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[Storel]

All this talk of dehumanizing is very interesting, but beside the point as far as Ender goes. The reason he existed in the first place was because his brother was too ruthless and his sister too empathetic, so they hoped he would be a medium, empathetic enough to anticipate the enemy and ruthless enough to annihilate them. Keeping him uninformed that things switched from games to reality was just keeping bothersome details out of his mind, because he couldn't de... sentient them. To use what I said earlier, he had the box of morality and not killing things, so they made sure he didn't know the box applied. Anything otherwise would have broken him- did break him, when it was over- because as Carl-E mentioned, most solders defense is their status in the chain of command. Ender was at the top, with no one to blame. And not just for killing the Formics, but all the soldiers on the ships, all the mistakes that might have killed more in a battle than could have been. He never could have ordered the suicidal final attack had he known he was ordering actual ships to die. He thought he was just delivering an FU to the jerks that programmed such an obviously hopeless battle, where there was no way any ships would survive as they always had before.

TL;DR, Dehumanization doesn't apply because Ender never knew there was someone at the other end.

Actually, you could see that as the most effective use ever of dehumanization: Ender literally didn't believe his opponents were even living beings, let alone human.

[Method of Madness]

It actually went beyond that, as he didn't believe his own soldiers were either.

[Storel]

Exactly.

[Is it cold in here?]

War is an ugly business Akima

A sense of honour and fairness should exist, and can exist in it, but it's hard to maintain in the middle of an engagement when you're nose to nose with your opponent(s) and ankle deep in gore with the guy in front of you trying to take your head of before you do the same to him/her.

True. That, however, was not the explanation for people sitting behind desks sipping coffee and ordering air raids on population centers.

[Method of Madness]

They probably liked to pretend it was.

[Nepiophage]

There no good guys in a war. Just bad guys and worse guys.

[Latias]

There no good guys in a war. Just bad guys and worse guys.

That is an awfully generic anti-war quote with no real meaning.

So what about all those people Germany attacked in World War II? Every one of them, a bad person for defending their country?

[Latias]

We're so close to pull a Godwin's law in here... If someone didn't already.

 

(click to show/hide)

Maybe there's, you know, a reason people bring up Nazi Germany in conversations fairly often. There's certainly nothing wrong with doing so.

[Sorflakne]

A sense of honour and fairness should exist, and can exist in it, but it's hard to maintain in the middle of an engagement when you're nose to nose with your opponent(s) and ankle deep in gore with the guy in front of you trying to take your head of before you do the same to him/her.

I don't remember who said it, but one quote goes like, "If you're in a fair fight, you really messed up."  And then there's that Patton quote about no one ever winning a war by dying for his country.

[Carl-E]

I was going to post this in the pointless thread, but it isn't, and it seems to fit better with how/where this discussion was going...


http://www.google.com/doodle4google/vote.html

Today's Google doodle is a competition winner by a teenage girl in Wisconsin. 

My father was a marine during the Korean conflict, before I was born.  So I can't really identify. 

But I do, and I can't stop the dripping from my eyes, every time I look at it.   Damn allergies.

[Loki]

I cannot help but feeling I don't understand the image. What is the purpose of black/white vs. color? To show that their respective existences were devoid of meaning and joy without each other, and now that they are reunited, they have some?

[Carl-E]

I don't know about "devoid of meaning and joy", but certainly lacking something. 

Something important. 


Through most of my childhood, my father worked away from home for a week or more at a time.  One time he took a job in Kazan, in the USSR, he was gone for 4 months. 

That was just life.  It wasn't joyless, but things were very different when he was home - and in many ways, more complete. 




I guess I identified more than I thought. 

[jwhouk]

It's not black and white (if you're talking about the Google doodle).

[Carl-E]

The first five "frames" (letters?) are, with the exception of the little flag in her hand.