Fandom High School

"Empathy," Ender began, "Is a skill that is fundamentally neutral in nature. We like to perceive it as 'good' - as if to understand another means we will immediately be kind as well. But those two concepts are completely separate from one another. You can be violently emphatic and yet utterly violent to someone at the same time."

Hem.

"Over the years, many philosophers have busied themselves with the study of what empathy truly is, and whether we should care for it," he said. "For instance, Nietzsche, ever cheerful, described empathy as 'to imitate another's feelings within ourselves'. To act on it with compassion was little more than putting a pretty face on pity."

He picked up his bottle of water. "Meanwhile, Edmund Husserl sees empathy as a form of awareness; an intention to observe the feelings of those around you, and being able to do so without necessarily having experienced or experiencing those feelings yourself. He sees a difference between this kind of intentional, intuitive observation and the observations of science. We see the other person as another person, not as a thing to be studied, when we practice empathy."

He took a sip of his water and sat back. "Nietzsche gets at the heart of something called simulation theory: the idea that empathy is what happens when we observe an emotion and try to reproduce it in ourselves, so we might understand the other person. Theory of Mind, on the other hand, is the idea that we all have some rules in our minds for how people ought to think and feel, and we practice empathy by applying those rules to another person and coming to a conclusion. This is also known as 'cognitive empathy'."

"How do you feel when you emphatize with someone else?" he asked. "Do you do it cognitively, reasoning through why they must feel that way? Do you attempt to reproduce what they might be feeling? Or do you simply observe and assume? Can you remember a moment where you looked at another person and knew, intimately, how they felt and why? What is empathy to you?"

Today, one would find Ender on the lawn with his legs beneath him, his implacable calm restored from where it had wobbled over the weekend.

"One day, sometime in the early 17th century, the French philosopher called René Descartes set himself to a nigh impossible task," he began. "He realized that over the years he had believed many things he had come to feel were false, and wondered how many more he'd come to dispute. And so he decided to be proactive about it. 'I needed — just once in my life — to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations', he would later write. He feared that if he kept waiting for the right moment, he'd be too old to do it properly."

He reached for a bottle of water, unscrewing the cap. "Once he settled with the thought, he realized he didn't need to fundamentally disprove each of his opinions to do so. It would be a lot of work, and all he really needed was to somehow undo the foundation of each. ' So all I need, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, is to find in each of them at least some reason for doubt', he concluded. And so he began to dig down, further and further, finding reason to doubt the very fundamentals of his beliefs, and in the end, realized there was only one thing he could not disprove to some extent - that he existed, for as long as he thought about anything at all, he had to exist."

Ender's mouth curved. "Or as it's been phrased in the public imagination, 'I think, therefor I am'. But Descartes' experiment provides more food for thought than merely that. He challenges us to think about what undergirds our beliefs, to accept that they might not be correct. Humanity, at least, has a habit of questioning everything, except for their most intrinsic, most elementary convictions."

He took a sip. "Now I'm hardly foolish enough to believe we can dig down and upend yours in a single class," he said. "First of all, I would like you to think - and discuss - what you feel is one unshakable idea you have about the world and the self. Secondly, I would like to ask you to spend this week trying, if not entirely, at least a fraction of what Descartes did: to find a reason to doubt this idea. And we'll speak of it next week."

"'Anger is accompanied by pain, but hatred not; for he who is angry suffers pain, but he who hates does not. One who is angry might feel compassion in many cases, but one who hates, never; for the former wishes that the object of his anger should suffer in his turn, the latter, that he should perish.'"

Ender smiled as the class settled in, a copy of the Complete Works of Aristotle sitting in his lap. "Aristotle is one of this world's most famous philosophers. One of the ancient Greeks, who lived almost 2.500 years ago, taught by the legendary Plato. And a man with a lot of things to say about hatred."

