Ender's Game was published in the 80s. While I didn't see it at the time, when I went back to the book later I noticed what I see as a comment on technology and warfare.
Security meant: Supermax fortresses with massive amounts of barb wire, fences, guns, ditches, drawbridges, high ground, burning moats and projectile weapons.
Strategy to take a fortified position was to overwhelm it. Throw lots of bodies at the defences until they crumble. So, thicker and higher walls, with more and bigger guys, armed with more and bigger weapons, travelling around in more and bigger vehicles. After the Second World War, we competed and fought over bigger armies, bigger bombs, bigger planes, bigger ships, bigger submarines, bigger fortifications in better locations. This was true pretty much until the 1980s, the pinnacle of the Arms Race.
What happened around the 1980s was that home computers were getting common. We were forced into a new paradigm of war. While the discovery of atomic energy was as much a game changer as the discovery of gun powder, this was getting overshadowed by a new threat the current militaries weren't ready for.
Security now is less about how many pushups someone can do in a minute, or how accurate a shot they are: A huge portion of security these days is how many words you can type in a minute, and how accurate you are with a mouse. Like Q says to James Bond in Skyfall: "I can do more damage to the entire world from my laptop in bed than you ever could with your pistol and martial arts." (Don't have the script in front of me, I am sure the quote is wrong but not the intention.) Suffice it to say, we as a planet have more to fear from the tech savy than we do from Conan the Barbarian. The person who steals your identity remotely can do you and the world more harm than the person who pulls a gun and demands your wallet.
This is really what I was looking for in Ender's Game, and what I was thinking when I was reading. Suddenly, thrust into a war where "Up" does not exist. Every type of formation on the ground or at sea - counted on there being ground, and sea. Air combat focused on relationship to the ground. Take away gravity and ground? Air has also usually played a support role, however devastating. What to do when we only fly in combat? How do you force aircraft down - when there is no "Down?" Nothing can actually "Fall." The adults want a new general for this new type of war, and they select Ender. Ender learns to think in zero gravity the way a generation learned to think in computer.
Most of the actual battles are never described in the book. How to describe a battle we can't understand and make us understand it? The genius of Ender is his ability to grasp what we can't, but we want a movie we can grasp. We have an orgy of CGI. The airless and soundless space is full of loud fiery explosions, and the endless black is full of colour and sound.
Ender is raised to be a tool, while the adults decide to do all the thinking. The adults in Ender's Game say: Achieve the objective we tell you to achieve. We don't know how to do this, so you figure that out for yourself. We'll be doing all the contemplating for you. All the moral anguish? Leave that to us. You're going to be smarter than us and better adapted to this new world and new style of war. Just remember we have the finger on your trigger, you don't pull it yourself. Never ask why. Never question. Never develop a moral compass or conscience as that would be inconvenient for us. We'll use you when we want to, and then villify you and discard you when we chose. The rules are what we tell you the rules are, right is what we tell you it is. Trust us implicitly, and never ask if we are worthy of that trust. Be morally and mentally flexible, but we expect you to be rigidly and unquestioningly loyal.
The adults lie to Ender, and manipulate him and trick him into being the Xenocide - the killer of an entire species. He destroys the enemy homeworld in a game, knowing that when the game is over he is done with this game and these people. He wants to go home to his sister, and he's I think really striking out at the adults in the room by wrecking their little game. Only, it was never a game. He was betrayed. At eleven years old, he is the killer of billions of sentient life forms. He had trusted the adults too much. He is discarded, and portrayed as a murderous sociopath with no place in the world he saved. And then, the weapon the adults forged to do what they can't, in the war of means that they don't understand, against a threat they can't comprehend - answers to his heart. Ender undoes the efforts of the generation he answered to.
Change the technology and the battlefield, change the threat and the means to neutralize it. When the leaders don't understand the objectives, nor how they are attained, then eventually the leaders are no longer in control. They can't even see where and when they lost control. As martial artists, what happens when the world and warfare change too quickly for us to understand, when we're not even aware of the threat or how to respond to it? Maybe one of the most interesting things for me, is how I think really the book predicts Edward Snowden - a new breed of soldier in a type of war few understand where everything we thought we knew about being dangerous is useless and meaningless. And, we're really not in control.
