In the book, as soon as the aliens realized that they were killing people, they withdrew, and never came back. In fact, the humans suspected that they probably weren’t coming back. We wiped them out not because we thought they were guilty, but because we weren’t 100% sure they weren’t guilty.
It’s been years since I read the book, but IIRC the issue wasn’t really that the aliens had a different ethical system. It was that we were alien enough to them that they honestly didn’t get that humans were sentient. Once they realized that we were, they felt it would be wrong to kill us except in self-defense. They had no intention of launching another attack against Earth.
As for human ethics, while genocide is certainly not unheard of, most modern humans would probably agree that there’s a big ethical difference between defeating your enemies in combat (especially when they attacked first) and completely destroying their entire civilization by killing every last one of them.
Right, the aliens had a queen/worker hierarchy to the nth degree (the workers couldn’t even think for themselves or survive on their own), and assumed humans were the same - I believe the comparison in the book was something like “agonizing over clipping your toenails” for the alien mindset of the killings from a human point of view. Once they realized individual humans were sentient, they withdrew.
As for the need for a (shielded, ignorant) child to be the commander, it wasn’t just about the decision of genocide - it was also about all of the battles leading up to the alien homeworld. In the book, the human fighters weren’t drones, they were human-piloted starships that had been travelling for 80+ (relative) years to get to the aliens’ system. An adult with full knowledge of the situation would’ve been hesitant to send humans to their deaths for slight strategic gain in the battles, while Ender was solely concerned with winning.
OK, thanks for clearing that up guys. Makes a bit more sense now.
Zero-G laser tag is StarCraft.
I don’t really get this, because all the adults who set up the program know what Ender is going to do. If they are hesitant to send humans to their deaths, why aren’t they hesitant to put them under Ender’s command?
It’s a long time since I read the book, but I had the impression that the theory was that children would be better than adults because they weren’t so set in their ways, and they would be able to understand, cope with and predict the alien way of fighting. Their minds were more adaptable because they were still young. But it’s a long time since I read the book, so that might not be right.
The problem with the hesitation is “he who hesitates, dies”. Hesitation in the heat of battle has much direr consequences than over the breakfast table. They need people who will see the most effective option and just take it, rather than try to come with a better one.
The flexibility is important in “why children”, but another reason (which has already been mentioned) is that kids are more likely to believe what they’re been told by grownups; avoiding any hesitation is why the kids are told they’re playing a game. They think they’re in a simulator when actually they’re fighting real battles.
Another thing that didn’t come across in the movie is the length of time it all took. Ender spent years at Battle School, and at least months doing the actual battles.
Yep. A big part of the “Command School” section of the book is about how Ender’s strategic brilliance comes as much from his ability and willingness to use individual battles as learning opportunities, to better understand his opponent, regardless of whether they lead directly to classical military gains like territory or even victory over the opposing fleet. After all, the underlying purpose of the campaign isn’t to win back lost systems (Earth never had any), or gradually gain a numerical advantage (the buggers outnumber them a billion to one even in the final battle). It’s to locate the homeworld (the “gate”) and deliver the killing blow in one stroke. Ender’s Dragon Army battle against the dual armies earlier in the book foreshadows this with little subtlety.
One of the (numerous) strange ironies of Card turning out to be a jingoistic ideologue is that Ender’s Game is one of the most humanistic stories I’ve read, despite the relative darkness of its subject matter. The book’s fundamental premise is that no reasonable human being, regardless of nation, would be capable of ordering loyal troops under his or her command to their deaths for apparently-minor strategic gains, without the slightest hesitation. (I leave it to more qualified members of the community to gauge whether that’s actually realistic.)
The adults of Ender’s Game are aware, at some level, that manipulating Ender into playing his “game” (a) only slightly absolves them of the monstrous acts he’s actually committing and (b) is a morally repugnant action in and of itself. But it’s worth it to them to win the war and, perhaps more importantly, provide juuuuust enough solace for them to convince themselves believe that they aren’t, y’know, directly responsible for the genocide. “Whatever helps them sleep at night,” and all that.
They’re also fully aware that they’re exploiting an innocent, sensitive little boy and just destroying him to the point that he’ll never be able to live with himself.
One other reason they were using children is that they didn’t have time to use adults. The ships were all launched decades before, and would be getting to their targets on a fixed schedule. Meanwhile, they were running their eugenics program back home to try to produce the leader they needed. It took longer than they thought, so when they did produce that leader, he was still a child when the ships arrived at their targets.
IIRC, a big part of the book was that adults trained in traditional ways were fairly bad at fighting aliens in space, because they’d try to apply their mostly restrictive, two dimensional thinking - like a naval battle in space. It’s hard for an adult to truly intuitive comprehend manuever in all dimensions, lack of gravity, inertia, etc.
By raising kids and training them in zero G, wide open games and simulations from the beginning, they naturally understood what space combat was in a way that the adults could not.
The part I never quite comprehended is why exactly Peter was such a bad choice for being “too brutal”, and Ender was the right choice?
Seems to me that Peter’d have done what Ender did, and WITHOUT all the psychological baggage that Ender lugged around afterward as a result. Granted, he was something of a psychopath, but at least they wouldn’t have broken him in the process.
(of course, it makes it easier to write follow-on books when your hero is all screwed up about his inadvertant xenocide)
I think its because a lot of times if one is “too brutal” they don’t necessarily think through strategy or think about what the other side is doing because their default is 'smash ‘em to bits’.
One of Enders strengths was the loyalty he inspired. He could not have won without Petra, Bean, etc. Peter was an ass and an obvious sociopath; no one would have followed him to the grocery store much less into battle.
Plausible deniability. “Hully gee! We had no idea he’d destroy the whole planet!”
In addition, one of Card’s other theses was that a truly brilliant military commander is one who can understand his opponent so well that he empathizes with them (even loves them). Peter was too sociopathic to ever effectively empathize with an enemy. At the same time, they needed someone who had Peter’s killer instinct - who would not hesitate to destroy an opponent he loved, if it were necessary to accomplish the mission. Valentine, who had Ender’s capacity for empathy, was deemed to lack that killer instinct. Hence the request for a Third child, one who would combine Valentine’s empathy with Peter’s killer instinct. They got exactly that in Ender.
Yep, which makes Card’s present-day ranting and raving about liberals and homosexuals and atheists and muslims a little hard to take. If you really want to defeat the homolibmuscommatheists, you’d have to understand them, and to understand them you’d have to love them. Not much evidence of either in his current blogging.
Also, Ender’s computer game he played in his off time ended up being a direct attempt by the hive queen to make contact. The game Ender played wasn’t the game as designed by the humans - he bypassed that and got into a wholly different game. Meanwhile teaching him by playing the game over and over, how to make the choices that would defeat the buggers.
StG
It wasn’t just that he worked with them. In the book, he trained them. They were his lieutenants and he rode them hard, but he also understood them and had their best interests at heart. They knew that he was honestly helping them to better themselves and they decided that following him was the surest way to become the best that they could be. His empathy helped him build a tight and efficient team.