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[Method of Madness]

First experience was when I was waiting in line before an IMAX screening of one of the Harry Potters...I forget which one. Five, probably. Anyway, my friend held my place, I walked down to the B&N downstairs, somehow ended up buying Ender's Game. Read probably the whole thing (or near enough) in line for the movie, got Speaker for the Dead from the library and tore through that. Started Xenocide and...well, it's years later and I might finish it someday. (I did eventually read through the Shadow series a year or so later but I never finished Xenocide and thus never read Children of the Mind.) I read Ender in Exile when it came out and found it just unremarkable but easy to get through.

[Kugai]

Never read Enders game or any of it's sequels.


To be perfiectly frank, I think the only novel of his I've read was the novelisation of the movie The Abyss.

[Pilchard123]

I wouldn't have minded that finish so much if it wasn't quite so out of the blue. I haven't read it in a while, but from what I remember, that's also the first the reader has any idea of what's happening.

[GarandMarine]

Akima I confess I'm having a hard time following just what you're arguing for.

In my last posting?

That treating unique artworks as somehow comparable with commercial products mass-produced for sale is dubious.

That colonialist looting of other people's cultures is bad, even when dressed up by the looters as "legitimate purchase" in a legal context that they force on their victims at gunpoint. That I don't accept Westrim's arguments as offering any justification for it, or for regarding Chinese attitudes as laughable.

That I don't accept that the characters in the story exhibit any sense of desperation as suggested by KOK, or any qualms at all about the appropriateness of their behaviour.

I was more referring to the artifacts. I see where you're coming from in many respects. What do you suggest we (as "The West" and one large prison colony) do to rectify the situation? Should all artifacts be returned? Or should nations with artifacts stored in national museums pay some form of restitution? As a historian and an avid museum nerd, the argument that a lot of these items (not China specifically) would have been long destroyed or lost without archeologists and other dedicated individuals preserving them could also be made.

On a side note, if I ever become stupidly wealthy, I'm going to set up a special network of museums globally. From those museums that agree to participate, large themed traveling exhibits will be formed from their store houses and current displays. (Similar to the King Tut exhibit that goes around now and then) these exhibits will be constantly rotated, every month to two months globally in a massive pattern, giving the local museums something new and exciting to draw in patrons with, and allowing a global audience to benefit from the knowledge you can glean from said exhibits as opposed to limited portions of the United States or Europe. 

[Is it cold in here?]

Like in "Doorways in the Sand"?

[ZoeB]

What do you suggest we (as "The West" and one large prison colony) do to rectify the situation? Should all artifacts be returned?

How about... Yes.

Or should nations with artifacts stored in national museums pay some form of restitution?

The only restitution I can think of is to transfer cultural treasures of equal value to the wronged nation for the same period.

As a historian and an avid museum nerd, the argument that a lot of these items (not China specifically) would have been long destroyed or lost without archeologists and other dedicated individuals preserving them could also be made.

The Elgin Marbles would have been destroyed by pollution by now if they weren't preserved in the British museum, for example.
However... such preservation should be looked on as a temporary adoption, not conferring ownership.

On a side note, if I ever become stupidly wealthy, I'm going to set up a special network of museums globally. From those museums that agree to participate, large themed traveling exhibits will be formed from their store houses and current displays. (Similar to the King Tut exhibit that goes around now and then) these exhibits will be constantly rotated, every month to two months globally in a massive pattern, giving the local museums something new and exciting to draw in patrons with, and allowing a global audience to benefit from the knowledge you can glean from said exhibits as opposed to limited portions of the United States or Europe.
[/quote]

[Method of Madness]

Returned to who, though?

[pwhodges]

Many things in museums are not unique, but merely examples.  Although theoretically this doesn't change the matter of ownership, considering the number of artefacts involved, the question of return is only likely to be seriously considered for those things which are unique, or so rare as to be nearly so.  Where the artefacts are architectural and have been built into the physical structure of the exhibiting building, this could be highly destructive (I'm thinking of bits of the Burrell Collection in Glasgow).

If all countries had governments of equal standing and cooperativeness, it would be ideal that arrangements were made to loan artefacts for exhibitions as required.

