Please note that this post has been updated; the third paragraph is new.
The moral component of our discussion in class was founded on intelligence. Specifically, the military intelligence to know whether the buggers had truly realized their mistake and would never attack us again, to know whether the I.F. had made any further attempts to contact the buggers once the ansible was developed (more on this later!), and whether Ender still would have been able to defeat the buggers had he known what he was doing.
Those less squeamish of us, who were willing to act in spite of our acknowledged lack of necessary facts, were not willing to take a risk where the continued existence of humanity was concerned. Although many people disagreed with this position, I don't remember hearing a cohesive argument to the contrary; instead, many people argued that more intelligence was needed, that they wouldn't be able to make a decision given only the information the I.F. claims to have had, or that wiping out another species entirely is just wrong.
Many of you argued that it would be important to know that an attempt at contact had been made; however, if you check out the Ansible entry in the Wikipedia page Concepts in the Ender's Game Series, you'll see that Card's ansible is explicitly designed like a set of two walkie talkies that are attuned to each other; the design prohibits two ansibles that are not constructed at the same time from communicating. Therefore, communication with the buggers through the ansible, based on Card's internally consistent technology, is impossible, and the I.F. would have known this, and decided accordingly.
It seemed obvious to me that, given the intelligence available, a war of extinction would be the only viable choice. That's why I was so very fascinated by all of your contrary views on the subject. We discussed it in class, but Graff's quotation deserves to be repeated:
"Ender, believe me, there's a century of discussion on this very subject. Nobody knows the answer. When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end. Our genes won't let us decide any other way. Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. So if we can we'll kill every last one of the buggers, and if they can they'll kill every last one of us."
According to Graff, individuals can sacrifice themselves, yes, but species cannot decide to stop existing, or as a group agree on a course of action that they know will lead to that outcome. Can an individual, however, decide for the rest of its species whether they can continue existing? Modern technology tells us the answer is yes -- it is (very, very remotely) possible for one person to obtain enough nuclear weaponry to eradicate humanity, if not all at once then at least by thoroughly irradiating the earth and rendering it uninhabitable. That one person can, theoretically, press a button and end our species. But we're discussing making a command decision that bears a risk of the annihilation of the species, rather than a lone madman. So here is the question that ought to be posed to those of you who could not decide to annihilate the buggers:
Do you accept responsibility for the possible death of your entire species?
I can't accept that risk, so I argued that the I.F. made the right decision. How would you argue otherwise?
Through the power of relativity, a million-year picnic may pass in an hour.
Friday, March 21, 2008
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1 comment:
Nice work Scott.
I also want to reiterate the fact that we don't know the amount of time that past between the first and second war. I'm going to give the I.F. the benefit of the doubt and say it was over 70 years between the two. Since Ender's Game takes place around 70 years after the second war. If it was in fact shorter than 70 years, I'm sure the military strategists would be thinking the Buggers were massing a huge invasion fleet just like the I.F. was thinking. After all, the second invasion had a Queen, the Buggers were out for an invasion that time.
There's plenty of blame to go around in Ender's Game and in reality. The U.S. did in fact turn around a ship from Nazi Germany with Jewish refugees and sent it back to Germany, does that make the U.S. responsible for their deaths? No war is ever clean with good and bad guys. WWI and WWII are typically seen as the good versus bad, but it's much more muddy than most people will admit. There are always casualties of war (granted an wiping out and entire species is extreme, but we've heard of this thing called the Holocaust that was aimed at killing everyone that wasn't "pure" to the Nazis).
I think you're dead on with how our genetics are programmed to survive. And to answer your question, I would make the same decision as the I.F. because the extinction of my species would be too much of a burden. I'd do whatever was necessary to survive. And I'm sure other people would agree, they'd sacrifice whatever was necessary to stay alive in the right circumstances.
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