He closed the book. "Aristotle sees a clear difference between anger and hate. Anger, he argues, is focused on the individual. In doing so, you must acknowledge the humanity - or sentience - of the being you feel such anger towards. You feel, and you want the object of your anger to feel as well. Hatred, on the other hand, is different. Hatred can also be about groups, says Aristotle, about a collection of things you wish only to be utterly destroyed. The object of your hatred need not feel something. It is only imperative that it be there to be mistreated, hurt, annihilated."

He set the book aside. "Hence, to feel hatred, you must have stripped the recipient of all that makes their feelings worth caring about," he said. "When I was young, I thought my brother hated me. I had something he didn't, and he wanted to destroy me for it. Only when I was older did I find the capacity to listen enough, and did he find the capacity to speak enough, for me to realize that he was simply fearful, and wanted my affection."

The annoyance of the weekend had passed, yes. Peter had called, and Ender had realized what all of that had been about. "In doing so, I denied his humanity, as much as I felt he denied mine," he said. "I was young. I didn't understand. Much like I was a few years later, when I felt a measure of hatred for the first time in my life, and paid the cost. It takes effort to put your feelings aside and listen. It takes more effort to understand that there's a reason to do so at all."

He reached for his bottle of water. "Don't get me wrong, anger can also be destructive," he said. "But personally I don't think it is as all encompassing." He took a sip. "So two questions, today. One, do you think Aristotle's division of anger and hatred is fair? And two, can you remember a time you felt hatred - and a time you felt someone hated you? What did you do about it? How did it feel? Do you regret it, or do you stand by it?"

"It is customary for us to do at least one class every half-semester that equates to 'free space' on the bingo card," Ender said wryly, "And after such an uneventful half-a-summer, it feels only right that it be this final class."

He stretched his legs out.

"How do you look back on the discussions we've had?" he said. "Or is there something we haven't discussed that you hoped we would have? Is there something else you'd like to throw into the group that you think we should all talk about? I leave it up to you."

"We've been blessed with relative peace of late," Ender said, his legs folded under him, the remains of a sandwich beside him. "Still, this is Fandom. I'm sure most of you will have woken up at some point or another looking like someone else, or feeling like someone else. It can be a bewildering experience. Or freeing."

He reached for his water. "The great philosophers spent a lot of time talking about matters of personal identity," he said. "Some philosophers denote identity simply as bodily existence: you are who you are as long as you are your physical self. Of course, that brings issues of its own with it, whether it be because of the natural process of aging, or because the island turned you into another sex. Are you still yourself, when your genitals are different? I would say yes, but it's a frequent topic of debate."

He set the bottle back down. "The second theory is that identity is a product of mental substance; that one's mind is separate from one's body, and that it is where our personhood lives. So if we wake up one morning forgetting who we are, then whatever inhabits our body is not us. Whatever that body did was not our action."

He eyed each student in turn. "Of course, John Locke went a step further and defined mental substance as being one's consciousness, in which case the answer is rather more clear-cut, I feel. 'If Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person.'"

"But there are many other theories. One presupposes that one's self is really one's intuition: after all, when your mind is gone, and someone then proceeds to torture you, you'll still feel fear and apprehension, because you can intuit that torture isn't something you want happening to you. Other theories suppose that consistency is key, that every part of you that I've just mentioned must remain in a certain alignment for you to be you. And so on, and so forth."

He smiled, tapping his finger against the bottle. "But that's enough for Philosophy 101," he said. "Have any of you ever experienced waking up in another body? Or with another mind? Did you remember what you did? Did it mean anything to you, or could you put some distance between it and yourself?"

"And now we arrive at the point in this series of classes where I start dragging old philosophers into it," Ender said, wryly, as he sat down on the law with his sandwich.

"But I think this might be an interesting one with this group," he added. "Specifically, I'd like to talk about justice. When is it okay to judge something terrible or evil? The philosophers of yore developed extensive theories on what made something good and right. Take the old Greeks, such as Socrates and Aristotle, who believed in what's called 'virtue ethics' - the idea that the character of the person defines the morality of his actions. Socrates argued, for instance, that if a person knew what was right, then he would do right. It was only not knowing what 'good' was that might cause someone to do evil."

