Is Breen evil?

[Max35]

Zombies are not dead. Dead will not become a Zombie.

I wasn't aware there was a requirement. Can't really prove that it is impossible for headcrabs to attach to already dead hosts. At least, not to my knowledge.

You know, I just remembered a few mutterings from the scientists in HL. Saying how they warned the administrator and he wouldn't listen, didn't have any regard for the consequences. So, upon further review, Breen ain't a good fella

but he isn't necessarily bad either.

 

[cquinn]

I wasn't aware there was a requirement. Can't really prove that it is impossible for headcrabs to attach to already dead hosts. At least, not to my knowledge.

canon or non-canon?

canon: In areas with heavy headcrab infestation, if you kill a zombie
without killing the headcrab, it jumps off an attempts to find a new host.

Or, if you kill a headcrab with a headshot, you do not worry about another
headcrab coming along and try to jack the last ones ride.

non-canon: In Opposing Force (sorry Samon), the scientists studying the
influx of Xen creatures to BM make some comments on the zombification
process, indicating that the headcrab works by controlling a still living host.


That does not preclude some future headcrab variant that may be able to
utilize fresh corpes as hosts. Deadcrabs?

 

[ríomhaire]

non-canon: In Opposing Force

Opposing Force is canon FFS.

 

[Tagaziel]

Second that.

-- Mikael Grizzly

 

[Langolier]

You know, I think in some ways Breen may have been humanity's savoir after all. Even if many humans had escaped the carnage of the 7-Hour war they would have had no infrustructure to fall back on. No large factories pouring out new weapons.

What I mean is...

Dr. Breen's surrender of Earth and the Combine's occupation inadvertently gave humanity the supplies it needed to mount a resistance and push them off-world.

Though I do not think this was Breen's intention at all. He didn't have the nerve, the bravery, to fight back. I agree with Samon that I would rather die fighting for my freedom than become a stalker for the rest of my so called "life".

Slaves in history have not been forced to give up their humanity. Infact slaves could even win back their freedom... However there is no coming back from being a stalker. Once you are turned into one it is final.

 

[Darkside55]

Off-topic, headcrabs require a still-living host at the moment they zombify. Anytime after that the host can die for all they care, it just needs to be alive at the moment of coupling.

Though I do not think this was Breen's intention at all. He didn't have the nerve, the bravery, to fight back. I agree with Samon that I would rather die fighting for my freedom than become a stalker for the rest of my so called "life".

Too true, but I'd like to add something to that. I think Breen understood that humans, being the species that they are and willing to fight and die for what they believe in, would have been wiped out with great ease by the Combine. Dr. Breen, being the logical thinker that he is, decided that this self-sacrificial attitude would obliterate them all, and end humanity itself. So, he stepped up and made the decision for everyone that they would surrender. Of course, most people didn't like that idea, but to Breen, the alternative was a load of heroic nonsense.

 

[Leviticus]

In Dr. Breen's world resisting the Combine is ultimately futile. He sees it as a Spanish Conquistador in steel armor riding a horse and humanity in feathers, brandishing a club. To him skipping the phase in which all of humanity is destroyed through either war or disease is a blessing. Of course, it isn't, and as we can see now the Combine is far from the perfect war machine. I suppose their interdeminsional empire can be equated to the Roman empire, which had its fair share of problems due to lack of adequate communication and technology. City states were lightyears away from one another.

I wonder if he'll be made into an advisor for the Combine. It is possible that the slugs we see are exceptional leaders from one of the Combine's conquered worlds.

 

[victor]

Breen is just human - he saw an opportunity and he took it. Once humanity was crushed, he swooped in and grabbed power for himself. He knows that what's being done to humanity is wrong, but he deludes himself that it's for the greater good. I mean, it's not like he's going to be turned into a stalker like everybody else.

You guys are still trying to rationalise it as "Breen is evil" or "Breen is a misunderstood good guy". But he's just human, and morally ambiguous. If he was down there, with Eli etc, at risk of being killed or turned into a stalker, he'd be resisting the Combine too.

Double standards are a natural part of human behaviour.

 

[Is This Tea]

I’m one of those strange people who does believe in good and evil… and while I understand that there is both good and evil in everything, if Breen would knowingly do those things, he is has much more evil in him than good.

Double standards are a natural part of human behaviour.

Because something is natural doesn’t make it morally acceptable.

10a: Naturalistic Fallacy:
Any claim that draws an ethical conclusion from whether something is "natural" or unnatural" is invalid.

-From Mechagodzilla’s Logical Fallacy an You post stickied in the Politics forum.

Breen’s double standard is a symptom of his character flaw.

 

[Langolier]

This whole debate makes me hope that we never find any more out about, Dr. Breen than we know already. The holes in his history add to the mystery about him, otherwise there would be little to debate. As evil as I think he is, I will admit that part of me still wonders if he wasn't aiding the resistance all along.

Primarily because of one thing:

"Lately I fear they have begun to look up on even me with suspicion..."

I generally hold that this is yet just another attempt by Breen to swallow everyone up in his propaganda, but it is interesting none-the-less, that he would even suggest such a thing.

 

[victor]

Given that ethics and morality are nothing more than constructions of the human mind, yes I think it does matter whether it's natural or not. But this is is neither here nor there.

 

[Is This Tea]

Lets assume for the sake of argument that morality IS “nothing more” than a construction of the human mind… how then does it follow from that that something being natural also makes it right? Rape is entirely natural; animals do it all the time. Everybody alive today is here thanks to AT LEAST one successful rape. Evolutionists will tell you that the inclination to rape exists because it successfully provides the genes of a carrier of this inclination with a reproductive advantage in nature. So, thank god for human mentally constructed morality!

