fandomhigh | Practical Philosophy, Monday

Another nice day, another class outside. Ender had brought two pitchers of lemonade and some cups to go along with the sandwiches - he was thirsty, and he assumed the students might tend towards the same, even if it had cooled off a little bit in comparison to last week.

"I hope none of you were hurt during the shark attacks yesterday," he said, settling down on his end of the circle. "For all that it does to twist our minds and bodies, sometimes Fandom likes to settle for more old-fashioned terrors."

He pulled up his legs. "Some of us are used to this," he said. "I don't mean here, but out in our home dimensions. I'm not, but my boyfriend is. We react to these events accordingly. My first instinct is to stay indoors and minimize the risk I might be running by going outside. His is to fight and protect. Neither of these approaches is wrong, even if his is more dangerous than mine. They're determined by the way we've been conditioned to respond to danger."

"Most people have probably heard of fight or flight responses," he added. "When confronted with danger, the average human will choose to either stand his ground and fight, or run away so he can fight another day. Part of the choice are rational concerns: is this danger likely to come back and trouble me again if I leave? How high are the chances of me surviving this fight? Mostly, though, it's an instinctive choice."

"I was raised in a military school. While there were threats from my peers occasionally, most of our trouble was psychological. You had a reasonable expectation that you wouldn't be physically harmed, and you were not expected to have to physically harm anyone to get out of a dangerous situation." Except for Ender, at times, but they didn't need to know that. "What aggression we did have was channeled into competitive games. Ben, on the other hand, was raised in the full expectation that he would have to go out and fight, and his enemies would not care too greatly about his personal well-being. He was taken out into the world to find and confront those enemies. His instincts are active: he seeks out conflict so he can fight it head-on and rid himself of it. Mine are passive: I won't fight until I'm actively forced into a fight-or-flight situation."

His mouth quirked briefly. You had to know him pretty well to detect it wasn't a happy smile. "I would have fought, if I'd gone out into that shark rain," he said. "So it's not a perfect example. But my instincts told me to stay inside, to minimize the risk that I had to fight. At the same time, I learned at my school that you can't flee from your peers - that if a danger was actively posed, there was no way to out-flee it, so the best choice was to minimize the chance it popped up. What were your instincts? Why do you have them?"

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"Stayed inside. I didn't wanna die. Guess that was my instinct," Flick said, shrugging. He'd tried confrontation before and it hadn't really served him well. "I took some footage with my phone to commemorate the event. Figured I'd maybe send it off to some trash news show and see what they think. Maybe make some money."

"Avoidance, then practicality," Ender mused. "They're not half-bad tactics."

"It's kept me alive so far," Flick said, shrugging a shoulder. "And it'll be fun to see how many people try and accuse me and another guy of faking the footage."

"Have you gotten into situations anything like this before?" Ender asked. "You seem awfully casual about it."

"If you mean sharks flying through the air? Yeah, that happens to me all the time," Flick said jokingly. "It's a very common occurrence."

And he almost left it at that but decided to be a little more honest about his answer. "I've just found that direct confrontation doesn't always work. Other people get hurt."

Because of him.

Ender could understand that - because of me was the thought that immediately shot through his head, because that was how he had learned.

"They can," he agreed. "And it doesn't. As I've said, I found out myself that it's usually better to avoid direct confrontation unless it's absolutely necessary. If you live by violent impulses, there's a good chance it won't end well."

"I'd tattoo that on my forehead if I were that kind of guy," Flick said though he wasn't serious. He just agreed with Ender.

Ender's mouth quirked briefly. "Is it still rough fighting those impulses?" he asked. "Or is that ingrained by now?"

"Ingrained." He'd learned quickly. "I didn't even have a thought about going outside yesterday. I'm not going to throw myself in front of a shark, a person, a car, anything unless the benefits outweigh the consequences."

"How big would those benefits have to be?" Ender asked.

"Big." And that was about all Flick would say on that. No specifics.

Practical Philosophy, Monday

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