Two (or three?) summers ago I went to the library to check out a book to take with me on my family’s annual trip to Colorado.
[1] I was looking for a copy of
Ender’s Game, or any book from the “Ender” series. The KC Plaza library was out of everything in print form except the second book of the series that follows a character of
Ender’s Game, Bean. Set, for some reason, on exploring other options, I went and investigated the possibility of there being a book on tape. As it turned out,
Speaker for the Dead was available on CD. Being the sequel to
Ender’s Game (which I had already read a number of times), I was content to check it out and listen to it.
[2]
Since it was on CD, I chose to burn it into my itunes so I could put it on my ipod, instead of having to have my computer out all the time or make my whole family listen along (though it probably would have been good for them). A few days ago I dropped into desperate need to find another book. After finishing J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Silmarillion, I discovered that I enjoy reading on my own in the evenings after work.
[3] After trying in vain to find a bookstore near my apartment that was open after I returned home from work, I was about to give up or try to find a library. Accidentally, I came across
Speaker for the Dead on my computer.
[4] With no viable alternative, I decided to relisten to this book. Not surprisingly, it was all I did for about 4 days – even at work I would listen to it while I looked up advertising rates for various radio stations in Texas.
[5]
The basic premise of the book, without giving too much away about it or
Ender’s Game (which will henceforth be known as
Ender and
Speaker for the Dead will be known as
Speaker), is that 3,000 years or more from now humans have colonized dozens of other planets and worlds we have found inhabitable – nearly 100 of them. This, in itself, leads to a number of interesting discussion points:
(a) By expanding our race to a variety of other worlds, we effectively guarantee that the human race will never die out. Is this something that is actually possible? Should it be a goal of ours? Or, perhaps more importantly, is this desirable, for us and the rest of the universe?
(b) Such expansion and colonization would (hopefully) lead to the ability to create new worlds in which there is less strife. If we had the chance to start over, how would we do things differently?
[6]
(c) Were this to become a reality, would it be best to simply give each culture its own world? Or part of a world? Could we create worlds that were specified as “Christian” or “Muslim,” or “Russian” or “Japanese” and have them function? How long would they last before individuals on each world began to quarrel over what exactly the terms of their world were, and what should be done with it? Or would we all just fight here over who would get to be the first to go to a new world, and nothing would ever get done?
[7]
(d) Similarly, is it possible that each world would develop just as earth has? Would humans experience some sort of evolutionary change on each different planet? Would it be split up into a bunch of different pieces?
(e) Most importantly (and admittedly a couple of my previous questions were just rambles), do we have to figure out a way to do this? I mean, look at our world – the “bottom billion” of people in the world live on less than a dollar a day, and that number is growing.
[8] The number of ethnic conflicts around the world is growing. Water is growing scarce and becoming a source of conflict. All debate about global climate change aside – even if seas don’t rise as they are expected to (and put places like New York, Florida, and California at risk), our growth and expansion will eventually lead to the extinction of resources or available space. Surely there’s a limit to the population of humans Earth can support. Well, of course there is. But surely we’re growing too close to that number too rapidly.
Obviously this is all far more intense than it likely needs to be at this point, and these issues are all much farther down the road. But that isn’t really my point. I know these books are science fiction, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t supposed to push people to think about real-life problems – or at least potential problems.
[9]
The assumption that all of this rests on is the fact that we’ve developed the kind of technology necessary to travel to other places and to communicate with previous places once we’re there. In Ender it is detailed how we come across such technology – instantaneous communication, near-light-speed travel, etc. Obviously this initially leads to questions like: how exactly does wireless internet work? And how instantaneous is something like Skype? When I say something into my cell phone, does it really have to bounce through multiple towers before it comes out of the other phone? Hopefully all of these questions are answerable by people who know more about this than I do.
[10] But what are the limits of such nearly instantaneous communication? What is moving that gets this information so quickly from one place to another - and is it possible to move bigger things at such speeds?
Anyway, the real meat of the book is the new sentient race humans have come across on one of their colonies – named the piggies. While they are genetically (and therefore physically) different than humans and have much different lifestyles, it eventually becomes clear that it is only chance and a few thousand years that separate the piggies from humans – at least technologically.
[11] A big debate occurs over how to treat the piggies, and eventually a fence is built around the human settlement on their planet. This fence, and many other rules set by some large, interstellar governmental body, is intended to keep humans from contaminating piggy culture. Only one or two humans are allowed out at a time to observe them, and they are not allowed to convey anything more than is necessary to the piggies about our culture.
It is clear by the end of the book that these laws were less designed by concern for the piggies than they were out of fear for human livelihood. The fence, rather than keeping humans in, serves as a greater tool to keep piggies out. The messages conveyed are clear: (1) we’ve accomplished so much and don’t want to share what we have, and more importantly, (2) we’re afraid of things we don’t understand.
We’re afraid of things we don’t understand.
