Theorizing The Drones Analysis
Psychological effects of war happens all the time around us in different shapes and forms, whether we are aware of them of happening or not. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and the article “Theorizing the Drones” by Chamayou uses the psychological effect of government officials tracking and monitoring the people. Ender’s Game and the article “The Mystery of ISIS” by anonymous uses the psychological effect of terror and sense of belonging. All three readings create a sense of the overlapping theme of psychological effects of war. Andrew “Ender” Wiggins, an adolescent genius, was chosen to go to battle school to train and to learn to eventually go to war against the buggers. Every kid had a monitor in their neck that the I.F. used to observe
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their surroundings, thoughts, feelings, everything in order to figure out if they capable for the complexity of the battle school. “If you are placed under surveillance, it is possible to record all your movements and establish a spatiotemporal map of all your usual doings. Furthermore, by intercepting your telephone calls, observers can superimpose your social network upon this map, determine which are your personal links, and calculate the importance of each one in your life.” (Chamayou) Instead of monitors, like used in Ender’s Game, today people are monitored by our phones, tracking our locations, connections with other people, and learning what is important to them. Even though the monitor, in Ender’s Game, is monitoring them to see if they would do well in battle school, phones are being monitored to see if a person is dangerous to the government and other people. By tracking and monitoring phones today, like in the article “Theorizing the Drone,” we could sometimes be wrong about a person, unlike in Ender’s Game they are always right. By having the monitor in the neck and being able to capture the person’s true thoughts and motives, is the reason why they are never wrong about a person. Being the genius Ender is, he passed straight through all the simulations and quickly became a commander of a very poor, untrained army. Colonel Graff was putting Ender through very strategical battles against other armies and Ender was about tired of it. Ender was being put into several battles a day and took the right away from him of being able to switch soldiers between his army with another, which is very unheard of. Ender knew what they were doing, trying to break him. Since the monitors, just like our phones, learned Ender’s weaknesses so they knew the only way to get to Ender was through his older sister Valentine. Ender was the third child, right after Peter and Valentine, who both did not get accepted into battle school. Peter being too violent and Valentine being too loving, Ender was a perfect combination of the both, violent enough to get the job done, but empathetic enough to not destroy everything. Valentine often coddled Ender, and the IF needed her to do just that in order to get Ender to play their game again. So being as manipulative as the IF is, they used Valentine to do just that. Ender knew what they were doing, but he still went with it. By having the monitor in the little kids necks, it creates a psychological effect on them by the kids thinking whoever has the monitor is better and smarter than the rest. With our phones being monitored, it creates a psychological effect of a feeling of no privacy and that the government knowing everything. In the article, “Theorizing the Drone” drone drivers experience psychological problems from the aftermath of using a drone to fight in war over a great distance. Since drone drivers are not in direct contact with war they develop a psychological effect called Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS). Ender learned everything about the buggers by studying them to know how to beat them. Since he knew everything about them, he became so involved in their life it was like they were friends. To become so mentally involved with someone’s life, you become so emotionally involved with whether they are alive or not. So when he discovered his simulations he won was the actual war and that he committed genocide, he quickly developed PITS and suffered from it. The psychological effect of the tactic of terror that ISIS uses on the people in the article “The Mystery of ISIS” would cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as described in “Theorizing the Drones,” “…an extreme traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury or other threat to one’s physical integrity.” (Chamayou) “’I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer! You didn’t want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!”’ (Card, 208) Ender was trying to convince himself and others that he was not a killer because once he found out he committed genocide against the buggers, he quickly developed PITS.
The IF is similar to ISIS described in “The Mystery of ISIS,” by both the IF and ISIS having complex rules, control over people, offer of protection, and create a sense of belonging.
When Ender was on the shuttle headed to Battle School, Colonel Graff talked so highly of Ender making it out to be that Graff is his friend and creating a sense of belonging for Ender. “’My job isn’t to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world.’” (Card, 25) We can conclude that Graff was using mind games to talk highly of Ender, by telling others he is the best, that way he would become a better soldier, thus creating a psychological effect on Ender. The IF also had control over the people and displayed that by hiding the truth from Ender that he was actually fighting the war against the buggers. “’It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it. It’s the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn’t do it.”’ (Card, 208) If it was not for the monitor, the IF would not have known that Ender was just what they needed and would not have known that they would have to keep it from them in order for him to win the battle. Since Ender figured out and understood the IF, it is inferred that Ender would be able to understand the complexity of ISIS and be able to stop them. The IF and ISIS created a psychological effect on people to be afraid of the leaders of war. “…it continues to treat Zarqawi as its founder, and to propagate most of his original beliefs and techniques of terror.” (Anonymous) While the IF uses the psychological effect of being friends with Ender, ISIS uses the terror tactic
to use fear against people in order to get done what is needed to get done. “Although the Iranians gave Zarqawi medical aid and safe haven when he was a fugitive in 2002, he soon lost their sympathy by sending his own father-in-law in a suicide vest to kill Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, Iran’s senior political representative in Iraq, and by blowing up one of the most sacred Shia shrines.” (anonymous) ISIS leaders are very successful by using the terror tactics and no matter the circumstance, both the IF and ISIS has complete control over what happens.
