Class 4/22

I was glad to hear that I was not the only one who felt that the writing was far below the first book.

I also liked how several people brought up the fact that it seemed like Russell did not quite know how to explain certain events so she seemed to put forth a story that did not really fit with the information provided in the first book or even within the second.

To me I feel like the most prominent thing I took from the discussion was that the book was not quite as bad as I thought but I still don't like it. Granted I don't like the other book either but this at least makes the whole thing tolerable.

The whole discussion about the nature of the otherness in the alien societies was very interesting especially having watched Contact on Thursday. The nature of the difficulties of communication between one species and another is one of the most challenge to tackle in Sci-Fi.

We couldn't really agree on whether or not Russell managed to pull it off but I think we were able to establish that this was one of the lesser concerns within this book considering nobody has really gotten a solution that is failsafe.

Children of God: Post-class Reaction

I think the topic that was most interesting to me in our class discussion is how one tends to impose their own concepts on the other: one tend to view them as something from history (past) or something else that is current and one is familiar with. We saw this in Russell’s second book, especially in Sofia’s character who, in agreement with Jen, I didn’t like much. Over all like most, I preferred The Sparrow, and in large part that is due to the characters there. I thought The Sparrow had more interesting characters and better humor. Also in agreement with a number of people in class I believe her attempting to resolve the religious dilemma she left us with in the first book was unnecessary. I enjoyed reading about the other side of the story for example Supaari’s point of view in his interaction with the foreigners during the first mission, but the turn her theme took with religion left me unhappy. I had a few moments of “you got to be kidding me” in this book…especially when Isaac sounded like God’s messenger bringing God’s music and Emilio’s reaction. I don’t know why but I have developed something that I can almost call aversion to organized religion in the past few years, so reading about people who blindly give themselves to faith is a little disturbing to me, so Emilio again starting to lean towards that mindset really disturbed me (I am not saying he embraced God again, but there was still some small references to him coming to terms with religion and God). I guess the most I took away from this book is the cultural interaction aspect of it, and the damage something foreign can do to a system. We see this in Sparrow with radical change in Runa behavior due to the foreigners and in large part Sofia. And we see this in Todorov with the arrival of the Spaniards. This makes me wonder if it is possible for someone to arrive into a different cultural setting and be strictly an observer and not impact that culture, or be a catalyst for radical change. Personally, I think it is impossible, so then the question is what can one do to minimize the affect they have on society because as we have seen, more often than not many latent and negative affects arise even if the intentions are good. So I guess the big question that was in my mind at the end of the class was what is it that makes a foreign entity such a big catalyst? And does anyone have the right to impose their own values on another culture and try and change it, and if yes in which cases is it ok and in which cases is it not?

Reflection, Class 13

Well, unlike most of the class it seems, I still don't have the same complaints about the writing. Perhaps I suspended some disbelief.
I wanted to comment on the discussion we had about alienness and whether the Jana'ata and Runa qualified as significantly "other" enough aliens. I still think it is next to impossible to truly depict absolute otherness. We simply wouldn't have a frame of reference to describe them much less interact. We'd probably blame the author for poor characterization or scoff at the descriptions. Therefore, the aliens in The Sparrow and Children of God I think were alien enough for the purposes of the books. God's other children would theoretically share resemblances to his known children. Each species had differences from each other and those on Rakhat shared some similarities that would come from evolving on the same planet. They had tails, different facial features, different body features, and different dominant senses. The cultures were different as well, though they did share common aspects with Earth history or societies. But again, I don't think that's necessarily bad. Depiction of an other that has no basis of comparison would make for a rather complicated first contact, don't you think? With absolutely no common points how would it be attempted? Luckily for the first Jesuit mission they had Emilio to pick up on the language parts quickly and act as a communicator.
I still don't really like Sofia in Children of God. Yes, she had a rather amazing life but she had some rather pointed blinders that affected her whole life and the life of her son. Perhaps he still would have gone off and she couldn't have prevented it even if they were closer, only two of their kind on the planet after all, but I think a lot of the excess violence against the Jana'ata that didn't want to fight anymore could have been avoided.