[HeavyP]

I wouldn't have minded that finish so much if it wasn't quite so out of the blue. I haven't read it in a while, but from what I remember, that's also the first the reader has any idea of what's happening.

Ehn, he starts hinting at the reveal through the final stages of the training - though I personally enjoyed it and it did make sense to me.  You do raise valid points, though.

[Method of Madness]

We had no idea because Ender had no idea.

[Storel]

First I heard of Card was his short story "Unaccompanied Sonata," which left me profoundly sad -- as I think it would anyone of any  even remotely artistic bent.

The first story of his I ever read was "Mikal's Songbird," published in 1978, and it was beautiful and sad. I read "Unaccompanied Sonata" a year later and it was even sadder, yet still beautiful. I felt that Card would definitely be an author to watch out for.

Intriguingly, one of the major aspects of "Mikal's Songbird" was a loving relationship between an adult man and a 15-year-old boy. This relationship was presented as something the people of that time and place considered perfectly natural and normal, nothing that would cause any shame to anyone involved.

I still have trouble understanding how the man who wrote that story could express the anti-homosexuality feelings that he has revealed in his non-fiction writings since then. As far as I know he's never put any such views into any of his fiction, though I haven't read much of his more recent fiction. In general I think Card is better at writing short stories than novels (the original short-story of "Ender's Game" was incredible, with a huge emotional impact compared to the novel), but he seems to have stopped writing short stories (more money in novels). I also feel that his writing has declined -- I don't think his later novels have been as good as his earlier ones. So he's not an author I really think about much any more...

[jmucchiello]

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.

My mother was schooled in the 50s and never encounter phonics until I went to grade school in the 70s. She can 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.

[Redball]

My wife taught English in Detroit high schools, and midway through earned a master's in reading. That university, Oakland, north of Detroit, taught whole-language reading. After she retired, she taught several years at a K-8 charter school out in Hillsdale. It was phonics-based. Clara had been strongly anti-phonics from her graduate school classes, but turned to appreciate both. She recognized, IIRC, that knowledge of both was needed to reach students because students learn differently.

[jmucchiello]

Ender's Game is famous because it is a story about a smart boy that young readers seem to identify with. I don't know anyone who read the book after they turned 20 who think it is a good book and too many people who read it when they were younger who think it is a good book.

[HeavyP]

Ender's Game is famous because it is a story about a smart boy that young readers seem to identify with. I don't know anyone who read the book after they turned 20 who think it is a good book and too many people who read it when they were younger who think it is a good book.

Hi.  I was over 20 when I read it, and I think it's an amazing book.  I have a number of friends who I've introduced to it, all of whom are over 20 and all of whom have enjoyed it a great deal.  I also know several who read it as children and re-read it every few years (which I do as well).

[Mr_Rose]

All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike. That is to say, actually behave like smart children instead of tiny, slightly ignorant but otherwise perfectly average, adults. And that author is Phillip Pullman; I spent most of Northern Lights and Subtle Knife not really liking Lyra that much and wondering what was going on until part way through Amber Spyglass when she finally finishes growing up. The difference is astonishing and incredibly obvious in retrospect but the way it's handled is masterful.

[Masterpiece]

His Dark Materials <3

[Loki]

All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike.

Hermione? She is a somewhat insecure child.

(click to show/hide)

Particularly I think of how she is deeply hurt by Ron insulting her in the first book, which leads her to hide in the bathroom which gets attacked by the troll on Halloween. She is also shaken after the experience.

Personally, I think one Mister Yudkowsky caught her personality in his Harry Potter fanfic pretty well:

No one had asked for help, that was the problem. They'd just gone around talking, eating, or staring into the air while their parents exchanged gossip. For whatever odd reason, no one had been sitting down reading a book, which meant she couldn't just sit down next to them and take out her own book. And even when she'd boldly taken the initiative by sitting down and continuing her third read-through of Hogwarts: A History, no one had seemed inclined to sit down next to her.

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you."

[Akima]

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. Dehumanisation requires no special programmes, training or facilities; it is more like standard operating procedure. The problem is how to avoid it.

[Method of Madness]

I don't think it was that adults wouldn't, I'm pretty sure the idea that Ender was the only one who would have even thought of the strategy he used, probably because it was so simple, yet so completely destructive. In other words, it was exactly like a child. It also helped that he didn't realize he was actually doing it, of course.