Each reading creates an overlapping theme of the psychological effects of war. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is analyzed by the use of the two articles “Theorizing the Drone” by Chamayou and “The Mystery of ISIS” by anonymous. Like the monitors used in Ender’s Game to learn how Ender’s life is, our phones today are monitored and tracked to see if we are dangerous to the government. This creates a psychological effect of war on the people by making the people feel like their privacy is taken from them. The use of tactics the IF in Ender’s Game and the ISIS in the article “The Mystery of ISIS” uses to control who they want to control. This creates a psychological effect of war to be afraid of the people in charge. All three readings discuss the psychological effects of war.
their surroundings, thoughts, feelings, everything in order to figure out if they capable for the complexity of the battle school. “If you are placed under surveillance, it is possible to record all your movements and establish a spatiotemporal map of all your usual doings. Furthermore, by intercepting your telephone calls, observers can superimpose your social network upon this map, determine which are your personal links, and calculate the importance of each one in your life.” (Chamayou) Instead of monitors, like used in Ender’s Game, today people are monitored by our phones, tracking our locations, connections with other people, and learning what is important to them. Even though the monitor, in Ender’s Game, is monitoring them to see if they would do well in battle school, phones are being monitored to see if a person is dangerous to the government and other people. By tracking and monitoring phones today, like in the article “Theorizing the Drone,” we could sometimes be wrong about a person, unlike in Ender’s Game they are always right. By having the monitor in the neck and being able to capture the person’s true thoughts and motives, is the reason why they are never wrong about a person. Being the genius Ender is, he passed straight through all the simulations and quickly became a commander of a very poor, untrained army. Colonel Graff was putting Ender through very strategical battles against other armies and Ender was about tired of it. Ender was being put into several battles a day and took the right away from him of being able to switch soldiers between his army with another, which is very unheard of. Ender knew what they were doing, trying to break him. Since the monitors, just like our phones, learned Ender’s weaknesses so they knew the only way to get to Ender was through his older sister Valentine. Ender was the third child, right after Peter and Valentine, who both did not get accepted into battle school. Peter being too violent and Valentine being too loving, Ender was a perfect combination of the both, violent enough to get the job done, but empathetic enough to not destroy everything. Valentine often coddled Ender, and the IF needed her to do just that in order to get Ender to play their game again. So being as manipulative as the IF is, they used Valentine to do just that. Ender knew what they were doing, but he still went with it. By having the monitor in the little kids necks, it creates a psychological effect on them by the kids thinking whoever has the monitor is better and smarter than the rest. With our phones being monitored, it creates a psychological effect of a feeling of no privacy and that the government knowing everything. In the article, “Theorizing the Drone” drone drivers experience psychological problems from the aftermath of using a drone to fight in war over a great distance. Since drone drivers are not in direct contact with war they develop a psychological effect called Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS). Ender learned everything about the buggers by studying them to know how to beat them. Since he knew everything about them, he became so involved in their life it was like they were friends. To become so mentally involved with someone’s life, you become so emotionally involved with whether they are alive or not. So when he discovered his simulations he won was the actual war and that he committed genocide, he quickly developed PITS and suffered from it. The psychological effect of the tactic of terror that ISIS uses on the people in the article “The Mystery of ISIS” would cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as described in “Theorizing the Drones,” “…an extreme traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury or other threat to one’s physical integrity.” (Chamayou) “’I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer! You didn’t want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!”’ (Card, 208) Ender was trying to convince himself and others that he was not a killer because once he found out he committed genocide against the buggers, he quickly developed PITS.
The IF is similar to ISIS described in “The Mystery of ISIS,” by both the IF and ISIS having complex rules, control over people, offer of protection, and create a sense of belonging.
When Ender was on the shuttle headed to Battle School, Colonel Graff talked so highly of Ender making it out to be that Graff is his friend and creating a sense of belonging for Ender. “’My job isn’t to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world.’” (Card, 25) We can conclude that Graff was using mind games to talk highly of Ender, by telling others he is the best, that way he would become a better soldier, thus creating a psychological effect on Ender. The IF also had control over the people and displayed that by hiding the truth from Ender that he was actually fighting the war against the buggers. “’It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it. It’s the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn’t do it.”’ (Card, 208) If it was not for the monitor, the IF would not have known that Ender was just what they needed and would not have known that they would have to keep it from them in order for him to win the battle. Since Ender figured out and understood the IF, it is inferred that Ender would be able to understand the complexity of ISIS and be able to stop them. The IF and ISIS created a psychological effect on people to be afraid of the leaders of war. “…it continues to treat Zarqawi as its founder, and to propagate most of his original beliefs and techniques of terror.” (Anonymous) While the IF uses the psychological effect of being friends with Ender, ISIS uses the terror tactic
to use fear against people in order to get done what is needed to get done. “Although the Iranians gave Zarqawi medical aid and safe haven when he was a fugitive in 2002, he soon lost their sympathy by sending his own father-in-law in a suicide vest to kill Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, Iran’s senior political representative in Iraq, and by blowing up one of the most sacred Shia shrines.” (anonymous) ISIS leaders are very successful by using the terror tactics and no matter the circumstance, both the IF and ISIS has complete control over what happens.
Each reading creates an overlapping theme of the psychological effects of war. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is analyzed by the use of the two articles “Theorizing the Drone” by Chamayou and “The Mystery of ISIS” by anonymous. Like the monitors used in Ender’s Game to learn how Ender’s life is, our phones today are monitored and tracked to see if we are dangerous to the government. This creates a psychological effect of war on the people by making the people feel like their privacy is taken from them. The use of tactics the IF in Ender’s Game and the ISIS in the article “The Mystery of ISIS” uses to control who they want to control. This creates a psychological effect of war to be afraid of the people in charge. All three readings discuss the psychological effects of war.