Orson Scott Card is #1 on my list of all-time favorite authors. I can read his books a dozen times and always find something new to ponder, some new angle or emotion I didn't read before, and truly count it as time well spent. Politics and religion are written with equal fervor and this makes him especially adept at presenting moral problems for society to consider.Xenocide, which is the third book in the Ender's Game series, has two backdrops: the world of Lusitania and the world of Path. Lusitania is a planet where a human colony settled before they realized that there lived a varelse(sentient but eternally cruel) species of virus which infected/influenced the life cycle of every life form there. It's a race against time to discover how to kill the descolada(the virus) while not harming the other sentient creatures on the planet BEFORE a fleet sent by Starways Congress blows up the planet because it has been deemed too dangerous to humanity to let survive.
On the world of Path, a colony of Taoist Chinese have settled and the brightest minds have teamed up with Ender Wiggin and his family on Lusitania via video conference to solve two puzzles at once. The descolada virus on Lusitania is the first. The second is a solution to the obsessive-compulsive-like behavior the geniuses of Path all exhibit. Starways Congress genetically altered the people of Path centuries before with a defect which would hobble their genius by making them slaves to OCD behavior. Hand washing, tracing wood grains on floor panels, staring without blinking, whirling around, hair pulling, and a multitude of other behaviors are rampant. 'The godspoken' of Path are revered by the common people but are slaves to their own individual need to 'purify' themselves by doing these empty rituals. Path's caste system is about to be turned upside down.
The following excerpt is a conversation concerning the characters' collaborative effort. In it, we see the clash of cultural conditioning and philosophical reasoning of two very different worlds concerning supreme beings or intelligences of the universe.
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(Page 273, italicized emphasis on words are from the original text.)
"And we're not special, none of us!" cried Wan-mu. "We're all as ordinary as mud! There are no godspoken. There are no gods. They care nothing about us."
"If there aren't any gods," said Ela, mildly correcting her, "then they can hardly do any caring one way or another."
"Nothing made us except for their own selfish purposes," cried Wang-mu. "Whoever made the descolada-- the pequeninos are just part of their plan. And the godspoken, part of Congress's plan."
"As one whose birth was requested by the government," said Wiggin, "I sympathize with your point of view. But your reaction is too hasty. After all, my parents also wanted me. And from the moment of my birth, just like every other living creature, I had my own purpose in life. Just because the people of your world were wrong about their OCD behavior being messages from the gods doesn't mean that there are no gods. Just because your former understanding of the purpose of your life is contradicted doesn't mean that you have to decided there is no purpose."
"Oh, I know there's a purpose," said Wang-mu. "The Congress wanted slaves! That's why they created Qing-jao-- to be a slave for them. And she wants to continue in her slavery!"
"That was Congress's purpose," said Wiggin. "But Qing-jao also had a mother and father who loved her. So did I. There are many different purposes in this world, many different causes of everything. Just because one cause you believed in turned out to be false doesn't mean that there aren't other causes that can still be trusted."
"Oh I suppose so," said Wang-mu. Sh was now ashamed of her outbursts.
"Don't bow your head before me," said Wiggin. "Or are you doing that, Jane?"
Jane must have answered him, an answer that Wang-mu didn't hear. "I don't care what her customs are," said Wiggin. "The only reason for such bowing is to humiliate one person before another, and I won't have her bow that way to me. She's done nothing to be ashamed of. She's opened up a way of looking at the descolada that might just lead to the salvation of a couple of species."
Wang-mu heard the tone of his voice. He believed this. He was honoring her, right from his own mouth. "Not me," she protested. "Qing-jao. They were her questions."
"Qing-jao," said Ela. "She's got you totally boba about her, the way Congress has Qing-jao thinking about them."
"You can't be scornful because you don't know her," said Wang-mu. "But she is brilliant and good and I can never be like her."
"Gods again," said Wiggin.
"Always gods," said Ela.
"What do you mean?" said Wang-mu. "Qing-jao doesn't say that she's a god, and neither do I."
"Yes you do, "said Ela. "'Qing-jao is wise and good,' you said."
"Brilliant and good," Wiggin corrected her.
"'And I can never be like her,'" Ela went on.
"Let me tell you something about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think that a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would teach you how to be just like them."
"Qing-jao wanted to teach me," said Wang-mu.
"But only as long as you obeyed and did what she wanted," said Jane.
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