They all started killing each other because plasmid use makes you psychotic, unless you can afford to keep taking more and more.
They all started taking plasmids because they needed to compete in the workplace (then later, in the war) or end up homeless / dead.
Plasmids were legal in the first place because Randism, being based 100% on individual responsibility, doesn’t believe that things like feedback loops or cumulative effects can happen at a societal level, and so doesn’t believe in regulations.
Plasmids are a pretty clear metaphor for dehumanizing yourself to serve the market, especially because the Randian superman is a psychopath that is only self interested.
But even without plasmids the fact that the worlds elite were brought down to Rapture, yet (to quote an audio log) “we couldn’t all be captains of industry, someone had to scrub the toilets” bred a huge amount of resentment from people who felt scammed and now trapped down there. Just like in the real world the markets in BioShock rely completely on low level workers to be able to function, and yet punish them for being in that position.
Your takes gets more and more based as it goes on.
Wow it’s like with vague enough framing, anybody can be the bad guys.
“Germany was making unprecedented scientific discoveries and innovating every aspect of their country from equality to population control when they were brutally attacked and their leader driven to suicide.”
Not only that, he saved the country from a tanked economy and hyperinflation!!!
also gave his life heroically to kill hitler
From playing and replaying both BioShock and Infinite, and reading interviews from Ken Levine, my own conclusion is that both of the BioShock games simply use ideology as a narrative tool to create conflict, and the only thing he is condemning broadly is extremism.
In other words, Levine and the rest of the team didn’t make BioShock because they hated Ayn Rand and wanted to spread that message. They made BioShock because they wanted to make a first-person shooter similar to System Shock 2. They needed villains to create conflict, and the easiest way a sci-fi writer can create a villain is just to take any ideology to extremes and think of ways that could go wrong.
I think this is made pretty clear by the lack of any “good” characters in either game. I can’t think of anyone the player is expected to just like and agree with- they are all charicatures taking their ideologies to extremes. Andrew Ryan is clearly bad, but the only real representative of lower classes is Fontaine who is argaubly an even more evil antagonist.
In Infinite, Comstock is clearly the villain as a racist and religious dictator. Daisy Fitzroy is the leader of the rebellion, someone who has personally suffered at Comstock’s hands. She initially starts off as the player’s ally, but then shifts to become “too violent” and “too extreme” in her rebellion, so she and the rest of the rebellion become enemies of Booker. It was really ham-fisted and just kind of waived off as “well anything can happen with the infinite possibilities of dimension hopping!”. But the real reason was more simple: they needed to add additional enemy types to shake up the combat and escalate the difficulty. They wanted to add the chaos of having the player run between two factions fighting each other without the safety of making one of those an ally.
Those two games use ideology as set pieces, but when you combine the two games together the final message is “extremeism bad, centrism good”. I don’t think every game needs to be a doctorate-level poli-sci dissertation, but I do think these two games deserve criticism for being pretty weak there.
Did you play the BioShock infinite dlc? They had a strange retcon where the Lutece twins approached Fitzroy and instructed her to appear to be a monster, specifically so Elizabeth would feel like she had to kill her.
It was a strange choice, because the remaining revolution was pretty blatantly horrible without her either way, and I’m not entirely sure that’s how this sanitized version of her would want it to go.
The politics of BioShock are not all that deep in the end. They’re mostly just a setting so they can tell a story of someone forced into a role without understanding it
Ah I hadn’t - it’s still in my backlog. But it sounds like it just re-affirms what I had drawn from the main games.
Ayn Rand,s “philosophy” is about as deep as a puddle.
‘Mine!’
Eh, I think the high level themes are interesting, and Fountainhead is a legitimately interesting book (Anthem is shorter of you just want a quick intro). It gets weird quick when you read her justification for taking land from the native peoples (the “savages” didn’t have the concept of owning land, so their claims aren’t legitimate).
