posted
How much damage do you think Ender meant to inflict, when he set out to inflict overwhelming, shocking damage to Stilson?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
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.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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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?
posted
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.
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posted
Does that mean Ender didn't have responsibility for his choices, once he was attacked?
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Boon
unregistered
posted
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?
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.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Aug 2003
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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.
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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.
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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.
posted
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?
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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.
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posted
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.
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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.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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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?
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
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. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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