Black Ops Zombies: Absurdity and a Realization of Death Combined

Well, faithful readers, several new zombie maps have been released with Call of Duty: Black Ops. These new maps feature some pretty interesting surroundings. One of the maps, which I'm going to focus on, is actually in the Pentagon.

Some existentialists focus on "the absurd," as my last post pointed out. Absurdity is an integral part of the zombie map "Five." The four characters that are forced to work together against the zombies are John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro and Robert McNamara (I don't know who he is, either). The first three in this list were notorious political enemies; however, they seem to have no problem banding together and helping each other survive. If nothing else about a zombie game captures you as absurd, this certainly will.

There's other absurd things in this game that might make you scratch your head. A "Pentagon Thief" that steals your weapons as well as new guns that encase zombies in ice are rather odd things for the Nazi Zombie genre. (Here's the video that points some of these cool things out.)

I've tried out "Five" a couple of times. It's quite a bit harder than the original zombie maps; I've only made it to round eight, which is depressing to someone who consistently gets to round 20 or so without trying on the first maps. The main problem, as I see it, is that there are so many confusing pathways that you can take. A decent amount of the guns on the walls are either not labeled or are unknown to me. The random box apparently starts in a different place every game. Additionally, the guns in the random box are even more confusing than the ones on the wall. I haven't played the campaign, so I have no clue what each weapon does; more often than not, I'll pass up an extremely good weapon, or trade out a decent gun for a useless one.

The limited lifespan also emphasizes your inevitable death. Most players can't make it past level ten or so. That gives you roughly half an hour of gameplay, tops. On the original maps, games could go on for hours. Of course, it's far more exciting to play in the Pentagon than the original maps; I doubt very much that I'll be going back to Call of Duty: World at War anytime soon.

The Absurdity of "Apocalypse Now!"

Hopefully this blog post will make a bit more sense than the last one. Anyways, we're back to Existentialism. This post will focus on "the absurd" operating in an old Vietnam movie.

Apocalypse Now! is a film that tries to show the outrageousness of war, much like Existential thinkers often try to outline the ridiculous things in everyday life. Here's one of the scenes that fits this theme best: the soldiers in this clip are bombing the living hell out of a Vietnamese village, all while playing one of Wagner's symphonies.

There are a few more worthy quotes, such as an exchange between the officer in command and the main character, Willard. They are talking about the general's idea of surfing in Vietnamese waters.

Willard asks, "Are you crazy, Goddammit? Don't you think it's a little risky for some R&R?

The officer replies, "If I say it's safe to surf this beach, Captain, then it's safe to surf this beach! I mean, I'm not afraid to surf this place, I'll surf this whole fucking place!"

Many existentialists portray life as being irrational and impossible to understand. Camus, Sartre, and others held views centering around the absurd. The world doesn't give us any meaning to latch onto, according to these thinkers; however, we are able to create it for ourselves. Rewarding, right?

One of the main problems with creating our own "meaning" or purpose for living is that there is no way of stopping people from forcing their beliefs on others or just using others for their own purposes. To be a bit more clear, there is no universal morality for people to look at, realize, and then all agree to abide by. Existentialists, when asked about this contradiction, might respond that as a society we need to create a morality system that will allow us to all exist in harmony. I'm not going to disagree that this course of action is best when confronted with a problem of nonexistent moral truths, but it certainly doesn't seem to satisfy the human need for justice and truth that everyone can recognize individually.

But if it's not there, it's not there, right? Nothing we can do about it. Still, just because it's hard to find a "purpose" or meaning of life doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. Maybe it's hiding, just out of reach? My prejudice against ethical subjectivism kinda shows through here. Still, there's a lot to be seen when we recognize "the absurd." It jolts (throws) us out of our everyday existence, as

Heidegger would say.

And now to end with some awesome quotes.

"One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics."

"Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll... uh... well, you'll say "hello" to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you. He won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say, "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you"... I mean I'm... no, I can't... I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's... he's a great man! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas... "

-----Photojournalist from Apocalypse Now!

Gamer, Free Will and Freedom of Action

In the movie "Gamer," the main character Kable (Gerard Butler) is completely controlled by a teenager named Simon (Logan Lerman) thanks to a new nanotechnology. The movie pits death-row inmates against each other in "real life" video games (i.e. people like Simon pay to control their living human character in a COD-like environment. Players shoot and compete to be the last man standing; however, only the controllers have any influence in the battle. Their characters, the inmates, can observe the things around them but are unable to take any action of their own.

This sort of control has implications on freedom. The inmates don't have the freedom to move their hands by their own volition, for example. But what would we label this as? Is it an invasion of their free will, or is merely an absence of freedom of action? Losing freedom of action can be likened to putting handcuffs on someone; they can still "will" to move their hands, but nothing will happen. Free will is more metaphysical; it deals with the volitions themselves, and the degree of choice and control pertaining to one's inner workings. A "hard determinist" might call an escaped prisoner devoid of free will, but perfectly capable of exercising freedom of action. A "libertarian" might say that a prisoner with his hands tied is entitled to free will (in that you can "will" to do otherwise), but not freedom of action (not that free will does much good if you can't actualize your volitions).

Which one is more important? Both seem necessary. I don't think that anyone would prize freedom of the will if it couldn't affect the physical world (i.e. you're tied up the whole time).

And which one does Kable lack? He can still make his own choices; in one scene, he desperately tries to turn around when he spots an enemy that Simon didn't notice (check out the trailer). I'd say that he merely lacks freedom of action, but it's far more disturbing than merely being in a prison cell. Someone else is actually controlling your body, even if your mind is being left alone. That brings up the question of what separates the "volitions" that the controller forces your body to make from your own internal mental processes. After all, the nanotechnology is implanted in the mind. So how much of Kable does Simon really control?

Anyways, I feel like all these posts on free will have been butchered. Feel free to critique or leave your impressions on the subject.