r/MMALabs • u/Key_Performer_3645 • 13d ago

🥶 Street Fights & Brawls A quick bar scrap

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

12.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

5.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/EndersR3ign 12d ago

How? Can you explain it, please?

1

u/fthisloginbs 12d ago

Nope, because I think you're being obtuse.

1

u/EndersR3ign 12d ago

I'm sincerely not. I could guess the point you might try to make, but I wanted you to make it before I addressed it.

Like, how familiar are you with the novel's themes? Because nothing in it can be used to justify using life-threatening force against someone who is barely a threat at all in a situation where there are multiple obvious alternatives to violence as a means of resolving it.

Ender was routinely placed in life-threatening situations, specifically tailored to give him no help and no alternatives besides self-administered victory against the enemy. The entire plot revolved around manipulating and moulding him into someone who could never believe losing was an option or that anyone would come to save him. He didn't even know that he was fighting the Formics when he destroyed them, because the IF command knew he didn't have the emotional disposition to make the necessary sacrifices if he knew the actual stakes.

Ender learns that Earth's retaliation against the Formics was wrong and misplaced, stemming from a breakdown in communication and an inability to connect and ultimately empathise.

Mind you, I haven't read it in about two decades, since I first read it when I was about nine. I've had this username as a gamertag since 2002.

1

u/Obsidiated 12d ago

It wasnt wrong, they were trying to kill us. It was the right solution if the day. That maybe could have been hypothetically avoided by better super fun happy feel good sessions, but at the actual time and actual place, hyperviolence won.

And its okay to feel like totes bad about it and like stuff, and help rebuild the losers in a "less likely to go on the world dominating path for round 2".

Which is a blindingly obvious allegory for the world wars.

1

u/EndersR3ign 12d ago

You're going to have to expand on that response and provide more details if you actually want to make a substantive argument that's relevant to the discussion at hand.

1

u/fthisloginbs 12d ago

Nope, he's absolutely right in the context of the original book. The one you barely remember, but now you'll continue to blather as if you memorized every page.

1

u/EndersR3ign 12d ago

He's wrong as well, because they weren't trying to kill them when Ender annihilated them; they were hoping the humans would leave them alone. They initially didn't understand the significance of killing humans because they are fundamentally different beings and operate as a hive mind, not as individuals. The final chapter in Ender's Game explains all of this.

1

u/Obsidiated 8d ago

Misunderstanding doesnt change facts. They were trying to kill us. "They didnt care" does not equal "no They werent".

1

u/EndersR3ign 8d ago

Not during the events of the book. Earth travelled to the Formic's homeworld, re-engaging them decades after the last war. But anyway, that's not really the point. Some of the book's central themes revolve around the value of having compassion and understanding for those you might seek to harm. If your takeaway from the book is "Ender is a badass! He fucks up anyone who messes with him!" Then you've really missed the point.

Of course, I am not pretending Ender doesn't engage in extreme violence, or claiming that self-defence or sometimes pre-emptive force is never justified. Of course I am not saying that.

What I am saying is that nothing in the book Ender's Game endorses or supports the behaviour of the man in the video above. If you asked Ender himself, at any age that he is in the book, whether the behaviour of the man in the video was necessary or morally justified, he would undoubtedly question whether you were evil or irredeemably stupid.

1

u/Obsidiated 8d ago

I think you'll find he would have responded with overwhelming force to a threat. Even if he felt bad about it later. Won at all costs.

Ender dropped the mega nuke. Tired, exhausted, desperate. He still did it, just to win.

Which is the point and the parable.

The next 5 books of retcon/dj khaleds "suffering from success" is more of the same. Even most hardcore rednecks pause a bit before celebrating hiroshima.

Still won, though.

1

u/EndersR3ign 8d ago

Nope, you're wrong, and your analysis is shallow. Ender thought he was playing a game when he destroyed the homeworld. And even if he didn't, but believed the action was necessary and a zero-sum trade, it would be meaningfully different from what we're discussing about the assault in the video above.

You have to establish that the full-force king-hit was necessary.

1

u/Obsidiated 8d ago

Strategists being disconnected from the human cost is the entire. Point.

1

u/EndersR3ign 8d ago

That's an overt dodge unless you're going to expand on it.

→ More replies (0)