a child-could reasonably be expected to have considered possible outcomes.
We don't hold fifteen year olds as liable for crimes committed as we do legal adults, even adults just three years older. This does, I think, apply in a moral sense as well.
---
Boon,
quote:Malice: 1. A desire to harm others or to see others suffer; extreme ill will or spite.
2. Law. The intent, without just cause or reason, to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another.
And another definition, the one I feel is most accurate. feeling a need to see other suffer
quote:Personally, I can see both sides of this issue. Both children acted, not necessarily out of malice, but of the need to control their own, personal situation.
Now, it seems pretty straightforward to me that Stilson felt a need to see someone weaker than himself suffer. Specifically he felt the need to inflict that suffering himself. That's malice.
Now according to the first definition, Ender could conceivably be guilty of malice. I understand why someone might think so, since he did go further than the minimum necessary force, but I personally don't think he was guilty of malice because if he was left alone, if he wasn't attacked by a group of older boys, it would never have happened.
quote:Once forced into fighting, though, he understood that if he didn't assert his own dominance, he'd have to keep fighting.
I agree, though I didn't reach that conclusion through pack-animal thinking.
quote:Neither boy really expected anyone to be seriously hurt, much less killed. They were six! How could Stilson honestly be to blame that no one had taught him that bullying wasn't right? How could it be Ender's fault that no one had told him that if he fought dirty, he might kill someone?
But there are some things we expect children of a certain age to understand. I personally don't think it's unreasonable to expect a nine year old boy to understand that hurting other people, and especially picking out the supposedly weaker people and hurting them so you can't be hurt yourself, is wrong. Whether or not they were sat down and told, "Now, don't bully anyone."
And I think it's unlikely that through his nine years, at some point he wasn't taught that hurting others (for fun, no less) is bad.
Ender, on the other hand...there's basically zero chance that someone taught him, "You have the power to kill someone, Andrew. If you get in a fight, restrain yourself, and don't do this, that, and the other, because the other guy might end up dead." Nor can anyone reasonably expect Ender to have considered that in such a brief period, because none of his education (self-administered and otherwise) would have even remote application to such a situation.
-----
Ryan Hart,
quote:Morally- Not of murder, but of cruelty. He didn't mean to kill Stilson however he meant to cripple him politically beyond all hope of recovery. Machiavelli said that if you are to do injury to a man you must do it in such a way that he has no hope of recovery and retaliation. That is what ender did. Ender is rather Machiavellian. He did not try to defeat the buggers politically, make a treaty with them. Those were not his orders. The politicians had ordered extermination. Ender was a soldier, he followed orders.
Ender was not Machiavellian when he annihilated almost all of the Formics. He was, after all, tricked into doing that. With Machiavelli, there was no trickery involved. At least as far as the person doing the dishonorable or distasteful or extreme thing is concerned. Machivalli advised that a prince do something like be feared before being loved because it was effective. He advised a careful consideration of the practical effects of one's actions, and doing that which had the best practical effect long- and short-term, period.
Obviously not Ender, who was tricked. He wasn't following orders when he killed the Formics, if you'll remember he was disobeying an outright (or at least implied) order, advising him not to use the Little Doctor on an inhabited planet.
As for "hurting Stilson politically"...I suppose, maybe. Really he just wanted to make Stilson and his friends so scared of him they wouldn't bully him again. Crippling him as the leader of his crew didn't enter into it.
[ January 03, 2004, 06:42 PM: Message edited by: Rakeesh ]
Posted by Ryan Hart (Member # 5513) on :
The book says it was so that Stilson would no longer be able to lead an attack. And Ender's Machiavellianism is exhibited in the fact that when he wanted to give up, he gave up by decimating the enemy. How many people do you know that when they quit a chess game, they do so by completely annhialating your men and checkamating your king?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I usually just throw the board at them, followed by all the pieces. Posted by Shan (Member # 4550) on :
If you throw the board at them, mack, wouldn't the pieces go first? Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
No, it's like the magic trick with the tablecloth! I have that kind of talent. Posted by Shan (Member # 4550) on :
Posted by Shlomo (Member # 1912) on :
Well, who made Ender a lesser person? You can bet he didn't designate himself a third.