( Then there were the stoics... )

"As I said, we all make our judgments. Of ourselves, of the people around us, of their pasts - especially around here. On what do you base your judgments? I think most of us realize that there is no such thing as pure good and evil - but how we judge other people tends to depend a lot on what we were taught and where we come from."

Another faint smile.

"I personally believe that character is important," he said. "Once you try to understand what makes people do what they do, it becomes that much harder to see them as evil. After all, most of us do what we think is right, even if our ideas of what right is are different." He gave a little shrug. "But of course I feel that way. I'm a Speaker for the Dead. It is, in many ways, our raison d'etre to value human understanding of the self above all else."

It had always been Ender's wont to have this class meet on the school's lawn, in the sunlight. There were pillows and picnic blankets, simple sandwiches and thermoses of coffee, tea and water. He was already there when class arrived, looking content to sit and enjoy the feeling of the wind in his hair.

"Sit down in a circle, please," he said when class arrived. "I like to keep things equal, when I can at all help it."

There were quite a few familiar faces here. "Most of you know who I am," he observed. "For the rest of you, my name is Andrew Skywalker. Dean Skywalker," he nodded at Anakin, "is my grandfather-in-law, and Ben here," another nod, and a smile, "is my husband and father to our three children. I'm sorry, sometimes it's hard to escape making something on this island a family affair. Especially when you are an alumnus."

He looked at the students he didn't know. "I am a Speaker for the Dead," he said. "When someone dies, and I am summoned, it's my job to poke and pry into the life of the deceased, to learn about the decisions they made and why they made them, so we can form a true picture of a person without claims to higher judgment. I'm not here to teach you how to be a Speaker, obviously, but this is the lens through which I try to conduct this class: we ask questions. Sometimes we pose hypotheses. But I won't tolerate harsh judgments, because they close the blinders on us, and make it harder for us to understand both ourselves and the world."

"While 'philosophy' is in my class's title, we're not here to talk about the philosophers of old or the specifics of particular lines of thought in philosophy. Here, we make some attempt to put our own experiences into a greater perspective through conversation and debate. Above all, philosophy is about asking questions about everything in the world around us - and about everything we feel about it. That means I expect some level of participation from all of you."

He smiled wryly. "That doesn't mean you always need to speak up about yourself," he said. "No topics are everything to everyone. If that week's subject veers too close to something you want to keep private, be my guest - just try and pitch in when someone else speaks. I'll try to raise a theme each week, but don't feel beholden to it. If there's something on your mind you'd like to discuss, please do throw it into the group."

He picked up a bottle of water. "So let's talk," he said, twisting off the cap. "How do you feel about where you are now? What kind of experience has the island been for you? Has there been anything that made you cry or made you think or made you wonder?" He glanced at Ghanima and Anakin with a wry curl to his mouth. "Perhaps I should say 'in the past five years', just to give ourselves some kind of a limitation."

"'The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely opinion'," Ender quoted, once the last of his students had settled in on the lawn. "If you did the reading I assigned a few weeks ago, you'll know that quote from the Greek philosopher Democritus. If you didn't, for instance because you were stuck in a hole, well, I won't dock points."

He smiled briefly, then reached for a bottle of water.

"Like many of the famous old Greeks, Democritus concerned himself with many areas of study, from physics to mathematics. But he also dabbled in philosophy." His mouth curved. "Actually, they called him 'The Laughing Philosopher', because he 'laughed at humanity's follies', which should tell you a thing or two about the man."

He took a sip of water.

"Democritus believed it was almost impossible to know the truth. After all, we see the world through our senses, which he felt were innately subjective. Who's to say the color 'purple' looks the same to your eyes as they do to a friend's? He called this 'bastard' knowing: to know only through the senses. Real truth can only be attained through reason."

