On Violence

(Spoiler Warning: This post describes important plot details of Ender’s Game written by Orson Scott Card.)

Ender Wiggin, the eponymous hero of Ender’s Game, has many characteristics, but his most important characteristic is his intelligence. Ender is the smartest boy in any room he is in, or ever could be in. But it isn’t memorizing facts or excelling in class that make him the best. No, his intelligence breaks down into two primary skills. The first is his ability to see through, break, and replace paradigms (We'll cover the second skill in a future post).  Ender does not become bogged down with staid thinking, thinking like everyone else. He is innovative. If there is a better way to do something, Ender develops it.

When my co-blogger and I were kids, our dad on multiple occasions told us that Generals always fight the last war. Thus, the French built the Maginot Line, knights were killed by long bows, and America designed the F-22 fighter jet--a jet that hasn’t yet flown a combat mission in the Global War on Terror. Ender, on the other hand, never fights the last war. He forces the enemy to fight his war.

How does Ender beat paradigms? How can you?

First, change your perception. When Ender boards a space shuttle, Ender teaches himself the different points of view of space. This way, he can see better than the other boys. When in the battle room--the zero gravity training room for the cadets at Ender's school--he sees the "gate as down." He views the room three dimensionally, and his tactics improve because of it. (To connect to counter-insurgency, I don't believe the US Military gets that the "gate is down" yet.)

Orson Scott Card writes about this in his introduction, saying he had “come to an understanding of history” (pg. xiii) when he saw that great Generals won wars by forcing their enemies to bend to their will, or their strategy. His key example is the difficulty fighter pilots in WWI had look up and down, thinking two dimensionally rather then three dimensionally. The pilot who changes his viewpoint, literally, wins the war.

Second, constantly think of new tactics. Ender uses others to force him to adapt to new modes of battle. In private practice sessions, Ender specifically tasks on his soldiers to develop new ideas for battle. These ideas challenge Ender to in turn develop new ideas.

Third, force the enemy to adapt to something he has never seen. Paradigms are just systems, patterns of thinking. If you disrupt that pattern, you can win. Ender does this when he first enters the video game room. He finds a game about digging tunnels and planting bombs. After watching for few minutes, Ender learns the patterns of the game and challenges a boy to play. The key line comes in the second game, “This time Ender was deft enough to pull off a few maneuvers the other boy had never seen before. His patterns couldn’t cope with them.” The other boy was unable to cope with the new patterns of strategy and loses because of it.

Fourth, ignore "conventional wisdom." It is conventional for a reason. The paradigm breaker ignores convention and beats it. This is also the primary reason that the book portrays someone so young. Ender must be a blank slate, uncorrupted by poor strategy and paradigms, if he is to win. His trainers isolate Ender, explaining, “Isolate him[Ender] enough that he remains creative- otherwise he’ll adopt to the system here and we’ll lose him.”

Fifth, change the value system. Twice in the novel, Ender forces himself to reevaluate his values. In the battle room, Ender performs an unthinkable strategy and wins because of it. For the buggers, he destroys their home world, something unthinkable to them. Each time, Ender changes the value system, and wins because of it.