[westrim]

Oh, don't get me wrong.

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.

First experiences

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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".

[GarandMarine]

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.

Ooooh! I wrote a paper on this!

To quote from said paper which is published on my pretty much defunct blog here: http://northstarguide.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/dehumanization-and-the-psychology-of-killing/

So far in this discussion of the process and function of dehumanization we haven’t really touched on the focus of what dehumanization is aimed at, allowing a functioning normal human being to kill easily and with minimal moral difficulty. Killing other humans is not something that comes naturally to people. Even for men and women raised around firearms who have been hunting for years the skill to successfully kill someone is there but the heart and intent are for the most part not.

Consider the average person who can take a human life in modern American society, there are people who have dehumanized through conditioning to be able to kill such as a gang member who grew up in that environment and lifestyle where killing was normalized and even encouraged. A soldier or a police officer who has been conditioned to be able to shoot and kill also falls in this category albeit through a very different process. Removing that type of individual we have crimes of rage and passion, these are very dissimilar from the soldier’s task or the conditioned criminal, with a crime of passion it’s all on chemicals, many people don’t actually go forth with the thought of killing someone according to the interviews after the fact.

There is only one category of person who has the ability to kill others of their species with out concern, we call these people sociopaths. They have a variety of critical mental illnesses that result in them dehumanizing everything and everyone, there is no emotion to the act of killing, no more then a normal human being does washing their hands. Thankfully these individuals are few and far between and this level of dehumanization is the last thing one would want in a soldier. That’s the point where soldiers lose their sense of who the enemy is and civilians go from people to be defended to just more targets.

The warrior and the conditioned criminal for the most part must do their killing in cold blood, going forth with the intent to kill. Situations can arise to change that, the wounding of a close friend or comrade for example but for the most part the soldier must go about his business as a competent professional in the arts of warfare, this detached coolness is literally the difference between life and death in many cases. Which returns us to that same dehumanization of the enemy, the soldier cannot be worried about if the man shooting at him has a wife or child, he is merely the enemy and must be eliminated so the soldier may be himself preserved and the mission accomplished.

Even in an environment with high dehumanization of the enemy like in WW2 that doesn’t mean the soldiers in question are conditioned to killing the enemy. After World War 2 Brigadier General S.L.A Marshall discovered that in the European theater of operations that individual riflemen only took shots against exposed enemy soldiers 15-20% of the time. (7) Firing rates increased when ordered to by a superior or when firing from a crew served/key weapons system like a machine gun or flamethrower but for the individual combatant they appeared to be unable or willing to kill. This research was correlated by numerous other studies of foreign armed forces and by FBI studies of firing rates amongst Law Enforcement Officers. (7)

The US military and indeed armed forces world wide responded by introducing conditioning techniques to their marksmanship programs. This condition exists to this day, when Marines learn rifle marksmanship the basic target at the 200 yard line for the known distance course of fire is a standard bulls eye, but all the other targets are human silhouettes, as are all the targets provided during combat marksmanship training, where coaches also provided pinpoint instruction on these same human silhouettes on where to aim for chest, head and “mobility” (the hips and pelvis) shots. LtCol Grossman in his article “On Killing II” that the Army system where silhouette reactive targets are used, that is targets that fall down when you hit them are actually a perfect model of what is called “operant” psychological conditioning. (7)

This new method of conditioning lead to increased firing rates in Korea and even higher in Vietnam, Other countries such as England has similar results in their own conflicts. (12) Considering the methods for conditioning are still being used by the US armed forces today to condition and prepare troops for combat, I’d say the effectiveness of the methodology and the psychology behind it can’t be questioned as far as an increase of combat efficiency is concerned.

[Mr_Rose]

His Dark Materials <3

Indeed. Pullman for President etc. and so forth. A pity the films will never be up to scratch as long as they're being funded by religious conservatives.

All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike.

Hermione? She is a somewhat insecure child.

(click to show/hide)

Particularly I think of how she is deeply hurt by Ron insulting her in the first book, which leads her to hide in the bathroom which gets attacked by the troll on Halloween. She is also shaken after the experience.