Another sip, then he set it down. "We're all from different universes with different rules, we're all people with different perceptions and different experiences," he said. "What's true to you can be quite fundamentally untrue to your friend from another universe where purple is a little yellow, actually. And still, here at Fandom, we manage to relate ourselves to people who are so very different from ourselves. In a way, I suppose, we collectively come together to decide on what we think is true, and we live by that."

He shrugged. "Of course, Democritus also pointed out that we can reason our way into beautiful theories about the state of the universe, but the only way to confirm those theories is to see them with our imperfect senses." He sat back. "Have you befriended anyone, or seen another universe, that made you question whether your own perceptions are true? Do you think Democritus is right, or is there such a thing as real truth?" he said. "Does it even matter?"

All of Ender's new students received an email that morning, if they were still capable of receiving any at all.

As you may know, my class centers around discussion. Without pupils, it's hard to discuss anything.

Enclosed you'll find a digital copy of a book about the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. Once we're able to meet in person again, we'll talk about his ideas about truth.

For now, I hope you and yours are safe. I will be doing my best to ensure the same on my end.

Regards,
Andrew Skywalker.

[[ no ocd, open to reactions and/or counter-emails ]]

There was an Ender sitting on the lawn, along with his customary sandwiches and drinks. He wasn't looking at them, though.

He was on his back, looking up at the sky.

"People arrive here from all corners of the multiverse," he said, once everyone had settled in. "From the medieval and further part, to places so far in the future we can barely dream of them. For me, growing up, space was an unknown danger where evil aliens lurked; it was a place I lived and learned and suffered, with zero gravity as familiar to me as the regular kind."

That was about as much as any of them were ever likely to hear about Ender.

"Coming here, where our feet were rooted to the ground and space was merely an unknown - that was strange. I had to adjust my being to the place I was in, and its new rules."

He considered a passing cloud.

"It makes you wonder how much the simple geography of our early days shapes us," he said. "For some of you, this might be the first steps you take outside of the world you knew. For others, that sensation might be familiar. Banal, even. Has coming here changed you? Has going somewhere else before that changed you instead? How much of who you are now is intrinsically linked to the place you first consciously existed in?"

"Sorry I'm late," Ender said, as he walked onto the lawn with the sandwiches under his arm. "Sometimes kids don't let you run on a schedule."

He set the bag down and sat down next to it.

"I also didn't have time to prepare much," he said, "So let's keep this simple: tell me about your week."

"It's been a calm week," said Ender, sitting as he was underneath a tree on the lawn. The usual spread of sandwiches and drinks was set out before everyone on the blanket.

"I've always found that this place inspires dread when it's quiet," he said, taking a thoughtful sip of his water. "That sense of 'something will happen, sometime, and we don't know when'."

He set his bottle down.

"But I'm told I'm a paranoid person," he said. "I'm curious about your experiences. Does Fandom have you sitting on the edge of your seat, alert and aware anything can happen? Or do you take a more easygoing approach - whatever will be, will be? Or has the island simply not given you anything to be fearful of, because you're used to worse?"

"I realize it's been something of a summer," Ender said lightly, "And that doesn't leave us with a great deal of space for reflection."

But the sun was shining. He'd even brought out sodas and cupcakes for the occasion, though the usual staples of water and sandwiches were also available.

"So I think this is a good moment for us to fall back to a question that's a cornerstone of, I think, most of our conversation, our ability to relate one another, and maybe humanity - perhaps, sentience in its entirely," he said, twisting the top off his bottle of water. "How are you doing?"

A pause.

That turned into a silence.

It was the question, after all.

"Welcome back, class," Ender said, sitting down on the lawn with his legs crossed beneath him. "You may all have noticed some small changes in the world around you this week."

A pause.

