endsthegame (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh2012-07-16 03:07 pm
endsthegame) wrote in fandomhigh2012-07-16 03:07 pm
Entry tags:
Practical Philosophy, Monday
There was a tray of sandwiches sitting on one of the tables again, one quickly making its way into Ender's hand as he waited for the class to assemble. He smiled a little as they did.
"Conflict is a big part of human nature," he said. "It's the way we better ourselves, the way we earn our survival. It's a way we express ourselves, a way we get the things we need, a way we try to change the world in our own image."
His smile thinned. "There has to be a difference for there to be conflict," he said. "When you've got just one human being, just one thought, there's not an awful lot of it. You are the center of your universe, and everything you know of is you. That's the state we as humans seem to strive towards at all times."
He sat forward. "Introduce a second human into the picture, and it changes," he said. "Suddenly there's something that's not you. There is another. Someone who might not think or feel the way you do. And that becomes a problem, because something that is not you is difficult to understand, because it does and says things that you never would, to people you'd never wish to be around, about things that don't hold your interest-- it is alien, it is other, and you can't map your own experiences on them and make them make sense."
"Most of history - at least here, on Earth - concerns itself with all the ways humans found to make others a part of themselves, to avoid this conflict," Ender said, "But it's hard to identify an 'us' without having a 'them' to contrast against, to tell you in which way all the other people around you are like you, so that you can understand them."
"And yet, most wars are born like this," he added, "when one group looks to the other and says, 'we are not alike, we are not the same, and that is intolerable - we will make you like us, or we will make you disappear into the night, we'll come with sticks and stones until everything we see is me again.'" His mouth quirked up again. "Productive societies avoid internal strife by finding ways to make the differences seem lesser," he said. "By promoting, if not a unified lifestyle, at least a unified frame of reference."
"We talked about homes at one point," he added, "and what occurs to us as strange about another place. Your homes made you feel like part of something - it gave you that frame of reference, that way of relating to other people. But now that you're here, away, among others-- it falls to you to create another frame of reference. To share experiences so we can figure out what about them binds us together."
He leaned back. "So that's the big secret of why I teach this class," he said, "and sharing experiences is what we'll do again today, as we've done before. Don't worry, I have no illusions about being some kind of driving force for pacifism in your lives... but sometimes in the late hours of the night, I find myself coddling this ridiculous notion of hope we might rise above this some day."
"Conflict is a big part of human nature," he said. "It's the way we better ourselves, the way we earn our survival. It's a way we express ourselves, a way we get the things we need, a way we try to change the world in our own image."
His smile thinned. "There has to be a difference for there to be conflict," he said. "When you've got just one human being, just one thought, there's not an awful lot of it. You are the center of your universe, and everything you know of is you. That's the state we as humans seem to strive towards at all times."
He sat forward. "Introduce a second human into the picture, and it changes," he said. "Suddenly there's something that's not you. There is another. Someone who might not think or feel the way you do. And that becomes a problem, because something that is not you is difficult to understand, because it does and says things that you never would, to people you'd never wish to be around, about things that don't hold your interest-- it is alien, it is other, and you can't map your own experiences on them and make them make sense."
"Most of history - at least here, on Earth - concerns itself with all the ways humans found to make others a part of themselves, to avoid this conflict," Ender said, "But it's hard to identify an 'us' without having a 'them' to contrast against, to tell you in which way all the other people around you are like you, so that you can understand them."
"And yet, most wars are born like this," he added, "when one group looks to the other and says, 'we are not alike, we are not the same, and that is intolerable - we will make you like us, or we will make you disappear into the night, we'll come with sticks and stones until everything we see is me again.'" His mouth quirked up again. "Productive societies avoid internal strife by finding ways to make the differences seem lesser," he said. "By promoting, if not a unified lifestyle, at least a unified frame of reference."
"We talked about homes at one point," he added, "and what occurs to us as strange about another place. Your homes made you feel like part of something - it gave you that frame of reference, that way of relating to other people. But now that you're here, away, among others-- it falls to you to create another frame of reference. To share experiences so we can figure out what about them binds us together."
He leaned back. "So that's the big secret of why I teach this class," he said, "and sharing experiences is what we'll do again today, as we've done before. Don't worry, I have no illusions about being some kind of driving force for pacifism in your lives... but sometimes in the late hours of the night, I find myself coddling this ridiculous notion of hope we might rise above this some day."
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