Xenocide: Wrong for Over 3000 Years

In Card's sequel, Speaker for the Dead, Ender faces yet another alien species that the humans think they understand. Instead of being a "hostile threat" like the buggers, the piggies are thought of as "savages." In this case, the Starways Congress understands the piggies as little as the IF once understood the buggers. The piggies are a race of extremely psychically-intelligent creatures that endanger other species by microorganisms that are present in their bodies.

The problem the piggies pose is that they, without knowing it, are a threat to human expansion. Again, the threat of xenocide is apparent. However much humankind thinks it has changed its ways in 3000 years, we hear a famous paraphrase from Ender's Game in the introduction to Chapter 17: "Nobody wants xenocide, but if it happens, I want to make sure it's the other guys that disappear."(313) This familiar reasoning follows the logic "if we can't tell what they're up to, it's best to assume they're hostile (or unwittingly harmful)," like we saw in the prisoner's dilemma in class. The humans boost their odds for survival by killing "the other guy" first.

Ender has apparently progressed further ethically in his twenty-odd years of star-travel than the human government has 2000 years since the formation of Starways Congress, which was created nominally to prevent any other inter-species conflict in colony worlds. Carl Schmitt would probably chastise Ender for confusing public conflict with private conflict and erroneously helping his "enemy." Thanks to the Valentine's categories ramen and varelse, Ender is able to distinguish that the piggies are "nearly-human" not "animal-like." Therefore the piggies, though not human, deserve the same rights reserved for humans (and hopefully all other sentient beings). On page 225, Miro compares the piggies to prehistoric man, allowing them the dignity of humanity. From his belief in the piggies' humanity (or raman-ity), Ender is philosophically obligated to help the piggies and humans come to a mutual understanding and a cooperative societal relationship.