"Or perhaps you haven't. After all, upheaval has come to the island in such enormously dramatic ways these past weeks that the lack of fish might almost seem like nothing at all." A pause. "Until you take a step off the causeway and look at the restaurants page in Yelp."

Look, you did adventure your way, Ben and Ender did it theirs.

"Still, small changes can steamroll into big implications. How did life evolve on this planet? How does the ecosystem function? How did cultures develop differently? Many societies were created in places where the fishing was bountiful - those settlements likely don't exist."

He looked at the class.

"Looking back at your life, can you identify any small changes that wound up having bigger implications than you expected?" he said. "Or is there anything you can think of that, if changed, would warp the world or your life in ways others might not predict?"

Beat.

"Or rant about the lack of sushi. This is a safe space."

He and Ben had had arguments this week.

Ender was back out on the lawn again with his blankets and his food and his water.

"It's been a trying summer," he said. "For some of you, at least. Since the island seems to be behaving--" He wasn't inclined to bring up his home life this week, thank you, "I feel this might be a good time to evaluate how we're all doing. Are you coping? Soaring? Have you found something positive in this constant upheaval, learned anything? Or has it all seemed like unnecessary sadism?"

He pushed the sandwiches forward.

"We spend a lot of time talking about these weeks, because they're hard to avoid," he said. "So this week I'd especially like to ask you all to bring up something else, anything else, that might be on your mind that's worth talking about. Or questions, if you have any for someone who spent many years on this island."

"I'm seeing a lot of familiar faces," Ender said, as he sank down on a blanket with a bottle of water on the school lawn. "To those of you who were in this class last time: welcome back.

"To those of you who weren't, welcome. This is Practical Philosophy. We don't have text books, and we don't discuss the great thinkers, unless they happen to come up for discussion. This class is here for us to reflect on the things that happen around us, the things that happen to us, and how we view them. I'll raise a topic every class, if possible, but the floor is always open for us to talk about anything that's on your mind."

He sat back. "This is an active class, so I expect you to participate. But we might discuss topics that make you uncomfortable, or that hew close to something you feel strongly about. Know that it's always fine to do nothing but ask questions of, or otherwise engage with, your fellow classmates. Being a little uncomfortable is important for all of us to grow, but not to the point where it causes you real distress."

He considered the class.

"As for today, well, last weekend was Pride weekend. It's a celebration, in a way, of those of us who don't quite fit into a normative mold of sexuality or gender, or both. But it's also a gesture of defiance to a world that still too-quickly tries to eradicate everything that falls outside a narrow band of human experience."

He took a swig of his bottle of water and screwed the cap back on. "I'm going to tell you up front: the humanity and the right to exist in freedom of people who don't fit in this band - straight, cis, and in this part of the world, white - are not, and will never be, up for debate in this class," he said. "But I am interested in your thoughts. What is considered the norm where you're from? How are those outside of it treated? How do you feel about that?"

"There is something about this place," Ender said, "That inspires fear."

They didn't meet on the lawn this time. Instead they were inside, in the Danger Shop, in a perfect recreation of Fandom's lawn on a very nice, sunny day.

"Do you feel scared?" he asked. "Does the dread of that place get to you? If so, how? If not, what does this place look like to you? Does it offer opportunities, or only terrible things?"

He reached for his bottle of water.

"I don't think the island was eager to dive into these old nightmares," he mused. "I wonder why it has."

It was a tired-looking Ender they'd find at the pondside, sitting on a pillow on top of a blanket, taking big sips from a bottle of water.

"Apologies," he said. "My son kept me up all night, so I didn't find much time to prepare any grand questions for you today. Though I suppose you could look on the current state of the island as a question mark in and of itself."

No, he wasn't going to mention that he'd been here before, not to the class, and certainly not to Jane, who was mocking him quietly through the device by his ear. "As far as I can see, this is a potential future for this planet - a war and resultant apocalypse of some kind. So often, humanity tries to immolate itself - it's enough to make you wonder if we're all innately self-destructive somehow."

