So it seems that as of right now no one is reading my blog. This is fine, for I began more for creatively therapeutic reasons anyway. Eventually someone will read it, even if it is just my girlfriend and she's only reading it cause I make her. Maybe she'll tell a friend, and they'll tell a friend and it will spread very slowly because no one will ever tell more than one friend. Exponential growth is over-rated anyway. Now on to what I started this post for...
I have recently reread a novel entitled Ender's Game written by Orson Scott Card. He is a great sci-fi writer and became well known because of this novel. I love Ender's Game and I was not disappointed with the reread either. It is set in the future (as most sci-fi tends to be) and follows a young boy (Ender) as he is conscripted into battle school at the ripe old age of 6 and trained to be the future commander of humanity's starship fleet in the looming human vs. alien war. The novel deals with many interesting moral issues that either exist already or might need to exist in the future. More than this I will not tell you for I'd hate to spoil such an excellent and personally influential novel for anyone else. I suggest anyone with an active imagination or a love for sci-fi read it.
I have based many opinions of mine on things I have learned from this book, and really admire Card as a writer and storyteller. The issue I now have arose after I visited Orson Scott Card's wikipedia page and read the info there on his beliefs and stances on many hot current events issues. I consider myself a fairly liberal and accepting person and I generally want the best for the other humans I inhabit this world with. I'm fairly certain now though that I wouldn't consider Card in the same category as myself. I am a Christian whom attends a United Church. I don't attend regularly anymore, especially since I've been in university. I believe the gay community should have and enjoy any right or privelidge which I hold. I am also one who did not agree with very many things that US president George W. Bush did in office. Card, according to wikipedia, is a Mormon who supports GWB and believes gays have no right to marriage. He calls himself a Democrat because he is pro-gun control but has publically insinuated that rises in crime are due to rises in premarital sex, that the war in Iraq was justified, and he supported Senator John McCain in the last US Presidential Election (all things I disagree with).
So, the next big question-o-life I pose to you (my previously discussed fictional readers) is this: How can I base some of my moral point of views on a book written by someone whom I don't morally or politically agree with? I feel that Mr. Card is entirely entitled to his opinions and views, and I respect how adamant he has been about promoting them (writing in magazines and papers), but how can I base my morals on the writings created by someone whose morals clash with mine? It is a tough one, and again I have no answer. I have been struggling with it for a while now, and the best thing I can think of so far is that his book doesn't necessarily have to coincide with his views, therefore I'm free to not do so either. I don't know if that's relevant or not. Think about though readers and maybe write something about it somewhere for your fictional readers to not read.
Later Days (another quote, guess where it's from)
when life hands you lemons, hand them back.
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