Les enfants de Dieu, apres-classe

Bonsoir tout le monde:

I have to say that I felt much better about the book having sat through the discussion. I really enjoyed Chris' points about the literary issues in several areas (that kind of helped me assign "blame" for some of my dislike for the book) - even though I might not dislike it as strongly as he did. On the other hand, I rather enjoyed some of the upsets in the book (not too many because of the foreshadowing, but still): the Carlos kidnapping of Emilio made me unhappy, but was still well played through and through; I may have even tipped my proverbial hat at the author when I got to that point.

Now, there was a seeming consensus about Emilio getting a really rough deal and not too much in return; if you'll allow me to play Devil's advocate for a moment, I might disagree. I feel that although Emilio had an extremely difficult time, it is almost exclusively the dealing with and/or finding meaning in these more difficult times in life that truly allow a person to grow, and defines their character. By no means am I saying that this level of difficulty is needed by any person in order to show strength of character; however, based on both the explicit reactions of DW and other Jesuits about the probability of Emilio's status as a saint, and then taking his actions and thoughts in the aggregate, I would argue that he does in fact make some meaning out of his suffering. The music as a consolation prize is one of the things we spoke about today that I didn't find myself agreeing with; rather, his saving of the Jana'ata child and later reunion with his own daughter strike me as divine intervention into a soul marred and tarnished by so much death, through the very personal circumstances of bringing about and saving the lives of children (also the soothing factor, given the fate of Askama). I also think that both Issac and Nico played roles in this rehabilitation of Emilio's humanity [again, given his removal from his to-be-wife]. Overall, I still liked the Sparrow much more, thats for sure.


En francais, parce que je peux

-Mike

The Conquest of America: Post-Class Reaction

One of the main thoughts that lingered in my mind after class, was how does knowledge affect human interaction? We discussed at length the different ways Cortez and Columbus used information, and the book talked about the different ways cultures processed information. So my question is what type of culture is better prepared for cross-cultural interaction, a primitive one or an advanced one, or does that have no effect? Is a culture that values superstitions over science a better or worse communicator? First world countries claim to be very worldly and understanding, but does their broad knowledge actually hinder them because it makes them view themselves as superior and thus act condescending?

I also wondered about how does learning about another culture change you. Because one can’t simply be a removed observer, by interacting with an “other” you are bound to undergo at least a slight change. I guess over all our classes discussion once again really made me think about what communication should be like, what is the right way to interact with others.

Reflection, Class 12

I agree with Tim and Mike that we did bash Columbus a bit, but I don't think that was a bad thing. For me, I feel like knowing more about him solidified my opinion that he was a little short on the marbles, so to speak.
At the same time, I think we can sort of parallel Columbus and Cortes to the folks in The Sparrow. Columbus didn't understand and still managed to start the destruction while Cortes did understand, which helped him destroy their civilization. Perhaps, had they understood more, the group in The Sparrow would still have made the same choices, in order to change the society they were in.
I found our discussion on understanding and sympathy to be pretty interesting. I'm still conflicted as to whether greater understanding does in fact lead to sympathy because I'm still hung up on the idea of people who study criminals and mass murderers having sympathy for those they study. I suppose it's possible but we don't want them to have sympathy really. Perhaps they understand how a person does something like that, not the why, because we did make that distinction. Understanding also takes time, so sympathy would be a developing thing.
Good point about the Freemasons, Mike. Not very well liked, were they? Until National Treasure brought them back into "cool" I suppose.

Class 4/15

I don't know if I have ever heard a collected group of people bash Columbus quite as much as we did today. Normally Columbus is regarded as a hero being the man who discovered America and made possible the world as we know it today.

I thought it was very interesting how we established that Columbus was in some way unaware of the the world around him and yet most people believed his position was more favorable than Cortes. Yes Cortes was more in touch with reality than Columbus but we seemed to decide that because Cortes realized what he was doing he must have been unhappy. Of course PTJ brought to our attention that the book never said Cortes felt guilty but that the feeling of guilt is what we all believed he would have felt. Columbus saved himself from this by creating his own utopia and refusing to accept anything that would challenge that state.

It has just occurred to me that I believe I said the account of The Conquest of New Spain was written by Bartoleme de las Casas, correction that was written by Bernal Diaz.

