The world is a very strange place, and nothing indicates that more than the existence of the video game Blackwater.

Released in 2011 on the Xbox 360, Blackwater is a first-person shooter that was positioned to be the pioneer of motion-control technology in shooter games.  Operating with the Xbox Kinect, the game did not require a controller to complete the on-rails gameplay, which was by all accounts uninspired.  Perhaps the burden of adopting such new technology was a burden.  The plot, which involved protecting dignitaries from militias in North Africa, was trite.  The game was a critical failure for developer Zombie Studios and publisher 505 games.  It was recognized by Giant Bomb as the worst game of the year, and although no sales figures are available, there is little reason to be optimistic.

Of course, a bad video game is nothing special.  However, the interesting part is that this game is based on the operations of and named after the private military company of the same name.  Blackwater was founded in 1997, and rose into prominence in the 2000s as it was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, some of it in no-bid contracts, by the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of State for training, consulting, and services.  Some of those services?  Participation in the Iraq war.  PMC contractors are not bound by the same budget restrictions and mandates to disclose information as official armed service members.  For this reason, we have no way of knowing how many Blackwater guards were stationed in Iraq.  We do know that the company was involved in hundreds of shooting incidents.  In one such incident, a Blackwater sniper killed three Iraqi Media Network guards.  The killing and public display of the bodies of four Blackwater guards was a factor that triggered the first battle of Fallujah.  In 2006, the Iraqi government withdrew Blackwater’s license to operate in country after Blackwater employees allegedly killed 14 civilians.  The US government overruled this withdrawal, eventually using Order 17.  Then the US passed a draft law overruling Order 17.  The adoption of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act led to some prosecution of PMCs, although most of these suits were withdrawn and replaced with legislation regulating PMC oversight. After some debate regarding jurisdiction between the US and Iraqi governments, the State Department’s contract was allowed to die in 2009, although Blackwater retained a contract with the CIA and changed its name to Xe Services LLC.  Then, a group of private investors obtained the company and it became known as Academi.  Internal documents leaked in 2010 confirmed several incidents of the deaths of civilians at the hands of Blackwater employees.  In 2014, five employees were charged with charges relating to the Nisour Square killings, which resulted in 37 Iraqi civilian casualties.  Also in 2014, a merger resulted in the company’s rebranding as Constellis Holdings, a company that retains a variety of PMCs including Tidewater and Triple Canopy, which is the company that Blackwater’s terminated State Department Iraq contract was awarded to.  That’s where we are today.  The company is still operating, training soldiers and law enforcement officers, and contracting in foreign countries including Iraq and Yemen.

Anyways, back to the video game.  The Entertainment Software Ratings Board rated it T for teen, meaning that it is only recommended for children ages 13 and up.  If you search, you can find a copy for ten dollars.

We may in our lifetimes reach a point where promotional material for private military companies is a normal thing.  Whatever else that fact is, it’s definitely super weird.

It is clear that academic study has become a fundamental component of my personal development.  However, the underlying concept that is necessary to justify the dedication to this and any other pursuit is a constantly developing understanding of what is fundamentally worthwhile.  In order to fulfill the philosophical goal of fundamental valuation there is one major concept that must be considered and addressed constantly through personal experience and logical consideration.  This is the fundamental value of arbitrary judgement.  Every experience that I experience inside and outside of the classroom is contributed to the valuation of arbitrary behavior, and those of this year are no different.

Classical philosophy universally pans arbitrary action as devoid of moral value.  However, it would appear that an action taken without consideration for morality can still be assigned a moral value when an external moral foundation is applied.  The underlying issue is that arbitrary action, while often used as a criticism of ethical systems, must be proven to be ethically wrong under a system to allow it to be discarded.  Consider, for example, the example of legions of monkeys developing plays, or a random number generator that is capable of eventually completing an electronic game featuring battling pocket monsters.  Despite the seemingly random nature of these behaviors, they can be perceived as working towards, and by necessity eventually accomplishing, a goal, which in the generic case can be extrapolated to fundamental moral good.  Thus, it is clear that despite many contentions, arbitrary action is not inherently morally flawed by its arbitrary nature, but by the application of external standards, by which it cannot compete with the ethically motivated actions of a more insightful moral agent.

Unfortunately, the selection of an external moral guideline is perhaps the most contentious issue in the history of philosophy.  The most common refutation of the viability of the application of these external ethical guidelines is that of the existentialist, who vehemently denies the possibility of the existence of moral laws.  The primary argument for this standpoint is the idea that any selection of an ethical system is in itself an arbitrary decision.  Note, however, that moral value has not yet been assigned here to the value of arbitrary action.  The arbitrary nature of this decision can therefore not be applied as a denunciation of arbitrary acts in general, and the existentialist viewpoint cannot assign moral value to anything, much less arbitrary action, which would be all action.  However, sidestepping this issue appears to create more problems for the ethicist.  Philosophers of the modern school of thought considered divine will to arbitrate moral value, and divine command theory to be a viable moral system.  Postmodern approaches to these claims often relied heavily on claims of arbitrary action.  The most famous of these refutations, the Euthyphro dilemma, embodies these concerns about arbitrary behavior.  If our fundamental conceit, that arbitrary action has not yet been proven to have any moral value, is accepted, than surely the issues with divine command theory are minimized, and it can take a place alongside more commonly accepted theories, such as act utilitarianism and deontology.

This line of questioning brings us to the event that altered my understanding of the issue.  While guessing the answer to a true or false question on a material science exam, I considered the arbitrary value of my actions.  It was clear that when evaluated from the moral standpoint of score maximization, my seemingly arbitrary action could be assigned a moral value enumerated cleanly into a point score.  My middle school teachers often emphasized the value of making a strong educated guess when unsure of a correct answer, and when searching for possible contextual insight, I came to a realization.  This question could be assessed as a matter of arbitrary evaluation and answered with a coin flip.  Conversely, with more knowledge or further consideration, it was possible to assign moral nuance, however minute, to the decision.  If I knew the answer or even had the tiniest scrap of insight, I could leverage a superior option.  In the same way, most ethical systems have the option of precluding truly arbitrary choice.  A modernist or a utilitarian may believe that there is no moral value to the color of shirt that they wear to their dreary office job in collections at six o’clock in the morning, psychological studies indicate that exposure to these colors can result in minute emotional responses in observers.  Thus, this decision gains moral nuance.  Perhaps it is the case that truly arbitrary choice only stems from ignorance under the majority of viable ethical systems.  This appears to be an argument with reasonable grounds in utilitarianism and deontology.  The implication of this conclusion would be that any arbitrary action under these models would be veritably morally bankrupt due to its inferiority to a more informed decision.

It is clear that no matter what conclusions are drawn from these considerations, further thought and the application of future experiences will only serve to refine the understanding of these values.  However, the conclusions that have been recently reached appear to offer a standpoint highly conducive to the valuation of academic study.  After all, perfect understanding of circumstances is necessary to make perfect moral evaluations and decisions in any moral system.  This line of inquiry has reaffirmed my dedication to education, and my summer research and future academic goals will serve to further the goal of making informed, and therefore less arbitrary, decisions.

I hope that this reflection shows who I am inside.