Security meant: Supermax fortresses with massive amounts of barb wire, fences, guns, ditches, drawbridges, high ground, burning moats and projectile weapons.
Strategy to take a fortified position was to overwhelm it. Throw lots of bodies at the defences until they crumble. So, thicker and higher walls, with more and bigger guys, armed with more and bigger weapons, travelling around in more and bigger vehicles. After the Second World War, we competed and fought over bigger armies, bigger bombs, bigger planes, bigger ships, bigger submarines, bigger fortifications in better locations. This was true pretty much until the 1980s, the pinnacle of the Arms Race.
What happened around the 1980s was that home computers were getting common. We were forced into a new paradigm of war. While the discovery of atomic energy was as much a game changer as the discovery of gun powder, this was getting overshadowed by a new threat the current militaries weren't ready for.
Security now is less about how many pushups someone can do in a minute, or how accurate a shot they are: A huge portion of security these days is how many words you can type in a minute, and how accurate you are with a mouse. Like Q says to James Bond in Skyfall: "I can do more damage to the entire world from my laptop in bed than you ever could with your pistol and martial arts." (Don't have the script in front of me, I am sure the quote is wrong but not the intention.) Suffice it to say, we as a planet have more to fear from the tech savy than we do from Conan the Barbarian. The person who steals your identity remotely can do you and the world more harm than the person who pulls a gun and demands your wallet.
This is really what I was looking for in Ender's Game, and what I was thinking when I was reading. Suddenly, thrust into a war where "Up" does not exist. Every type of formation on the ground or at sea - counted on there being ground, and sea. Air combat focused on relationship to the ground. Take away gravity and ground? Air has also usually played a support role, however devastating. What to do when we only fly in combat? How do you force aircraft down - when there is no "Down?" Nothing can actually "Fall." The adults want a new general for this new type of war, and they select Ender. Ender learns to think in zero gravity the way a generation learned to think in computer.
Most of the actual battles are never described in the book. How to describe a battle we can't understand and make us understand it? The genius of Ender is his ability to grasp what we can't, but we want a movie we can grasp. We have an orgy of CGI. The airless and soundless space is full of loud fiery explosions, and the endless black is full of colour and sound.
Ender is raised to be a tool, while the adults decide to do all the thinking. The adults in Ender's Game say: Achieve the objective we tell you to achieve. We don't know how to do this, so you figure that out for yourself. We'll be doing all the contemplating for you. All the moral anguish? Leave that to us. You're going to be smarter than us and better adapted to this new world and new style of war. Just remember we have the finger on your trigger, you don't pull it yourself. Never ask why. Never question. Never develop a moral compass or conscience as that would be inconvenient for us. We'll use you when we want to, and then villify you and discard you when we chose. The rules are what we tell you the rules are, right is what we tell you it is. Trust us implicitly, and never ask if we are worthy of that trust. Be morally and mentally flexible, but we expect you to be rigidly and unquestioningly loyal.
The adults lie to Ender, and manipulate him and trick him into being the Xenocide - the killer of an entire species. He destroys the enemy homeworld in a game, knowing that when the game is over he is done with this game and these people. He wants to go home to his sister, and he's I think really striking out at the adults in the room by wrecking their little game. Only, it was never a game. He was betrayed. At eleven years old, he is the killer of billions of sentient life forms. He had trusted the adults too much. He is discarded, and portrayed as a murderous sociopath with no place in the world he saved. And then, the weapon the adults forged to do what they can't, in the war of means that they don't understand, against a threat they can't comprehend - answers to his heart. Ender undoes the efforts of the generation he answered to.
Change the technology and the battlefield, change the threat and the means to neutralize it. When the leaders don't understand the objectives, nor how they are attained, then eventually the leaders are no longer in control. They can't even see where and when they lost control. As martial artists, what happens when the world and warfare change too quickly for us to understand, when we're not even aware of the threat or how to respond to it? Maybe one of the most interesting things for me, is how I think really the book predicts Edward Snowden - a new breed of soldier in a type of war few understand where everything we thought we knew about being dangerous is useless and meaningless. And, we're really not in control.
No comments:
Post a Comment