Personally, I think one Mister Yudkowsky caught her personality in his Harry Potter fanfic pretty well:

(click to show/hide)

No one had asked for help, that was the problem. They'd just gone around talking, eating, or staring into the air while their parents exchanged gossip. For whatever odd reason, no one had been sitting down reading a book, which meant she couldn't just sit down next to them and take out her own book. And even when she'd boldly taken the initiative by sitting down and continuing her third read-through of Hogwarts: A History, no one had seemed inclined to sit down next to her.

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you."

One childlike moment does not excuse the rest of the seven books. OTOH, Rowling does make most of her adults behave like spiteful playground bullies so I guess it evens out in the end?

That said, I am not even slightly surprised fanficcers have been able to better characterise the HP crew; Rowling is, honestly, just not that good of an author. Not terrible but not amazing either, just popular (and the most 'fic'd), so raw statistics means that theres a good chance someone who happens to be better but isn't being paid will come along and outdo the original.

Also, if OSC's politics off-page can get the books criticised as being mouthpieces despite not showing any actual signs of same, then surely Rowling's tacit support of the use of "date rape drugs" on-page is worth some heat? I refer, of course, to the several mentions of "love potions", including one powerful enough to actually circumvent free will entirely, that pass without further comment on the morality of same. Truth serum is a government licensed and controlled substance with hefty penalties for abuse but, apparently, something far more effective and specific than rohypnol and alcohol together doesn't even merit a stern warning from the teachers?

[Method of Madness]

Which is interesting, because the Imperius Curse, a spell which does something similar (albeit turned up to 11) earns someone an automatic life sentence.

[Carl-E]

GarandMarine, it's not just conditioning to the kill - you mention the ugly aspect of dehumanising the enemy, and that's an interesting psychological process of its own.  My god daughter served recently (Iraq was still on) as a weapons tech in HI and came back from basic talking about "Hadjis", an attempt at a derogatory nickname for Iraqi's rather like Vietnam's "Gooks". 

Or even WWI's "Huns". 

I won't mention what the Nazi's called their enemies...

Dehumanising takes place on many levels, and she was back for two or three years before she was even able to think of a person with "Hadji" characteristics as human.  It was a major breakthrough for her - with a good bit of tears involved. 

[Method of Madness]

Wait, "Hun" is derogatory? I honestly didn't know

[Loki]

Reminds me of a report on Second Life which was printed in the Spiegel. The reporter commented on "how another player called [her] hon while chatting, as in, hun, a reference to [her] German nationality" 

[Redball]

The reference to Hun as used by British and American officers in World War I is at the bottom of the Wikipedia link in Loki's post. In the 19th century, German soldiers were told to fight like the Huns of old, if I recall the sense of the reference. But Loki, did the reporter or the source confuse "hon" = "honey" with "Hun"?

[Carl-E]

Wait, "Hun" is derogatory? I honestly didn't know

It was during WWI. 

[Storel]

The reference to Hun as used by British and American officers in World War I is at the bottom of the Wikipedia link in Loki's post. In the 19th century, German soldiers were told to fight like the Huns of old, if I recall the sense of the reference.

Exactly. So "Hun" is not derogatory when applied to the people who established a large empire under the rule of Attila the Hun, but it is derogatory when applied to Germans. (Or to anyone else who isn't an actual Hun, I suppose.)

[Method of Madness]

It honestly sounds complementary. Not intentionally so, but "fear those fuckers, they're crazy" is a pretty big complement to give to an opposing army.

[GarandMarine]

GarandMarine, it's not just conditioning to the kill - you mention the ugly aspect of dehumanising the enemy, and that's an interesting psychological process of its own.  My god daughter served recently (Iraq was still on) as a weapons tech in HI and came back from basic talking about "Hadjis", an attempt at a derogatory nickname for Iraqi's rather like Vietnam's "Gooks". 

Or even WWI's "Huns". 

I won't mention what the Nazi's called their enemies...

Dehumanising takes place on many levels, and she was back for two or three years before she was even able to think of a person with "Hadji" characteristics as human.  It was a major breakthrough for her - with a good bit of tears involved. 