I’m glad I read her books because it helped me set boundaries on my own views and recognize when a politician boosting Atlas Shrugged is full of BS. I agree with her assertion that we’re better off expecting and even encouraging people to follow their own self-interest, but disagree on leaving it at that. We should reward self-interest when it benefits society and punish it when it doesn’t, and redistribute the excess to everyone has a chance to succeed, however they define that. Asking people to not follow their self-interest leads to reduced productivity and outcomes.
Those two games use ideology as set pieces, but when you combine the two games together the final message is “extremeism bad, centrism good”. I don’t think every game needs to be a doctorate-level poli-sci dissertation, but I do think these two games deserve criticism for being pretty weak there.
Imo, they get the hype for being “deep” because they are pretty deep as far as popular games go. They are certainly deeper than COD’s “Look, terrorists, shoot them!” or Mario’s “Dragon stole my princess”.
Exactly. At least for 1&2, Objectivism is setting, not plot, the plot was created by the team. They could just as easily have used socialism, fascism, or any other “-ism” to make the same game, the main difference would be the set pieces. If it was Nazis, for example, the plasmids would be for creating super soldiers, and for socialism it would be yet another social experiment to see if it would create super workers or whatever.
Now, disregarding the whole ethical thing, the reason why Rapture Fell was because there was a very big divide beetween the workers and the people. (Also because Plasmids were not regulated and the poor became addicted)
And since there was no social housing and stuff, they Protested, and then joined Sofia Lamb, who was appealing to them
So, its more of a mix of the people going insane without ethical restrictions, the consumers going insane because of addiction, and a bunch of people dying because of protests by the workers
The Sofia Lamb bit is a retcon by hurt objectivists who thought the first game unfair. So, they retconned it to be not their fault. It was, instead, the dirty socialists fault.
Anyways, Rapture fell because unfettered business interests always end up at massive inequality. This was made worse by magic addictive powers and a complete lack of ethics. Plus, being at the bottom of the ocean meant you couldn’t just ship in a new lower class to ease tensions.
I’m surprised some egomaniacal billionaire didn’t start flooding areas if people couldn’t pay him to not to.
The Sofia Lamb bit is a retcon by hurt objectivists who thought the first game unfair.
I can see that, I was just playing BioShock 2, and in the Hotel section, there was just this Audiolog with 2 people, one of whom was supplying the other with raw supplies, the other manifacturing Adam Syringes out of it, and selling it to the same guy who then sells it to Ryan industries, monologing about „how big of a fool the other was, because they make so much Profits”, essentially retconning all of Capitalism in BioShock.
Which first of all wouldn’t even work, because they have a fucking Monopoly at that point and can raise prices all they want
And second just goes back to „Why the fuck would they Vote for Lamb, if they weren’t oppressed? Lamb addressed Problems in rapture that didn’t even exist according to BioShock 2
I’m surprised some egomaniacal billionaire didn’t start flooding areas if people couldn’t pay him to not to.
I always like to add it to my head cannon that when Rapture started leaking, the billionaires just started demanding money for the big Daddies and all the repairs
I don’t think Ryan produced Plasmids, that was how Fontaine became a faction leader.
Whomst amongst us would not be guilty of a little sperging under a completely unregulated oligarchy? Surely the social contract would protect everyone from lead poisoning 🧐
I mean, seriously, a legal injection that can give me superpowers? Give me that shit now!
A little sperging, as a treat.
Among us
My take on Bioshock is people became mutants and started killing each other because there were no laws or regulations aside from “you can’t stop others from profiting.” It was legal for them to become mutants. It was legal for them to weaponize and arm themselves before the inevitable revolution / civil war of Rapture. The closest thing to a law enforcer was the big daddy and he does NOTHING about the hordes of cannibalistic telepathic monsters. You know why? Because there are no laws against what they’re doing, the daddy was only made to protect the little sisters who produce profit for Fontaine.