After all of the set-up I can't wait to read Children of God, I certainly hope it lives up to all of the hype by PTJ.

I will leave you all with a glimpse of the Conquest of America with this clip from the film 1492.

America Conquered

Good evening:

One of the things about today's class that stuck with me was our fairly strong consensus that Columbus was crazy. The comment about how we have Columbus Day and not Cortes Day got me to thinking about other holidays or times we commemorate, without really considering the full implications of celebrating that person. Lincoln is someone who is always celebrated as a genuinely good person, with few flaws (if any). But Lincoln also simply cut all civil liberties in the border states such as Maryland, removing habeus corpus, and having "Federally-supervised" voting booths - and then the whole "Emancipation Proclamation" was an afterthought to preserving the Union. That said, he is generally regarded as one of the best US presidents - and taken in the aggregate with the benefit of hindsight, I totally agree with that prognosis. I suppose I just find it odd that I do agree with that, because there is no sort of criteria for what mix of doing bad and good (in terms of long or short term) yields a famous figure worth commemorating. In the same manner, Cortes strikes me as perpetrating much more evil (even without knowing all of the specifics), and therefore it seems to me that no holiday commemorating him makes any sense.

So to take this post in an entirely different direction, what about that elusive set of people and groups who did mostly good and then either get no recognition whatsoever, or even only negative recognition? The group that comes to mind is the Freemasons, whose philosophy is the [unprecedented] basis for much of American government and political philosophy. These crazy ideas like spreading a vote out to each member (albeit only white land-owning men at first), and the ideas of freedom of speech and religion, all emanate directly from Masonic principles. Yet, not too long after the country was founded, the Anti-Masonic political party sprang into existence. I guess that today's class got me to thinking, overall, about how the constant fickleness of people affects even our "heroes" and how we remember them - people are weird.



Hoping that you aren't insulated in some sort of fake reality

-Mike

The Sparrow: Post-class Reaction

This book is so complex and raises such intricate issues that we obviously weren’t able to exhaust discussion about it. I agree with Tim, it was interesting to focus on who would be qualified for such a mission and try to make a list out of it. I think our discussion concerning that got most interesting when people started raising the issue of what would be the goal of the mission: making contact or gathering information? Which led to the whole idea of a series of missions and what kind of mission should go first. I think we established as a class that the Jesuit mission didn’t think things entirely through, but then again what can you expect, they seemed to have expected God to take care of the things they overlooked.

The other part of discussion that I think was very important originated with Phil saying that the people on the mission got too comfortable. And that led to the question of how scientific were they actually acting and at which point did they make their mistake(s). I am also interested to see how the second book will flip things around. I think that it will be able to tell us more about the mistakes of the first expedition.

Lastly I want to mention a thought that crossed my mind during discussion. While we were discussing Supaari and debating how they should have interacted with him and viewed him, the thing that I thought is: despite his appearance, claws and carnivorous nature, he exhibits very human qualities. He desires to have a family and although he is marginalized by society he does his best to figure out a way to achieve his goals. We may find him selling Emilio as a means of getting what he wants as “inhumane” but if we look at our own history, humans have used other humans to reach their own goals on numerous occasions. And if you think about it when people have created aliens (in various forms of fiction) the aliens always to some extent exhibit human characteristics and desires; that is because that is the only way we can perceive things, I don’t know if anyone can actually create a truly “non-human” alien.

Class 4/8

I liked what Mike said about how all of the people we consider saints were good people who had to deal with horrible things. I mean this book presents pretty much everything necessary to meet those qualifications.

I'm also quite interested to see how much things change once we read the next book in the series.

To me the most interesting part of the discussion was the lists we made about who we would send on this mission. I think this is the most fascinating part.

Within each of the groups certain positions all seemed to be pretty much unanimous. People like a doctor, biologist, pilot, and survivalist were agreed on within the groups and also at the larger class level. People had slightly different ideas about the specifics of these roles but agreed that the roles were necessary. However, in order to fill the other half, it became quite difficult to come to a consensus on what the other positions should be filled with.

Of course the most disturbing news of the whole day, Brad Pitt is going to play a Jesuit Space Missionary. AHHH!!!!!!!!

