Aww I'm all sentimental

This is the only class I cared about this semester, except for this inconvvenient Saturday morning class that met three times, but aside from that, I only wanted to be in this one. Amid writing bullshit ethnographies and reading about how crappy Latin America is to peasants, I got to read some really fucking good scifi that I didn't know existed. I took this class to be with my friend Rachel and to discuss Ender's Game in some academic sense and to have a class with Jackson. And those were all fulfilled just fine, and the new authors I've now got about a million books by make this semester worthwhile. Granted, I could have done without Ursula Leguin in general, but everything else was cool.

The best comment made in class last week was "when does more technology stop being an improvement?" and I think that in certain areas of technology today, that has even been reached. I feel like that there has never been a time before now when all scientists should absolutely be shown a required set of movies, namely the ones about medical mutants eating brains and spaceships called to Earth with radio waves obliterate us, not to mention anything to do with artificial intelligence. I read a news story recently about scientists putting the largest amount of human dna ever into mice for ummm god knows what. When questioned as to whether the mice would gain human intelligence, one scientists said don't worry, if the mice start showing human-like behavior, they'll be killed. They were talking about a human developing in a mouse body! AHHH! I understand that medical improvements are always necessary, but come on! I guess pretty soon we're doomed anyway, but I'm still holding out hope for a sudden jump into colonizing other planets so I can get the hell off of this place, preferably taking my hometown with me (not the people, just the beaches)

Tolerance vs. Acceptance

While reading this, I was continuously trying to place this whoel society in parallel to some stage of American diplomacy. Why? Because I found it entertaining that even behind many ruses, a foreign diplomat so FOREIGN was accepted. He had three legs! Goddamn! And they were okay with him walking around. Now, what this reminds me of is in Gone With the Wind, when the description of the new composition of the town was given. Where never a foreign accent was heard before, after the war started, the Confederate streets were full of European accents and no one turned their head anymore. This seems the same as in Look to Windward, where foreignness has been dulled down to acceptance. At what point do instincts against something so utterly different get worn away? Have we ever actually reached somethng so accepting as a society?

Wiggin Family Genetics

Kinda drawing off of Andrew's "Family" post and what was said in class, I found the Wiggin family's role overall as entertaining to say the least. I could practically say that my favorite part of this book was the ploy that Valentine and Peter pull off completely separate from Ender. The complete brilliance of the family was the coolest plot device I've seen in a while. Some criticisms from class: I don't think that it's such a coincidence that all three kids were so great, and not the result of a government breeding program necessarily, although the book of short stories "First Meetings" would refute that, perhaps. Just plain old good genes and raising made those three. Also, the feminists in class were getting all pissy about the Battle School excluding girls, but come on now, without being sexist, you can say that little girls tend not to be as competitive minded when it comes to wargames and emotional abuse.

Okay, and I went to Florida this weekend and bought Xenocide in the bookstore at the aurport and read it so fast that fingers were black from the ink at the end. Not a bad book, but a little flaky by the end.

Ideal Interactions

The idealism of human nature in Speaker for the Dead is what catches my eye. Natural reaction would of course have been to get revenge on the piggies after the first murders. I can only hope that we would really learn from the xenocide the way the humans in the book do. In reality, I don't have that much trust in us. As far as I can tell, when someone, even one not associated with our culture, attacks us, we react in the harshest way possible. We are always likely to react in an Ender's Game fashion.

I suppose that's why this novel was written, to show that on a small scale, humans can react correctly, or at least not destroy everything new that frightens them. If they had killed all the piggies, I would have supported it, just as I support not killing them. Either reaction is acceptable in my mind, as the first is a bit too harsh and the second and a bit too weak-minded. A proper course, the most advisable, would have been Ender's from the start, or simply talking to the piggies and understanding them. However, I find it difficult to judge anyone in this situation because it is the most stressful one around. Any reaction that preserves the humans is okay in my book.

Ideal Interactions

The idealism of human nature in Speaker for the Dead is what catches my eye. Natural reaction would of course have been to get revenge on the piggies after the first murders. I can only hope that we would really learn from the xenocide the way the humans in the book do. In reality, I don't have that much trust in us. As far as I can tell, when someone, even one not associated with our culture, attacks us, we react in the harshest way possible. We are always likely to react in an Ender's Game fashion.

I suppose that's why this novel was written, to show that on a small scale, humans can react correctly, or at least not destroy everything new that frightens them. If they had killed all the piggies, I would have supported it, just as I support not killing them. Either reaction is acceptable in my mind, as the first is a bit too harsh and the second and a bit too weak-minded. A proper course, the most advisable, would have been Ender's from the start, or simply talking to the piggies and understanding them. However, I find it difficult to judge anyone in this situation because it is the most stressful one around. Any reaction that preserves the humans is okay in my book.

Politics?

In Adam's last post, he mentioned that he wasn't sure that Schmidt's idea of politics is relevant to the real way politics works, in that it is too cut throat, but that it fits Ender's world nicely. I'll agree with this on the outside, but I think that politics works that way in places taht we, as the public, cannot have access to. I wonder what the goal of politicians in America really is. If you asked them to describe their ideal world, would it be one where everything is America literally or just with Western views agreeable to us.

I believe that many political actions are actually motivated in the way that Schmidt describes, by viewing everyone as enemies. The most base motivation that drives every action of governments is fear, and naturally so, as protecting the sovereignty of their nation is their job. Therefore, if fear remains the driving force, actions will be as cut throat as Schmidt imagines. Overall, I think the reality of politics is not as severe as Schmidt's view, but fairly close ideologically.