I mention that in the full article if you click through to link. Dehumanization in reference to killing was mentioned in this thread so I only linked the relevant part about killing and rates of fire when engaging the enemy circa WW1/WW2. It's an eight page psych paper that I did my own research for, I promise I have a complete picture of dehumanization. That said I still refer to hadji as hadji, though I make a point of distinguishing (as do most of my mates) between Iraqi and Afghani civilians and hadji. Hadji is the bad guy who kills your friends, wants to kill you, and murders women and children on the regular, he has no honor, no self respect and only deserve swift violence visited upon him and his ilk. Dehumanization? Yes absolutely. However an enemy who rigs an ice cream cart with an IED in downtown Kabul specifically to target children does half the world on that himself.

What's interesting to me is how dehumanization as a psychological structure towards the enemy has moved, it's become a more complex form, allowing for the compartmentalization of "the enemy" and "the civilian populace who's getting just as shot up by the enemy as you are" there's guys who don't make that distinction, especially after tours in primarily hostile areas but I'd say in my experience they're the exception not the rule. Further dehumanization in the classic sense is at the very least officially discouraged in the military, a lieutenant who gives a briefing to his platoon and uses terms like "hadji" in a derogatory fashion around his company commander will probably get a talking to, if tape of it leaks to youtube and the command is forced to take notice, mast is certainly possible. Obviously propaganda posters (of which I have some excellent examples if you click through to my article) are a thing of a bygone age, yet still it lives. Some of it's the enemy we're fighting, but the process has moved underground into the barracks and the "grape vine" (a.k.a "the underground") where it continues to live to these days.

Again, not that it's hard to cast our current enemy in the bad guy's light, murdering women and children on the regular kinda sets that to easy mode for the average American lad or lass.
Or stories from the locals like the picture this letter from the mayor of Tal Afar, Iraq to the 3rd ACR (a local unit) paints: http://www.hardchargers.com/3dacr.pdf

It honestly sounds complementary. Not intentionally so, but "fear those fuckers, they're crazy" is a pretty big complement to give to an opposing army.

That's why I've always liked some of the nicknames they've given Marines through out the world. Even if the Teufuel Hunden one is completely made up. Whenever enemy propaganda talks about us, from WW2 to modern times we're listed as psychotic murder machines. Whether they're calling us shock troops, Marines, black boots or white sleeves (old desert nickname, Somalia in particular) or just referring to us as America's elite soldiers who have to murder a family member to join. (that is REAL enemy propaganda)

[westrim]

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.

The reference to Hun as used by British and American officers in World War I is at the bottom of the Wikipedia link in Loki's post. In the 19th century, German soldiers were told to fight like the Huns of old, if I recall the sense of the reference.

Exactly. So "Hun" is not derogatory when applied to the people who established a large empire under the rule of Attila the Hun, but it is derogatory when applied to Germans. (Or to anyone else who isn't an actual Hun, I suppose.)

It's not derogatory anymore period, because that usage no longer exists. It would be like trying to say someone is boastful by calling them a cracker- you'd get a totally different reaction.

[Method of Madness]

his brother was too ruthless

This actually isn't true. (The only reason I brought out that tiny bit of your post is because as far as I can tell I agree with the rest)

[westrim]

his brother was too ruthless

This actually isn't true. (The only reason I brought out that tiny bit of your post is because as far as I can tell I agree with the rest)

I realized that was the wrong word after posting, but dangit, I couldn't' think of the right one. A couple other characters describe him that way though, before they learn more.

[Loki]

But Loki, did the reporter or the source confuse "hon" = "honey" with "Hun"?

Yes. Although, I just double-checked, and to her defense, the user in question did spell it hun.

She describes her attempt to talk to a female-looking avatar:

Draco answers [in English]: “Sorry, Hun. I’m a guy and only into other girls.”
“Hun” is the English word for “Hun [the tribes]”. And for “German”. And it also means a wind instrument formed of clay and played in Korea. I decide that none of the three is an insult and continue on.

Clearly, the reporter did think to check Wikipedia, but not Urban Dictionary. Also, the bolded paragraph has apparently been since removed from the online version of the article, I assume because of reader letters and blog posts advising her that hun is, in fact, short for honey. Still, I would expect a reporter doing a report on Second Life be somewhat familiar with web slang.