Reflection on the Sparrow

Hello everyone:

Oddly enough, my favorite part of the entire discussion in class was Professor Jackson explaining that "Devil's advocate" is a Jesuit expression, as part of their [close to] all-inclusive attack on their own beliefs during their training. That said, I wanted to comment on the issue of Emilio being a saint (at least according to his fellow Jesuits on the mission). One of the messages this story does a shockingly thorough job of conveying is that really, REALLY bad things happen to pretty good people. On one level, this sort of idea bothers me a lot, and I tried to convey that in class. Then again, I thought about other people in history who have been popularly labeled "saintly" or something similar: people like Ghandi or Mother Theresa. They did in fact do great things for many people; such are the criteria for being saintly. But then, consider how much hardship and suffering they actually went through while doing good, I might have to agree with DW's diagnosis of Emilio being a saint. He displayed an extraordinary amount of holiness and calling for his current situation, and then acted on it. I hate to say it, but the message of the book that terrible things happen to good people, is almost a criterion for being a saint as well; the person must exhibit holiness, especially in the face of extreme adversity.

Then, I remember what Professor Jackson was saying about how the next book turns all sorts of things upside down - this comment might not even be valid in about two weeks. I am quite curious and intrigued to see where the next book goes.


Have a saintly evening

-Mike

Reflection, Class 11

I wanted to start by making a few comments on Tim's post. Just about his discussion of the Jesuits and missionaries. Did the Jesuits really try to force their beliefs on the Runa? Perhaps their worldview or cultural biases, as we discussed in class, but there was no mention of evangelization or trying to teach them about God or Catholicism. They seemed to just do their thing, i.e. say Mass, and if the Runa came, great if not, that's fine too. I think the story comes off as more tragic because all of the changes that the group brought in the lives of the Runa were by accident, they were something the Runa picked up, like the garden. Granted, we also discussed the nature of the mistakes made by the group, and perhaps the whole revolution idea was more deliberate but again, it spread without their help in the end as most of them were dead.
Also, with regards to Sofia's actions that ended up getting most of the group killed. I don't think it would be believable if she did nothing in that situation. She'd clearly developed as a character, she'd lost much of her detachment both with her contact with the other group members and her marriage to Jimmy (which, okay, might have been a little forced but it sort of comes down to a last man on Earth sort of thing). If Sofia hadn't done anything I think other group members might have, just based on their characterization. Jimmy certainly seemed a caring about others kind of guy and I think he would have done something, maybe tried to protect some of the babies or something along those lines. They might not have called for an uprising but I doubt they could have stood by and done nothing.
Finally, our discussion of who to bring on the trip. I do think that the group wasn't outfitted properly for the kind of mission they were on, they had somewhat less of a full group but they had a good starting point at least. Here's Mel's and my "fun" list for our sci-fi character crew:
1. Han Solo- pilot/con man/skepic, can also fix stuff
2. Emilio Sandoz- still useful as a linguist and could do some comparative religion in a pinch
3. EMH Mark 1 (ST:Voyager)- doctor/comparative culture analyst/biologist, doesn't need to eat so food would last longer too
4. Jayne, with Vera- security guy, knows how to deal with alien worlds already
5. Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1)- anthropologist (any other ideas for a better fit here would be welcome, he's all we could think of)
6. Data- general knowledge/engineer, sort of a walking authority on anything and everything
7. Counselor Troi- empath/diplomat, she also has training in reading the emotions of aliens
8. Maguyver- survivalist, not exactly sci-fi but again, we had a lack of insight as to who else would be useful here

The Concept of the Political: Post-Class Reactions

I feel like this class discussion was one of the most interesting we have had. In the end it really made me think about the future possibilities of humanity. Ultimately we came to the conclusion that Schmitt thinks that enemies are necessary for a state to function properly. So the question that came to my mind towards the end of class was: is it always going to be just about conflict? To me that just seems depressing. Especially since now conflicts do seem to take that “we are fighting for humanity and you are against humanity if you are against us” theme, which Schmitt says is a bad idea. And as we have seen it creates very intense and hateful conflict, plus to me it seems like that type of conflict can easily be taken to the “ultimate conflict” level, especially with the damage modern weapons can do. In my other class where I have been reading about Dalai Lama and similar peaceful leader, and those readings presented me with an insight to people who believe that if people try then the world can be more peaceful, and societies would live in harmony and understanding. So in the end I was contrasting these two views and trying to see which is more likely, or will it be something in between or something else. Can humanity ever come to a point where it won’t be so quick to label the “other” as an enemy, and try to understand before destroy. Can people become better at cross cultural communications? Or will it be like Schmitt says, always about friends and enemies.