He shrugged.

"It's as good a topic as any."

And as good a way not to think of the Capital Wasteland as possible.

"Last week, some of you brought up the topic of the island's influence on our perception of consequences," Ender said. "It's a topic that has been discussed by many generations of Fandom students across the years, and it's always worth revisiting."

No, no invasion could stop him from gathering by the tree on the lawn, bar a sudden rainstorm or extreme cold. The sandwiches were there again, as were the drinks. "And also, lo and behold, the island has thoughtfully brought us many lumbering conversational pieces."

Ah, dinosaurs. That took him back... all the way to his freshman year, wasn't it?

"So we might as well pick up where we left off," he said. "Dangerous animals now walk the island. How do you feel about that? Fear? Excitement? Do you still worry about what might happen with them, or no?"

A beat.

"Or talk about anything else. Conversation is always free in this class."

"Hey," Ender greeted the group, smiling faintly. "It's traditional for my class to spend the first week reflecting on the future, and the last reflecting on the past."

"Specifically," he continued, stretching his legs out in the grass of the dorm lawn, "How much have you changed since you got here? How do you see your future, on the island or off? Has the island been an interruption in your life, to be skipped past and left there once you graduate? Or going by your experiences, do you think it will forge lasting changes that will stick with you in the times ahead?"

He smiled briefly.

"I realize this isn't a particularly philosophical series of questions," he said. "But it's something worth reflecting on, not just with me, but between yourselves. I have a feeling your viewpoints will be as diverse as you are."

He sat back.

"But to pull it larger: do you think there's a shared experience here on this island? Something similar we all take away from it? Or none at all?"

After he let those questions sink in, he looked towards one student in particular if she was there. "Peridot? Can you come see me after class?"

Today, class was meeting... in the Danger Shop. Ender had programmed it with a simulation of a nice, cool forest clearing, though otherwise his setup was unchanged.

"I suppose this week is as good a week as any to talk about nurture," he said wryly, sitting down. "Specifically, what effect does the environment you grew up in - or exist in - have on you personally? Has it helped define you, or does it define you entirely, or are most of your traits inborn?"

He spread his arms.

"It's an issue on which scientists and philosophers have quarreled for centuries," he said. "When a child gets born to a family in the desert, are they instilled with a resistance to heat on a biological level, or is it that they grow up accustomed to it? Is a child born cheerful, or is that a mechanism they build as they explore how their interaction affects the world around them? And so forth, and so on. I don't want to really talk about other people, though. I want to talk about you."

He took a sip of water.

"So tell me about where you come from, in as much detail - or lack thereof - as you like," he said. "How much of an effect do you think it's had on who you are?"

"I'm... still not completely sure what happened last week," Ender admitted.

This did not happen often, folks.

"There might be a discussion topic in here somewhere about chaos, friendship and harmony," he volunteered, "But I think today we'll have an open floor, and you can talk about what you want."

He shoved a bottle forward. "Please. Make sure to hydrate."

God only knew what being a pony could do to you.

There was no sun to speak of, but it was also pleasantly warm out here on this planetoid - so Ender decided to brave the dorm lawn. He'd packed more than his fair share of water bottles and sandwiches today.

He greeted the arriving students with a, "Sit down in a circle, please." He smiled. "You may well be the biggest class I've had in some time, actually. This way, we keep things fair."

He shoved his sandwiches to the center of the circle, so everyone could access it.

"Welcome," he said. "My name is Andrew Skywalker. I'm an alumnus of this school; I graduated several years ago." That was all they needed to know, as far as he was concerned. "And you might be wondering what you signed on for. I'll give you the spiel I give my students every year I'm here - but this is the only class that is prepared or rehearsed to any capacity. That, after all, is the point of it."

