02 May 2006

What a Card!

Just a quickie about Orson Scott Card's novels, Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. In these novels, Card does many things, and covers many themes. But for tonight, I just want to note that he explores the idea of consciousnesses so alien to ours that communication is rendered extremely difficult. In the first of these novels, misunderstanding leads to war. In the second it leads to multiple murders, which are done by vivisection of the victims.

How appropriate to be reading these as we struggle through World War IV: The Free World vs the Global Salafist Jihad. It has hot spots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Judea and Samaria (indicating my bias here), Sudan, and a warming one in Iran.

It is clear that we and our Radical Islamist brothers are having a misunderstanding. But part of their schtick is that they cannot afford to try to understand us as we understand ourselves. We, on the other hand, are secure enough in our own identities and religions to try to understand them "from the inside out." Indeed, we must do so if we are ever to win this long war. They cannot risk this kind of love. But we can. Military force and technology are powerful stop gaps. Love in the form of understanding is the winning edge.

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