Class 4/1

Before I begin. Did anybody else attempt to go to the Tavern tonight. My God I hate Greek Life on Campus.

Remember when PTJ asked if we could become a political actor against the Greeks. My answer is 100% yes. PTJ, tell us what to do, we are Borg. Resistance is futile, they will be assimiliated to the honors side.

Now back to the discussion.

The idea that a group must be willing to fight as the primary determinate as to whether they can be considered a political entity and thus a state is very interesting. The whole problem of the Palestinians is given whole new life when this is the sort of qualifications that are placed into the context.

I also really liked the distinction made between an enemy and a foe. I would have never thought to create such a distinction but now it seems so clear.

I would end with a found farewell to Heir Schmitt but I came across something as I was looking around that I feel demands some attention.

While I was looking for some other things to bring in I came across this page from the University of Oklahoma. This is an academic site which has copied an entire page directly from Wikipedia. Maybe our blogs and Wikipages will carry more respect than we initially thought.

Reflection on Class 10

Good morning:

I would like to do this reflective post based on the entirety of our conversation yesterday, but I would like to tie it in to a quote from one of my favorite books ever: Grendel, by John Gardener. This is the modern-era book, written from the perspective of Grendel - the antagonist in the ancient epic Beowulf. The quote goes as follows:

"What is the state in a time of domestic or foreign crisis? What is the state when the chips are down? The answer is obvious and clear! Oh yes! If a few men quit work, the police move in. If the borders are threatened, the army rolls out. Public force is the life and soul of every state: not merely army and police but prisons, judges, tax collectors, every conceivable trick of coercive repression. The state is an organization of violence, a monopoly in what it is pleased to call 'legitimized' violence. Revolution, my dear prince, is not the substitution of immoral for moral, or of illegitimate for legitimate violence; it is simply the pitting of power against power, where the issue is freedom for the winners and enslavement of the rest." -The old peasant to Hrothulf

In this instance, Grendel, with his monstrous inhuman appearance, has not yet been detected by the human guards, and so he overhears this conversation in their camp. Both within the content of this speech, and more generally the entire tale of Grendel's persecution based on his inhumanness, the book follows what Schmitt predicts fairly closely. The various bands of human warriors are all tied together by blood in some way or another, hence Beowulf being greeted as cousin, albeit very carefully when he approaches the camp of Hrothgar. These groups are all loosely tied then by blood, but still consider each other Schmittian enemies, in that they push at each other's borders time and again and then relent; yet also Schmittian friends, in that they have some things in common and can see each other as friends. Grendel, once identified, clearly becomes the foe of Hrothgar - he cannot face him alone, so requests Beowulf (the strongest in the land) to come to his aid. He arrives, and eventually bests Grendel in one-to-one combat (which is where Grendel the novel ends up at) - but as can be gleamed from reading the poem Beowulf, Grendel the inhuman, existential threat of a monster is cut down: at this the Danes all celebrate his destruction. Although I did not read much of the [epically long] poem beyond the Grendel and his mother portion, my teacher at the time mentioned the various problems the Danes later encountered amongst themselves, when there was no other enemy such as Grendel to unite against. All in all, a story that fits well into Schmitt's ideas. It is uncanny how well that quote I picked out of Grendel fits into Schmitt's haunting vision of the future (I am not sure if Gardener actually meant to allude to it or not, but I feel like he did).