We’re afraid of things we don’t understand. Why? It’s true. That’s the way it is, and probably always has been. And when I say we, I don’t mean any specific group of people – not students, not Americans, not…tennis players – I mean humans in general.
[12] When we don’t know what something is, or someone’s intentions, or where something comes from, we’re afraid of what it could mean, or do. It serves for individuals, it servers for groups, it serves for nations, and it will serve for the human race as a whole if we live to encounter another sentient race.
Right. So why does this matter? Well, it matters because Card has taken a fictional example to expose something that is an essential part of the way humans interact. Think about building it up from a smaller scale.
[13] When kids are really young, they tease the kid who is new, who is different, because they don’t know him or her. They wouldn’t label it as fear, but a concern prevails about their perceived social status when someone new joins the social order, and they must make sure that person doesn’t rise to become a threat.
Anyway, the point of all this isn’t to critique the way we interact on this planet. Among many others, the main question that
Ender and
Speaker bring to the table is this: is the discovery of another sentient race, a perceived threat and something that we, as the human race, do not understand, the best hope for the unification of and peace amongst humans?
[14] Is the complete elimination of our race the threat that will cause us together peacefully?
[15] Or, more intricately, is it really in the face of a threat that we are only going to be able to achieve peace? Does fear really govern that much of what we do?
As I’m writing this, I just let out a deep sigh. I’ll be honest, I have hardly touched on the questions I really wanted to attack and pose in this entire thing. All the things this book made me think - I’m having a ridiculous time translating them into words. The characters in the book are all of above average intelligence.
[16] Actually, supposedly two of them are two of the smartest people to ever live. Ender (one of the characters) has a remarkably easy time understanding people and their motives, without really prying into them. They see everything a facial expression represents; they hear all the meanings behind words. And I think when I sat down to write about it, I thought that would rub off, or at least allow my ideas to flow relatively freely. Evidently that hope was wildly misplaced, and here I sit, extremely disappointed in the effort I’ve put forward.
All I can say is that these books drove me to think as much as possible. So I guess what I’m saying is – go read these books. And then come back to me, and lets discuss what happened and what it means. At this point I’m nearly two-thirds of the way through
Xenocide, the sequel to
Speaker. Though the premises have started to get a bit more far-fetched, the issues are even greater and the questions more penetrating. I wish I could put it more simply. I wish I could articulate it at all.
Imagine you’re a train driver and your breaks go out. There are five workers on the track ahead expecting you to stop, but you know you’re going to hit them, killing them all. Before the track reaches them, however, you could turn the train onto another track that only has one worker on it. Do you turn the train? Now imagine you’re standing next to the track watching the train. You know the brakes are out, and this time there is no alternate track. You happen to be standing next to a very large person. You know that if you push this person onto the track they will stop the train before it gets to the five other people. Do you push them?
What’s the difference in the two scenarios? That’s the difficulty I’m having explaining all the issues in Speaker. Maybe it’s something you have to talk about, not write about. Maybe it’s just meant to make you squirm inside until you have to give up.
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[1] Maybe it isn’t quite an annual trip, but it used to be close. I, quite sadly, haven’t been since the summer after my freshman year, and likely won’t make it out again until next summer. If I make it out then.
[2] I first read
Ender’s Game my freshman year of high school. I have Mr. Nickels to thank for that – it may be my favorite book.
[3] As opposed to, for example, doing required reading or writing for class.
[4] Though I guess it cannot come as a huge surprise – the book spans 127 tracks and 14 hours of my music library.
[5] My latest and largest project at work – pricing the Texas radio market.
[6] This does, of course, ignore the question of whether or not we deserve the chance to start over.
[7] Interestingly, in the book the peace on every world is explained by the power that an inter-world governing body wields. However, this power is not militaristic; rather it is one of information, as they can cut off the world from the information, news, advancements, and thoughts of all the other worlds. This threat holds the stability on each world as well as any military could.
[8] Fair warning – the rest of this is exceedingly fatalistic.
[9] I think it should be noted that up to this point, I have said nothing that I am really particularly proud of how I said it. In fact - I haven’t really said anything at all that I meant to say, and I have said many things that don’t really matter, but perhaps that’s just how difficult this is.
[10] Which really means, hopefully we know what’s going on and aren’t just happy that things are continuing to work smoothly. Still not the point I’m trying to make.
[11] Piggies have huts and tools, but nothing made of stone or metal. Also, they are, when full grown, about half as tall as an average human. Although I guess average human height is reasonably subjective as well.
[12] So I ran out of groups pretty quickly.
[13] It should be noted that my aim here is not to be wildly controversial.
[14] Or, perhaps, is it the only hope?
[15] You could theoretically point to the Cold War here as an example – Mutually Assured Destruction, while it didn’t create complete peace, at least created a sense of relative stability.
[16] Then again, how much fun would a book be to read if the characters weren’t very smart?