"While 'philosophy' is in my class's title, we're not here primarily to talk about the philosophers of old or the specifics of particular lines of thought in philosophy. In this class, we try to put our own experiences into a greater perspective through conversation and debate. Above all, philosophy is about asking questions about everything in the world around us - and about everything we feel about it. That means I expect some level of participation from all of you."

He smiled wryly. "That doesn't mean you always need to speak up about yourself," he said. "No topics are everything to everyone. If that week's subject veers too close to something you want to keep private, be my guest - just try and pitch in when someone else speaks. Ask questions."

"You can even ask questions of me, if you feel the need. And maybe together we can get to the core of our joint and individual experiences." His mouth quirked a bit more. "That doesn't mean we're always going to be lingering on the existential questions - or staring at our belly buttons. It just means we're going to try and dig and come to some understanding about each other, ourselves, and the world."

He picked up a bottle of water. "As for today, let's open a dialogue," he said. "Even the new among you have been here for half a semester. So I have to ask: how do you feel about where you are now? Is the island speaking to you, in a metaphorical sense? What kind of experience has it been for you? As for the rest of you, how has the past year treated you? Has there been anything that made you cry or made you think or made you wonder?"

"We can talk about that. Or you can bring up something else you feel is worth questioning. I consider most topics fair game, as long as they're brought up with regard for your fellow students. I can't claim knowledge on most, but I can claim an ability to annoy you with questions about just about anything."

He grabbed a sandwich from the bag. "Every week, we'll reflect on something that happened since we last met, but I'm always open to talking about anything that comes to mind." He nodded at one of the students. "Anyway, I've talked for long enough. It's your turn."

It was a wry-looking Ender who made it to the dorm lawn that morning. He was drinking a fair share of water, too.

"Unfortunately, I've been felled by something of a headache, so let's keep this short," he said. "We're now parked on a world where violence appears to be normal - a part of everyday life. It leaves me to wonder what it might mean to all of you. We come from such vastly different worlds, with such vastly different conceptions of what it means to be violent. Mine, for instance, kept such things rigidly controlled within our own borders - but we were willing to lash out with impunity and any perceived attackers from beyond. But because my people were no longer used to it, weren't numb to it, they had to work around... the consequences of making violent choices."

That was about as in-depth as he was getting about that, unless someone questioned it.

"What is violence to you?"

"Every once in a while, the island likes to remind us that our futures are not as empty and expansive as they might seem," Ender said. "Or perhaps, the lesson you can take from these weekends is that the possibilities are endless - that your future might not be what you think it will be. Sometimes it's good to remember that whatever we see, whether it be this particular quirk of weirdness, or the appearance of our future children, or some other twist of Fandom, is a snapshot."

He smiled faintly.

"These weekends were terrifying to me when I was younger," he said. "The island chose to show me what I'd become if I remained on a certain course, and it was not what I expected it to be. It wasn't enough to make me change my trajectory, though I thought it was - I just wanted to change it for the worse. But it gave me a small push, a small taste, of my own failures, my own weaknesses, and what they could do to the people around me."

He picked up a bottle of water. "Of course, maybe that's not what happened to you," he said. "Maybe your vision was happy; my later ones were, as if they were reflective of my new, better choices. But that doesn't have to mean anything. Nor do terrible visions have to mean anything, either. I suspect it's different for all of us. Still, if this happened to you: how likely do you think it is that your future will come to pass? Does it mean anything? It's not an unavoidable fate - my own experiences can tell you that much. But do you think there is anything relevant about what you saw? Did you see portents, warnings in your future? Something you should do or change? Or do you believe we can't change what happens next, and so these visions can't really matter one way or another?"

He took a sip.

"Those are good questions even if you didn't have a weird weekend, actually," he said. "In traditional philosophy, determinism is the firm philosophical belief that our lives are unchangeable, and everything is predetermined. Our free will is meaningless, an illusion. A weaker version is the idea that some things are just meant to happen, and while we can affect smaller things, the big things happen as they should." He tilted his head. "What do you think?"