I do actually suggest that ye who read this post also pick up a copy of Grendel and read it - I could even loan it to you, so just ask me

I also request that you do not ever go to see that epic failure of a movie they attempted to make out of this..... "The American Movie Business: Ruining Good Stories from as early as 1100 AD"

-Mike

Reflection, Class 10

Well. Down with the Weimars...and universals. Oh, and liberalism and pluralism. Yay National Socialist Party? Maybe. For all his political faults (sort of ironic...), I do think Schmitt has interesting things to say. I particularly wanted to touch on that last paragraph that we closed class with. In my Politics in the TV Age class we talked about how everything is sensationalized and turned into an enemy, sort of akin to what Schmitt was talking about when war was changed to keeping the peace. Everything can be justified in that context, covers all manner of sins, if you will. Someone's disturbing class? Kick 'em out, they're disturbing the peace. Causing a ruckus in a public place? Arrest 'em, they're disturbing the peace. Don't know what to do with someone because they don't seem to fit in? Put them away somewhere, they're disturbing the peace.
At the same time, some of that seems necessary, doesn't it? Stability and order in governing and in the citizenry make for a stable country. Governing stability certainly is important, given the lesson of the Weimar Republic. And it seems like, until we do a 180, or at least a 90 on how society approaches the different/non-status quo, those who cause trouble and disrupt the stability need to be dealt with, either through teaching them not to cause trouble (rehabilitation or simple education) or need to be put away (imprisonment). I'm not quite sure how to fix all that. Utopia, I guess. Maybe lots of soma, that seems to work.

Ender's Game: Post-class Reaction

Our class discussion about Ender’s Game was in large part a topic that is really important to me: communication (or lack of it) between two different sides. I agree with Mike that lack of communication has been responsible for a lot of destruction and violence in our history. And I truly believe that if people tried harder to communicate and understand “the other” whoever that other may be then a lot of problems could be resolved and the situation would not turn to violence. I see a lot of conflicts around the world where both sides just try to make the other side look more monstrous and just want to destroy or suppress them. Such violence, hate and narrow-mindedness can never lead to good. But I also agree with Jen’s point where she says that well sometimes the other side really does mean you harm for whatever reason. So I guess when it comes to matters of life and death and a situation of hostility it is important to try and fix things by trying to communicate and understand but one also can’t just stand by and let themselves be destroyed.

In one of my classes we are currently looking at the issue in Tibet and I just read one of the Dalai Lama’s books. The things he advocates are truly beautiful. He talks of peace and a symbiotic relationship between China and Tibet (he is not even demanding Tibet independence, he is just asking for just treatment of his people), he also wants to make Tibet a land of “Ahimsa” which means a place of peace and non-violence, and he advocates caring for the Earth and nature. One key point he makes is “Universal Responsibility” and he says that all of humanity needs to realize that they are responsible for this world and that one can’t just live separate from issues that happen in it, because we are all connected. I mention the issue between Tibet and China because it is the perfect example of a clash of two cultures...China has been basically raping Tibet for half a century, but a lot of the Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama are still pushing for understanding, communication and peace, now the younger generations are getting restless and are starting to consider more violent ways to fight back. So this is the perfect example of the issue we faced in class…what to do with an aggressive “Other” because that is what China is. Plus the Tibetan people are fighting for their survival (China is basically slowly committing cultural and religious genocide). And there is a great communication gap between the two. I just learned more about his issue, so it is fresh in my mind and something that really frustrates me because I just can’t understand why things like this keep happening. Which goes back to the point I made in the first part of this post: if only people made an effort to communicate and understand then maybe interactions with “the Others” won’t be as negative and violent.

And finally I would like to say that I also agree with Tim, this book really is one of the best we have read and it made me really think about important ideas.

Reflection, Class 9

I couldn't help but think about Mars Attacks while we were talking about Ender's Game. In that movie, they try to communicate, sort of succeed but it turns out they were wrong and the aliens were hostile. It was using logic and reasoning, as opposed to gut instinct, that led them down the wrong path and got everybody killed. Except for the guy and his grandmother with that terrible country music who saved the day. And in Aliens last night, thinking that they weren't as bad as Ripley said they were got Burke into trouble, besides him being a jerk in the first place. So sometimes, thinking the aliens mean you no harm is kind of stupid.
At the same time, thinking the aliens, or other groups, are always out to get you is equally stupid. I watched this movie, Fail-Safe, for my capstone that dealt with Cold War era mentality that forced these pilots to ignore voice commands from the commanders, even the president, because voices could be faked. The problem was that they'd gotten orders to go and attack Russia based on a computer glitch and Russian jamming of transmissions meant that they couldn't receive nullifying orders in the proper time frame. These pilots didn't even question their orders, never mind that they'd never gotten a go ahead order (which also speaks to the success of their training) and figured that the country had been attacked and they had to go in. At the moment I can't think of examples where the aliens meant no harm the entire time, because we established in Ender's Game the aliens were hostile for a while, but I'm sure they are out there. Probably in Star Trek.

