It's Us or Them! Really?

                In this reality, there are many conflicts that result in death because one side can always dealt a fatal blow to the other side so one side have to act fast in order to guarantee their survival. A book series that I had read in the past known as the “Ender’s Game series” depicts how an alien species known as the buggers had invaded earth twice and failed but humans thought they were going to do it again. Due to their advanced technological abilities and their hostility toward humans seen in the first two wars, the humans decided to train an elite team of military geniuses to counter their future invasions and utterly destroy their race. Eventually a young child genius by the name of Andrew Wiggin or more commonly known as Ender the Xenocide used a molecular disruption device to destroy the bugger’s home planet and almost wiped out their entire race.       

             
               Although the buggers wanted the forgiveness of the humans after the first two wars, the humans didn’t understand their intentions so they were destroyed. This first book is the time when Ender committed Xenocide because the story that was told to him about the buggers was dominantly one sided so he was somewhat forced to perform the monstrous sin. For the sake of the human race and his sister Valentine that he wanted to protect, he was forced to make that decision because it’s either Us or Them. To Ender at that moment, he was only focused on destroyed the buggers so he participated in war simulations to practice for the oncoming war but at the end, he finally realized that the battles were real and he really had wiped out almost the entire specie.

            
              Later, he finally came to understand that the true intentions of the buggers and why they intentionally stationed all their queens (overminds) at their home planet to be destroyed together. Although their once glorious civilization was wiped out, he thought about the decisions that he made and he would make those decisions if he was given a second chance because the circumstances made it impossible for him to not choose to protect his own “people”.    

           
             Even though this is a science fiction novel, it still depicts a possible circumstance where people have to decide if they’re the one to survive or die. Most of the time, people are given one-sided reasons for supporting the conflict so people will fight for that cause without questioning it. Also more frequently, these conflicts results in large pockets of people dying but if negotiation was possible, then the deaths could had been prevented and that could only happen if the leaders wanted peace. Now that leads to the point where the leaders are the roots to the conflicts and if they could have solved their ongoing problems between themselves, then there wouldn’t be a reason for people to make decisions like “it’s Us or Them”.