I like to quote the famous evolutionist Richard Dawkins on this matter
“Much of the message of my first book, "The Selfish Gene," was that we must understand what it means to be a gene machine, what it means to be programmed by genes, so that we are better equipped to escape, so that we are better equipped to use our big brains, use our conscience intelligence, to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and to build for ourselves a new kind of life which as far as I am concerned the more un-Darwinian it is the better, because the Darwinian world in which our ancestors were selected is a very unpleasant world. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. And when we sit down together to argue out and discuss and decide upon how we want to run our societies, I think we should hold up Darwinism as an awful warning for how we should not organize our societies.”

 

[99.vikram]

He is NOT UGLY :frown:

 

[durtay]

I mean come on he cant be that bad If he wanted Gordon,Eli or Alyx dead all he had to do is put a bullet in their brain while they were in his office. But that wouldnt make a good story though. If you ask me Gordons a worse guy than He was, saying that I mean Being a MIT graduate and the hero and all he had to know the dark matter core (or what ever it was) was going to blow with Breen inside. Gordon murdered the guy and all Breen was trying to do was escape. He wasnt trying to hurt no one.(Not including the fact that if would have escaped he would have kill everyone in the Citidel and city 17 Combine and human By the way are'nt all combine human just wanted to know?

 

[Darkside55]

No, the original combine are aliens. The combine soldiers you see, the Overwatch, those are all humans. The synths like striders and dropships and gunships were also once alien races.

 

[victor]

Lets assume for the sake of argument that morality IS “nothing more” than a construction of the human mind… how then does it follow from that that something being natural also makes it right? Rape is entirely natural; animals do it all the time. Everybody alive today is here thanks to AT LEAST one successful rape. Evolutionists will tell you that the inclination to rape exists because it successfully provides the genes of a carrier of this inclination with a reproductive advantage in nature. So, thank god for human mentally constructed morality!

You're basically proving my point. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as right or wrong, and as a consequence there is no such thing as good and evil.
To catogarise Breen as either is a pointless exercise.

 

[Leviticus]

You're basically proving my point. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as right or wrong, and as a consequence there is no such thing as good and evil.
To catogarise Breen as either is a pointless exercise.

He can still be categorized as either acting selfishly or acting on a twisted notion of virtue. If he does think that what he is doing is beneficial ultimately for humanity then he is a very different character from what he would be if he was only acting for himself.

 

[Is This Tea]

You're basically proving my point. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as right or wrong, and as a consequence there is no such thing as good and evil.
To catogarise Breen as either is a pointless exercise.

No, I’m saying that if we do follow your assumption that morality is “all in our heads” so to speak, then it does not follow that it is not “real.” Mental constructions are real. You don’t need Right and Wrong, Good and Evil to exist as absolute objects out in the objective world to make moral judgments. Nature is neither good nor evil. Only humans are capable of those categories because Good and Evil are human mental constructions. This does not make them somehow unreal. It also doesn’t matter that everybody has different opinions about what is Good or Evil. Perhaps you would be more comfortable if the question was phrased, “Do you think Breen is Evil?” rather than just “Is Breen Evil?” because, yes the question is of subjective opinion, not objective fact.

 

[victor]

No, I’m saying that if we do follow your assumption that morality is “all in our heads” so to speak, then it does not follow that it is not “real.” Mental constructions are real. You don’t need Right and Wrong, Good and Evil to exist as absolute objects out in the objective world to make moral judgments. Nature is neither good nor evil. Only humans are capable of those categories because Good and Evil are human mental constructions. This does not make them somehow unreal. It also doesn’t matter that everybody has different opinions about what is Good or Evil. Perhaps you would be more comfortable if the question was phrased, “Do you think Breen is Evil?” rather than just “Is Breen Evil?” because, yes the question is of subjective opinion, not objective fact.

Well put.

 

[durtay]

No, I’m saying that if we do follow your assumption that morality is “all in our heads” so to speak, then it does not follow that it is not “real.” Mental constructions are real. You don’t need Right and Wrong, Good and Evil to exist as absolute objects out in the objective world to make moral judgments. Nature is neither good nor evil. Only humans are capable of those categories because Good and Evil are human mental constructions. This does not make them somehow unreal. It also doesn’t matter that everybody has different opinions about what is Good or Evil. Perhaps you would be more comfortable if the question was phrased, “Do you think Breen is Evil?” rather than just “Is Breen Evil?” because, yes the question is of subjective opinion, not objective fact.

I like how you think:cheers: :cheers:

 

[Is This Tea]

Thanks victor, your points are also very well put.
Back to the topic… is Breen evil?

 

[CookieCuttah]

Evil is when you do things fully knowing that the consequences are going to be negative, horrifying and also inhumane to boot. Breen's compromise to save the human race is not evil as it was done knowing that the alternative is the course of evil; therefore, Breen is not evil , because he did the best he could think of. While it's worthy of debate what was the best course of action, it is obvious that he did not do it out of evil intention.

 

[Is This Tea]

Breen's propaganda says that he chose to collaborate with the Universal Union because, "The alternative, if you can call it that, is total extinction - in union with all the other unworthy branches of the species." It may be his true opinion, however, it draws me to alert because it is after all propaganda. In a more candid moment, when he is trying to persuade Eli to join his side by describing all the wonders the combine has shown him he says, "...ancient stars colonized by sentient fungi. Gas giants, inhabited by vast meteorological intelligences, worlds stretched thin across the membranes where dimensions intersect...Impossible to describe with our limited vocabulary." The search for knowledge is most often a positive thing but their have certainly been those who have been tempted to do unethical things to obtain knowledge. Perhaps Breen is a Faustian figure.

 

[Combine_what?]

Brain Washing is a good theroy