Class 3/18

I personally think asking the class to put themselves in the position to decide how to handle the buggers was a bad idea. I know that the intention was to foster a debate about the morals and factors that went into such a situation. However, it quickly devolved into a few people saying the IF were absolutely right and a few saying they were absolutely wrong. I don't think there was any real development of an argument other than the two sides becoming so entrenched that they were not able to see the others perspective.

As far as the discussions of a possible movie. I am probably one of the few that believe a movie could work for this book. However, I think Card would have to be removed from the project. If a movie version let the audience know that Ender was not just playing a game then the entire point of the story would be missing. The story works because not only is Ender shocked but the reader is too. If the viewer knew in the beginning, where would the shock be?

I think this is one of the best books we have read yet. I just wish we were watching Starship Troopers this week because I can see alot of parallels with that, not so many with Aliens.

Reflection on Ender's Game

Hello everyone:

The thing that kind of bothered me about today's class was how many people (but not all) decided that they would make the same choice as the IF, if they were in charge of the situation. I am not attacking them for their decision, but I am afraid that my understanding of the circumstances forces me to still disagree. I definitely heard where people were coming from by saying that the human-to-human conflicts are different than the human-to-bugger issue, but I must stick with the points I made in class - the underlying points remain the same. If we agree to attack some sort of other based merely on two facts - we cannot communicate with them, and they seem to be hostile - then the world will continue to not be a friendly place. I brought up the example of how the colonists treated the Native Americans (which Lena later echoed in relation to another point), so I thought I would try and bring up some additional anecdotal evidence here.

The other biggest example that comes to mind is the manner in which the Roman empire worked- this isn't a perfect fit, but some of the ideas here apply. The Romans made it their policy to allow nations to either surrender and assimilate into Rome, or be destroyed utterly. This led to the destruction of some "barbarian" tribes in Germania, because they wouldn't comply (barbarian being a Greek word taken by the Romans and later civilizations to: the original meaning comes from "barbar" being used to describe the (seemingly) nonsense language of the outsiders). These specific instances are similar to what the IF did to the buggers. The buggers (Germanic tribes, specifically the Illyrians) attacked Earth (Rome), and did not communicate at once or in understood ways, and as a result they were crushed. As a result, the military prowess of these people (the Romans lost three full legions to them before crushing them) as a learnable skill was gone - similar to all the possible gains lost through the destruction of the buggers.
reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_empire

To support my ideas from a different direction, lets look at a similar phenomena that occurred twice, in completely different circumstances. During the American Civil War, brother fought brother over the issue of slavery - or to restate the problem, they could no longer communicate about the issue and one viewpoint had to be destroyed in favor of the other. Many soldiers died fighting in setpiece battles, and due to lack of medical attention or supplies. That said, General Lee eventually surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse - while this was happening, the former enemies, both Union and Confederate soldiers, played baseball together in order to pass the time. This is only one example from that war, but think about the parallels to the buggers - both sides in the Civil War definitely has avenues of communication, but they did not pursue them, and chose to fight instead.
reference: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/aubrecht2004b.shtml

The other example that comes to mind is during the Christmas of 1914. during the Christmas Truce between the German and British soldiers. The common soldiers merely stopped fighting for several days, and exchanged presents and made friends with each other. There was a clear disagreement between the two sides, and they killed each other mercilessly both before and after this Truce, but when they both pursued communication, things improved. Neither side was completely fluent in the other's language, but they still shared a sense of similarity. I feel that the bugger/human conflict has a parallel: when the queen has the model of the giant's corpse built, it is an attempt to talk to a human in a way they understand (the Truce having soldiers exchange gifts and throwing snowballs, areas where they could comprehend each other).
reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

Something to think about, I suppose.

Have a good evening.

-Mike