[GarandMarine]

Yeah I'd say in the modern days "Hun" or "Hon" (I do see it spelled and pronounced both ways, especially down south) as slang for "honey" is way freaking more common then a insulting term for German or a reference to the bad ass tribe "The Huns" or the kick ass alt rock band "Atilla and the Huns"

[Pilchard123]

Still, I would expect a reporter doing a report on Second Life be somewhat familiar with web slang.

Your faith in these people is heartwarming.

[ZoeB]

"Hun" in WWI slang is often prefixed by "the Beastly". As in "the Beastly Hun". Oddly this takes some of the sting out of it.

While originally propagandistic hate-speech devised by the tabloid press, it became less malicious with familiarity.

By WWII it had become something of a joke, as with this ditty about the Focke-Wulf 189 recon aircraft:

"Our Fuehrer thinks of everything
We're lucky little Huns
The 189's a great machine
For foxing ack-ack guns"

[Method of Madness]

This whole hon/hun thing reminds me of this:

[Kugai]

[Carl-E]

...That said I still refer to hadji as hadji, though I make a point of distinguishing (as do most of my mates) between Iraqi and Afghani civilians and hadji. Hadji is the bad guy who kills your friends, wants to kill you, and murders women and children on the regular, he has no honor, no self respect and only deserve swift violence visited upon him and his ilk. Dehumanization? Yes absolutely. However an enemy who rigs an ice cream cart with an IED in downtown Kabul specifically to target children does half the world on that himself.

I'll be honest, my real issue with the nickname "Hadji" is that it has a meaning - had one, rather, before it was appropriated for dehumanization.  It was originally the title given a person who goes on a Hadj, the obligatory visit to Mecca that all Muslims attempt make at least once in their life.  What we're doing is calling these people devout Muslims - and that's just so fucking far off the mark that it makes me crazy.  I know our language is an everchanging wonderland, but the military machine has taken the name of a peaceful group of pilgrims representing the vast majority of devout believers and given it over to a small bunch of crazed terrorists.  And it's caught on, to the point that a person taking the Hadj may well, in the future, have severe difficulty if referred to as a Hadji. 

I mourn the loss of the original meaning of the word in this country (and probably much of the west).  More so that the new meaning has probably spread into the occupied areas as well, changing the language it came from through nothing more than willful ignorance. 


None of this is your fault, of course.  Who the hell knows how it started.  But I try and tell anyone I  hear using it what it really means.  Not just because it makes them think a little, but because I'd hate to have a term of pride and accomplishment, of devotion and inner peace, turned into a slur.  It's essentially bullying at its worst.  And that's the last thing we need given the might of our military.  Like the letter you linked says, we are, and need to continue to be the good guys. 

Good guys don't do shit like that. 

[Akima]

Good guys don't do shit like that? Good guys have done a great deal worse.

Terrorism is not a tactic of strength, but of of weakness. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda etc. are rank amateurs in the killing-women-and-children stakes compared to the forces commanded by, for example, Albert Kesselring, Arthur Harris, and Curtis Le May, and the last two, at least, were "good guys", right? On the single night of March 9/10th 1945, a fire-bombing attack on Tokyo burned out about 42km2 of the city and killed approximately 100,000 civilians. The conventional bombing campaign against Japan may have killed as many as half a million. The appalling effects of the nuclear weapons deployed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well known now, despite considerable efforts at the time to conceal and minimise them, presumably to make more credible our claim to be "good guys".

I will make no comment on the military necessity of any of these acts, or on the men who committed them, but I will point out that all combatants in WW2, "good guys" and "bad guys" alike, did not hesitate to target women and children in pursuit of victory, often explicitly and always implicitly. I don't know how one could compare the beastliness committed by terrorist groups in Iraq, with the hideous burns suffered by one of the "lucky" survivors of Hiroshima, and decide which is better or worse. I don't actually think there are any good guys, but only bad guys and worse guys, and you just have to support the lesser evils.

[TinPenguin]

Good guys don't do shit like that? Good guys have done a great deal worse.

I think perhaps you need to reconsider the meaning of the term 'good guys' in the context of Carl-E's post.

[Is it cold in here?]

In this case, I read "No true Scotsman" as a call to action, urging the "good guys" to act better.

[Kugai]

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.