Becoming The Enemy, As Sci-Fi Writers, Can We Avoid This?
Becoming The Enemy
By
Rob Shelsky
It is all too easy to become like “them.” Don't you think? Well, I’ve always thought that. When fighting an enemy, an implacable foe that will stop at nothing to win, it is such a simple and swift thing to turn into “them,” to become their mirror image. History and circumstances seem to dictate this often, if not quite always, happens.
Many would argue, quite successfully, that one doesn’t have a choice in this matter. In order to survive, you have to do whatever is necessary. Meet the enemy head on. Do not flinch. Do not give ground. Are they right? I wonder.
I first became aware of this issue on a personal level when I was a boy. Not being big for my age, I found, like so many of us have, that bullies were a real problem. What was my father’s pat advice?
“Stand up to them. Don’t let them know you’re afraid. Bullies are really just cowards.”
All well and good, and believing this, I followed his not-so-sage counsel. What happened? They beat me up, that’s what happened! Cowards they might have been, but they were mean cowards! When I tearfully told my father of my humiliating loss, his answer was another stock reply:
“Well, at least you showed them you weren’t afraid.”
Whoopee! Big deal! Tell that to the doctor. If I wasn’t afraid before, I was certainly terrified afterward. Now knowing what being beaten really felt like, I feared those bullies and avoided them whenever I could, not always successfully. To get revenge, once I even punctured their bicycle tires with a sharp nail. They had left them unattended.
Time passed and in school, they taught about the Second World War. Hitler was a barbarian. He murdered millions and committed any atrocity in order to further his goals. Then I learned about how, having finally beaten Hitler and the Japanese Empire, we then had to fight Communism. I heard about the dreadful period in American history known as “McCarthyism.” I also learned that in our long time as a country, we were at war far more often than we were at peace. Apparently, bullies could come in a wide variety and they never let up!
Becoming an adult, I found this also held true in the workplace. No matter what kind of occupation, or where, there always seemed to be someone who had to establish the pecking order, usually trying to put everyone else at the bottom of it, or at least below them. We use such terms as “backstabber,” “apple polisher,” backbiter,” and other not-so-polite expressions to describe these people. So, there is no doubt they exist, that we have to deal with them, somehow fight them.
However, why is it every time we resort to fighting “them,” that even on a personal level we so often come off being just like them in our behavior? When I flattened those tires, was I any better than those bullies were? And Hitler may have practiced horrible lies and propaganda, but in order to fight him, we did, too. During World War II, it was common to see posters plastered on buildings in our cities, showing Hitler’s head, but with the body of a spider sitting in the middle of a terrible web. We typically depicted Germans as monstrous creatures, not human at all. With regard to fighting Japan in this way, we made Emperor Hirohito’s image a stereotyped caricature, very cartoon-like. Our newspapers of the time featured drawings of a stunted and myopic figure, one wearing thick glasses, and having pronounced buckteeth.
To fight against the idea of enemy concentration camps, to survive as a country against such horrors, we resorted to making our own camps, herding fellow innocent Japanese-Americans into them. We hounded, imprisoned, and ruined many people’s careers during the McCarthy era, with its witch hunting, and anti-communist policies. In short, again, we became very much like “them.” And not just once, but repeatedly throughout our history and the world’s as a whole. From the Salem witch trials on, in order to defeat our enemies, real or imagined, we have often resorted to their tactics, behaved just like "them."
What is it, I wonder, that makes us do this? Is it some innate alpha-male complex that forces us, as individuals in our society, to fight for dominance, or have to fight those that would take it from us, be they male or female? Do we then exaggerate that syndrome to national-level proportions? Are we all just secretly bullies fighting for control and some of us just aren't very good at it? I hope not.
I do think that we have developed this from tribal origins, when we patterned our conduct on just that sort of alpha-male, tribal-chief behavior. It was all we knew, the only way we had of surviving. The times demanded it. Often, it worked.
Nevertheless, there are other patterns we can follow, other success stories, as well. Mahatma Gandhi didn’t resort to guerrilla warfare to defeat the English. Martin Luther King didn’t instigate violent riots to get his way. So, there are other paths we can choose to take, maybe, much better ones. At least, we have some good examples from our history.
Would such methods work against a Hitler who would stop at nothing? I don’t have the answer to that. However, I do know that somehow we need to change our age-old, tribal behavior. It just doesn’t work on the modern world level. As a civilized people, with admittedly just a veneer of laws to keep us “civilized,” we have to find new solutions for planet-threatening questions.
Now, I would not second guess my forebears and say they were wrong to respond to the problems created by World War II in the way they did. I can decry the excesses of McCarthyism all I want, but I also know what an insidious threat communism was to our way of life then. The important thing here is that whether it is communism, or modern terrorism, that we don’t surrender our way of life while battling to defend that very thing. We don’t want to lose what makes us, “us.” That would be true defeat.
Under such sad circumstances, we would “have met the enemy” and truly, they would be “us.” It would make looking in the mirror a dismal prospect at best, seeing not ourselves there, but “them.” Besides, is there really a “them?” Or, is it really just one wonderful planet of “us?” Personally, I think that’s the case.
What is my point in all this? Well, some science fiction writers have imagined an alternative to the "them or us" scenario. Robert Bloch was one of them, Robert Heinlein was another. Even Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury came up with stories that showed other ways for the "good" to triumph, without resorting to such terrible tactics as the enemy often does. Women authors seem better at this sort of writing. Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, are just a few examples.
Still, many more sci-fi and horror writers go the other way, "fight fire with fire," in order for their "good" side to win. And though we may cheer them on, as in the Star Wars space operas, if we look closely, in many cases they aren't so terribly different in their behavior than the "dark side." It's what they believe in that makes us want them to win, not so much how they do it, because it always involves mayhem!
So here's a challenge to all science fiction writers; how about trying to write the occasional story where good triumphs, not so much by defeating evil in battle, but maybe by outwitting it, superseding it somehow? Show me, someone please, a story where good manages to win the day without becoming the mirror of evil to do it. I'd love to see more stories like that. They may not be easy to write, but I'm betting they'd sell, because they'd have to be written differently, be more creative than the average tale, and so would grab some editor's attention, I'm sure.
Anyway, it's something to think about and perhaps even try. Does good have to be a mirror image of evil in order to succeed? The answer lies within you, my fellow science fiction writers! Ask yourself: Why must we become the enemy in order to win against "them?" Can't we find some other way to win the day? As science fiction writers, we should be trying harder to come up with stories that do this. After all, if we can't try to see the future, and try to make it a better place, who can?
