Villains that Actually Make Sense, Part 2

In the video game Half-Life 2, there are no children. I'd speculate that this is mostly because, while Valve was unabashedly out to scare the pants off its clients, they didn't want to put child characters in dangerous situations in a first-person shooter. They justified it by saying that Earth's conquerors had installed a "suppression field" that did, er, something to humanity's reproductive process. Their puppet, Doctor Breen, tried to justify that action in this way:

"I find it helpful at times like these to remind myself that our true enemy is Instinct. Instinct was our mother when we were an infant species. Instinct coddled us and kept us safe in those hardscrabble years when we hardened our sticks and cooked our first meals above a meager fire and started at the shadows that leapt upon the cavern's walls. But inseparable from Instinct is its dark twin, Superstition. Instinct is inextricably bound to unreasoning impulses, and today we clearly see its true nature. Instinct has just become aware of its irrelevance, and like a cornered beast, it will not go down without a bloody fight. Instinct would inflict a fatal injury on our species. Instinct creates its own oppressors, and bids us rise up against them. Instinct tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity. Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress. Instinct, therefore, must be expunged. It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of human urges: The urge to reproduce."

Yes, Breen is what happens when The Spock meets The Quisling meets Misanthrope Supreme. Intellect trumps emotion. Back when I first played Half-Life 2, I mentioned that I thought Breen had a point near the end of the game when he begs you to stop raising hell. And lets face it: alien invaders came and kicked humanity's ass in seven hours. Collaboration really was the only means of survival. Now, there's a great deal of speculation, mostly originating from sources outside of the game, that Breen was partially responsible for the whole invasion, in which case, well, I have considerably less sympathy.

But to return to his lecture on instinct, the man is actually spot on. (And this lecture comes so early in the game that, Big Brother references aside, I half thought I'd end up working for the man.) Granted, he was using it to justify what basically amounted to the extinction of the human species (see my previous post; if you can't keep replacing your fallen, you can't survive). But his basic thesis that instict is our enemy is correct. See, when someone pisses you off, instinct dictates that you punch him in the face. When someone you find attractive walks by, you want to jump into bed with them. And for eons, we did precisely that. And then we built civilizations and enforced codes of law to keep instinct at bay. "Do as you please" is not the law of the land, because such a law is simply anathema to any society that wishes to survive for more than one generation. We decreed that instinct was subordinate to a small but essential number of human rights; the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that order.