On the Half Life series, and the Dialectic of Power: of Half Life

theironfelix (62)in #philosophy • 7 years ago (edited)

The Grunts

Of Half-Life and the Human-Alien Conflict

What better way to see how a dialectic can be in motion, then to start with everything that went wrong for humanity as a whole. The first imposition is that of the USA and how power consolidated within it. And of course, the government isn't that nice, unlike the superficial features, when excavated for how and why it came to be.

So what is the rottenness of this government, are the conspiracies true that it is merely a front of a shadow organizations and/or alien species? Or does it defend evil monopolies that makes the free market and genuine growth impossible? Neither are the case in real life as taken in from American colloquial meanings, but this is a rant worth saving for another day. Just know that for now, the bourgeois, the primary propertied class, does whatever it can to stay afloat and reproduce capitalism, the main essence of modern society.

Re-railing back on topic, how does the government serve to keep the Superstructure of society alive so the Base doesn't have a chance to allow a revolution to happen? Simply put, with what choices there are in real life: one being that reactionaries can produce a false negative (false antithesis) to the current abstract (thesis) in an attempt to rewind the clock back to a point to start all over, and another is suppressing the elements that produce a true negative (antithesis) as to yield the results of having contradictions crack less and the abstract still unchanged with current society.

Yet, if the proverb is correct, "all things come to end" or a quote from Marx: "In the eyes of dialectical philosophy, nothing is established for all times, nothing is absolute or sacred." And these two quotes do explain a truth for progress in and for itself: that time is in constant fluctuation and returning back to a point is nigh on impossible.

Yet the game doesn't hint at all the past, we are left to assume all things that did happen in our universe did happen here but in the direction to Black Mesa's creation along the way. So, what does the game reveal, if anything, on the government other than generalizations and assumptions?

Take for instance the HECU, the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit or the military faction mentioned before, and how it plays in with Freeman's ultimate goal. They have a two-fold purpose: teaching Gordan and the player knowledge of and valuable combat skills and knowledge against HECU, which will aide him in Half-Life 2, and effectively attempting to hinder Gordan's ultimate mission in Half-Life. And how do they carry out this two-fold purpose? By effectively carrying out mass assault in Black Mesa and killing all those related to Black Mesa in general thanks to the Resonance Cascade event.

Then in a twist of irony, due to their inefficiency to carry out the task, Black Ops agents are sent to kill all those still in Black Mesa and to make sure nothing remains of Black Mesa. And it does beg a question, and this begging is genuine, what would be the next agency to deal with all the previous factions and the Black Ops?

So, how does all this mentioned, from real life and the game, make the dialectic concrete and make you the reader certain that the game's government works similar or the same as ours? It does emphasize more the latter by exposing the rationale of the government when it comes to catastrophic events it can't contain normally by deciding to suppress any alien and domestic elements before it can become worse. And in another sense, varying degrees of this same punishment can be said for any other conflicts and contradictions to its current rule and society's future. For sure they can't do this always in good faith.

The former is, nonetheless, expressed more in the fact that the Black Mesa faction and the Alien faction serve as the elements that could've brought the antithesis, or elements of that, to the current establishment, but in their own ways. Black Mesa could've, if it had the chance, leaked out the disaster of the Black Mesa incident and severely caused major societal backlash, especially if it does take in the early '80s and late '70s when it still wasn't looked at right by the end of counter-culture. On the flip side, the alien faction could've created and strengthen reactionaries all over the USA to pose a certain threat to the government. In this concreteness that the dialectic is being developed in the game's world, it still remains an abstraction that can still be universally applied since these can be possibly remade in our world or any other fictional world. But if one thing was to be cleared out immediately, is that this abstraction, which is a universal, is not in the void since the void is a betrayal of what abstractions are in and for themselves.

And so, this dialectic does have a footing in explaining the general security for power, and the assumed consequences that could've spelled the beginning of the end of the human government. And what of the Alien faction head then? Due to how they were more of a refugee/migration group that set up temporary living in Xen, there is no real power other than Nihilanth and it is directing for its survival. And the entire faction is fractured when Gordan Freeman kills Nihilanth in Half-Life. Thus, they have no substance to really carry outside wartime production of alien grunts and how they were more of a barbarian group fleeing from something more dangerous and disgusting than it. And that force is the Combine, and they are more than willing to expand to wherever they want to expand. But that can be discussed next time.