Card's Hierarchy of Exclusion

Tiro at the Maxwell Evans Report posts on Orson Scott Card's "Hierarchy of Exclusion," from Card's science fiction Ender's Game series. Although the hierarchy was designed for a universe in which humans have encountered alien species, Tiro points out that "within the Ender's Game universe, the Hierarchy uses the term 'alien' to refer to humans who are from different cultures, as well as actual aliens, in the sense of differing species." So it is relevant to interactions within our own species.

The hierarchy consists chiefly of four categories. (The descriptions below are adapted from Tiro, who adapted them from Wikipedia.)

Utlanning (from Swedish: "outlander" or "foreigner") - these individuals, while 'strangers' in the traditional sense, are members of a person's own species or culture.

Framling ("stranger", from the Swedish främling) - This term refers to strangers of the same species but different cultures, those who are "both substantially similar to and significantly different from ourselves."

Ramen (Card's original term) - These are strangers of who are of another species, and yet capable of communication and peaceful coexistence with, in Card's model, Homo sapiens sapiens -- although this does not ensure communication will take place; nor does such communication ensure peaceful coexistence.

Varelse (from Swedish: "creature") - pronouced 'var-ELSS-uh,' this term refers to strangers from another species who are simply not capable of communication with Homo sapiens sapiens. In the truest sense, they are aliens, "completely incapable of common ground with humanity." In Card's view, a meeting with true varelse must eventually, over time, lead to war.

As Tiro notes, by far the most interesting aspect of the hierarchy (and the one that gets the most attention in Card's book) is the ramen/varelse border. As Card himself notes, what makes the distinction so interesting -- and leaves us with a troubling moral dilemma -- is that "it is a distinction that is ultimately unknowable."

That is, by definition a varelse is someone so alien and dangerous that you can't know them and can't reach an understanding with them; but that inability to know them makes it quite possible that they are potentially ramen after all, but you have no way of discovering it. Thus the tragic misunderstandings of the "Bugger Wars" in Ender's Game and between other aliens and humans in the later books in the series. Yet for the survival of your own people, you can't just assume that currently unknowable aliens mean well after all. What if those aliens are led by a Hitler and they simple will not express their "better nature" until it's too late for you? Thus the right of communities to defend themselves against those who appear to have both the capability and the desire to exterminate them must remain -- the right, in short, to decide that, as best you can determine, another community is varelse.

The real moral issue is how quickly, and on how much evidence, and under what threat, and with what consequence you decide that another community is varelse. Once having admitted the possibility that, to defend your own community, you might have to obliterate another, do you then find yourself leaping to the conclusion that any degree of strangeness is enough to make aliens worthy of treatment as varelse? I submit that there is a point where your own community becomes varelse -- that is, an indiscriminately murderous and dangerous community that needs to be destroyed by others in order to protect themselves.

Card is actually a little more draconian than some of the characters in his own books, who object to the implication that we ever have the right to decide whether others are varelse. One cynically asserts, "As far as I can tell, intelligence is intelligence. Varelse is just the term Valentine invented to mean Intelligence-that-we've-decided-to-kill, and ramen means Intelligence-that-we-haven't-decided-to-kill-yet." As a response of sorts, the character who first constructed the Hierarchy acknowledges this in one of her later works: "The difference between ramen and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be ramen, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have."

There are two very different competing philosophies for dealing with apparent varelse in the Card novels. One is that when confronted with varelse, you strike so hard and fast that they are utterly destroyed and can never harm you again. The other is that no matter how hard they try to destroy you, you refuse to go on the offensive or give up on communication. In so doing you prove yourself to be ramen rather than varelse, and hopefully eventually turn your enemy into ramen as well. The former approach was Ender's strategy when he killed Bonzo and wiped out the Buggers. The latter was Ender's approach in dealing with the Descoladores. It was also the approach of Jesus, who said "do not resist the oppressor" and "turn the other cheek". The point of these two strategies is that they break the cycle of violent retaliation. Unless we want to be locked in continual warfare, we need to have the stomach for one or the other. Card himself seems to lean more toward the latter, though he's unwilling to go the full way to radical pacifism. I'm in roughly the same boat.

Card's Hierarchy has fascinating implications for the current clash between Islam and the West. The present public debate essentially revolves around the question of whether Muslims are ramen or varelse -- and whether we even have the right to decide. At least a few posters over at Tiro's blog argued that they are varelse, that communication is impossible and war is inevitable. I cannot object strongly enough to this characterization, and I expect that most of those who argue this do not know any Muslims and have never made an effort to know them. The neocons are doing precisely what Card warns against: leaping to the conclusion that others are varelse, and thus running the risk of becoming varelse themselves.