[npc]

I can't say I've read the entire series, but you're definitely not the only one who here who disliked Ender's Game. I keep this around in my bookmarks since it pretty clearly expresses what I think is wrong with the book: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

[lotharbot]

As a teen who grew up in a pacifist background, I rejected the book's dubious moral constructions. As I said to a friend at the time, who had argued Ender had no other choice: "he doesn't HAVE to live." The same applies to humanity as a whole. As your conclusion rightly notes, we are not so special as to deserve to live at any cost, or to deserve to destroy our enemies at any cost.

[crpatino]

I agree that it is immoral to hold 'self preservation' as your ultimate value. It does not prevent a few people choosing to do so from time to time, and when one of those gets cornered, the results are horrific.

On the other hand, you need to consider that for you to have grown up "in a pacifist background" its quite an unusual event in the History of Humanity. In particular, it means that there's someone somewhere doing all the dirty deeds that keep the pacifists safe and unaware for long enough to raise any offspring. In the primal environment, uncompromising pacifists would probably end up darwinized!

[lotharbot]

When I say that Ender didn't have to live, I don't say that out of ignorance. I know the history of those who've held the conviction that "God did not condone killing or the use of force for any reason" and "were therefore unwilling to fight for their lives." People from my particular tradition [0] were persecuted, at least in some areas, from the 1530s until 1990. In some communities, a book of martyrs [1] is held in high regard. Migration to escape persecution was remarkably common. ("Running away" is a survival strategy employed by quite a few species.)

I am by no means arguing that others should follow this philosophy. Merely explaining that, having grown up in a culture where we gave this idea serious thought, I found Ender's Game to be shallow and naive.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr%27s_Mirror

[crpatino]

Wow, thanks for sharing that. I honestly had not thought of "running away" as a sustainable strategy.

To clarify a little bit, it's not so much as of pacifism not being a viable strategy, but that it is a viable strategy for individuals or small communities, but not implementable on a national scale.

Eventually, the martyrdom of a pacifist, while a tragedy on its own, is not detrimental to the meme of pacifism. I'd say it's the opposite. However, if a group of people that follows the meme of pacifism is systematically harassed, I'd think it would eventually be assimilated by the other group doing the harassing. Even if most of the individuals are not physically harmed, the idea of pacifism is the one that suffers.

But of course... geographic isolation may take you a long way, I guess.

[lotharbot]

> "if a group of people that follows the meme of pacifism is systematically harassed, I'd think it would eventually be assimilated by the other group doing the harassing."

History shows that "running away" and other isolation strategies have allowed at least some groups of pacifists to persist through several centuries. Harassment seems to actually strengthen the idea of pacifism within many of these groups.

It may not be viable on a large scale. But that ties in to my earlier point: a viable strategy for survival is not the ultimate goal. Or, at least, it's not a universally agreed upon primary goal. We're not so special that our survival must necessarily trump everything else. Neither Ender nor anyone else in the book series seems to give serious consideration to the idea that maybe it's better to die than to kill. Again, I'm not arguing that everyone should agree to this philosophy, I'm just saying the failure to give it even token consideration comes off as a bit shallow.

[georgieporgie]

An interesting read, thanks.

[nooneelse]

I'll second the "not the only one" sentiment. As a child, I liked the book. As an adult, I feel it used my childish mindset and desire to feel special as tools to manipulate me into thoughtlessly accepting a dubious moral framework. As such, I think it is largely over-rated as a work through the common mechanism of idolization of what one liked as a child.

Since I can't very well read it again for the first time, I was happy to find a couple of years ago that a narrative-astute friend of mine had happened to never read it. So I encouraged him to give it a try and was extremely careful to say nothing of the ambivalence I've had for it. He summed it up as pulp designed as a preteen want-to-be-a-superhero hook with an twist about on a level with a middling Twilight Zone episode. Thus ends my anecdote.