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The most off-topic WCDT discussion ever

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westrim:

--- Quote from: Neko_Ali on 13 May 2013, 09:58 ---Oh, don't get me wrong.

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I get what you're saying. Hopefully he himself is still so far below the larger pop cultural radar that it won't hit the fan.


--- Quote ---First experiences
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My first experience was in the back of a- no, wait.

I actually read Enders Shadow first, THEN Enders Game. I got most of my books through used book sales hosted by the library, which is good because at the rate I devoured them I would have bankrupted my family. About a year later I got around to Enders Game, but I actually preferred Shadow because after seeing Bean be aware of the passive malevolence of the institution, for Ender to be so clueless was grating. Accordingly, I haven't read beyond Enders Game except for novellas, but I've read the whole Shadow line, which was much more to my geopolitical interest.


--- Quote from: jmucchiello on 15 May 2013, 10:28 ---
--- Quote from: mtmerrick on 09 May 2013, 15:54 ---This further goes to back of my theory that phonics in English is a load of bullshit and should not be taught to impressionable children.

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My mother was schooled in the 50s and never encountered phonics until I went to grade school in the 70s. She can't pronounce a word she's never seen before to save her life. Words are just collections of letters for here with no rhyme or reason. 'b' does NOT make a 'buh' sound for her. It is annoying. So please reevaluate your theory that phonics should not be taught.

EDIT: OTOH, my son learning phonics is a nightmare. I don't like how the lessons are presented.

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Perhaps the problem with phonics then is targeting to those that need it and not wasting the time of those that don't.


--- Quote from: Akima on 15 May 2013, 15:46 ---I think the problem with Ender's Game (it is the only OSC novel I have read, and I wasn't that impressed) is the basic premise that you need to trick kids into performing genocide because adults can't bring themselves to do it. History offers not the slightest support for this idea. I have the same problem with works suggesting that brainwashing, or raising children in special academies, is necessary to produce assassins. On the face of it, there has never been any shortage of people ready, willing and able to kill. Dehumanization requires no special programmed, training or facilities; it is more like standard operating procedure. The problem is how to avoid it.

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That wasn't the intent at all of Battle School. They didn't need amorality but elasticity. They were expected to more easily think outside the box because they hadn't learned there was a box yet- except, of course, that they still had plenty of boxes. Enders gift was ignoring the box- symbolized by everyone assuming that the enemy gate was across from them, forward, but he turned it so the enemies gate was down. The reason they didn't tell them it wasn't training was simply to keep them free of real battle concerns about things like lives. The second guessing was bad enough without realizing there were actual people on actual ship they were ordering.

Akima:
I can't remember which character it is that says this to Ender after the destruction of the enemy, but:

"You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We're responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it."

"Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure you didn't know."

The implication is pretty clear, I think, that decent people who know they are killing either won't do it, or at least won't do it well. A glance at the history of the 20th century does not support that. The mass mobilisations of military and civilian resources in two world wars were on too vast a scale for most of the killers to be anything other than ordinary people.

Carl-E:
But the killers you describe were military.  The entire purpose behind things like boot camp is to break the individual to a certain degree, to make them part of a unit.  Then they become those same weapons tools of war, aimed by the chain of command.  Told who to kill and when, and under what circumstances, so that the decision (and ultimate moral responsibility) is not their own. 

Which is why being a veteran of war consists of a persistent effort to regain your humanity. 



Some struggle with it more than others. 

jwhouk:
Look, I don't know where you got the idea that you were all being paid by the page, but Jeph told me that he's had QUITE enough of those rumors, thank you!

Is it cold in here?:
I believe it was Paul Fussel's writings about WWI where I read about people frequently just neglecting to shoot, and I can't remember where I read about the US Army in the 20th century needing to upgrade training so that people would actually aim at the other side.

My late father-in-law would drop artillery shells very close to but deliberately not on Nazi positions, close enough that they could bring themselves to surrender without feeling loss of honor.

On the other hand, there's the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners".

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