Posted by Ryan Hart (Member # 5513) on :
::looks for where Shlomo's post came from::
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Ryan Hart,
quote:Machiavellianism: The political doctrine of Machiavelli, which denies the relevance of morality in political affairs and holds that craft and deceit are justified in pursuing and maintaining political power.
Machiavellian thinking is when a person examines as many potential courses of action as possible, including those deemed immoral or otherwise wrong, and then does the thing that is most expedient and will preserve their power and expand it by as much as possible.
You've got a point with Stilson, I'll admit. BUt when you say Ender was behaving in a Machivallian fashion when he annihilated most of the Formics, you're directly contradicting the very definition of the word.
First of all, it was a game. Ender did not think it was real. Machiavelli advised a Prince do something like Ender did in the real world. Second, Ender was tricked. He didn't know it was reality. Third, Ender was quitting, not trying to preserve his power. He was giving up a great deal of power, he thought-the power of being humanity's ultimate general. The fact that he did so by annihilating the Buggers is irrelevant. When you're going to say someone's thoughts were this style or that, it's motivation that matters.
Ender was quitting, going out with a bang. But he wasn't just going to stop playing, he was trying to make it so that the leadership of humanity wouldn't dare entrust to him military power beyond drum major.
In what way is that Machiavellian? Niccolo (sp?) Machiavelli advised not caring whether or not one is annihilating all the Formics. Ender thought it was pixels. Machivalli advised doing whatever was necessary, period, to preserve one's power and serve one's ambition. Ender's action was designed to remove his own power, and in fact was the utter surrender of ambition.
Posted by Ryan Hart (Member # 5513) on :
The reason I call Ender Machiavellian is because he acted with overwhelming force. Your right he wanted to quit, but to do so he crushed his enemy? That's not rational. For the sake of then Ender didn't seek victory, he sought annhialation. Perhaps Ender himself wasn't Machiavellian, perhaps it was his handlers. They ordered the destruction of a race because they thought that would preserve the speicies. Ender himself may not have been Machiavellian but his methods and handlers were.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:Your right he wanted to quit, but to do so he crushed his enemy? That's not rational. For the sake of then Ender didn't seek victory, he sought annhialation.
Ender wasn't. Ender wasn't trying to use overwhelming force on people...he was playing a GAME. He wanted his GAME to end. So broke what he thought would be a major rule so that they'd have to kick him out.
And I'm not sure if the handlers were entirely Machiavellian. They didn't start out in a position of power, the Formics did. They didn't seek to preserve power, they sought to tip the balance of power. But perhaps halfway through the campaign, when their puppet had annihilated most of the Formics, it shifted from tipping the balance of power, to possessing the power, and keeping it with the total destruction of the Formics.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Was it moral for Ender to fight Stilson?
Yes. It's what he was WRITTEN to do.
Wow, that's about the most absurd thing I've ever read.
So no character in fiction is a moral entity? We can't judge that Voldemort was wrong to kill Harry's parents, or that Moff Tarkin was wrong to blow up Alderaan, or that Regan and Goneril were wrong to turn against King Lear? Or, for that matter, that Stilson was wrong to bully Ender? After all, they were WRITTEN to do these things.
You can't read a story without judging the characters in it.
If Ender's murder of Stilson was so just, why is he distressed when he learns that Stilson died? Shouldn't he have been satisfied with himself, for cleansing the world of one more Stilson?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
To FIGHT stilson? Yes. To kill him? No.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
But he was just as much written to kill Stilson as he was written to fight him.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
The idea that the moral choices of fictional characters are not relevant to real life, or worth discussion, makes about as much sense as the idea that cyberspace isn't real.
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