Bioshock is steampunk scifi but it’s also anarchy in it’s truest form. People built whatever they liked, and they destroyed whatever they liked, and when violently mutating psychoactive drugs were introduced the latter succeeded over the former.
BioShock 2 revealed that Andrew Ryan had a secret prison to throw people into when they disrupted his control over the city. And more than once he decided he would burn it all down rather than let someone else win.
It may have masqueraded as anarchy, but the system was still rigged from the start. There was always a ruler. And power can corrupt even the strongest idealistic convictions
but the system was still rigged from the start
And this, intentionally or not, is the real message. There’s no such thing as a real meritocracy, the system is always rigged in favor of the people who created it.
That’s fair, and to add onto that Ryan did have a self destruct button in his office that would wipe out the whole city.
On the other hand, though, Fontaine and Lamb both rose to power despite Ryan’s head start on authoritarianism.
Anarchy is explicitly against “profits”.
And it doesn’t mean that there are no rules but no rulers.
Rules require enforcement which requires people coming together to form a consensus and outfitting and maintaining the livelihood of enforcers, which is NOT ANARCHY.
No, what you describe is chaos. Anarchy means there are no rulers. People rule themselves and are also looking out for each other thus enforcing the minimum set of rules that are necessary to have a stable society. Rules can come from a consensus, yes.
A current example is the anarchist punk camp on Sylt where it was decided that dogs need to be on a leash when your are in the camp. If someone sees someone with a dog without a leash, they tell them of the decision and why it was made and that’s it.
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Since writing that last comment I have that funny thought of a diplomacy lottery in my head where it’s randomly decided who will join a trained diplomat or experts on state visits to represent the people. “… And this year… Dale will visit the environmental summit with our experts in …” followed by an AMA where Dale can share their impressions. I’d love it ;D
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If no permanent rules are in place then those temporary role enforcers will just enforce whatever rules they want. Like the splicers are doing by harvesting your delicious liver.
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Anarchy is synonymous with Chaos. Every dictionary and every printed encyclopedia agrees on that. Fontaine and his horde of Splicers are all “looking out for one another.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchism
1: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchy
1
a: absence of government
b: a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority the city’s descent into anarchy
c: a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government2 a: absence or denial of any authority or established order anarchy prevailed in the war zone
b: absence of order : disorder
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Who is gonna stop them?
usually anarchists advocate for elected or rotational positions for policing.
What happens when it comes somebody’s turn and they decide to stay in charge permanently? Well obviously the loss of the social contract means that individual isn’t protected anymore, either, so they kill him. Just like the splicers tried to kill Andrew Ryan.
The same thing that happens anywhere else? A power struggle between the people who want it and don’t? Are you implying this is unique to anarchism in some way? I don’t see why it would be.
A power struggle with no legal recourse except bloodshed is indeed specific to a system where there is no power structure or system of laws, correct. That’s what I said. It has never once proven false. And you came in here and demanded I retract my statement? What are you going to do about it, eat my liver?
There is a legal recourse, you’re saying someone with power ignored the law and attempted a coup… do you think coups don’t happen in non anarchist countries? How is this unique to anarchism in any way?
Core ideas of anarchism: mutual aid, no hierarchies, stateless moneyless society, free association.
This person: anarchism is capitalism without rules
You’re probably thinking Anarcho-Communism or some other convoluted trite. Dictionaries all say the same thing: no laws, no leader, no order.
Surely you know better after skimming through a dictionary than me, an anarchist that has read dozens of anarchist theory books
Even antivaxxers have their own books, your theories mean nothing in the face of the consensus.
You might wanna read up slightly on this, you’re quite far away from the consensus meaning of anarchism. While superficial, you could start with the first three paragraphs of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
Three paragraphs may be too long of a read for that person
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lol nice mobile website link
To say an example of a place and people with no laws is not Anarchy, you’re kidding yourself.
Which anarchist philosophers or anarchists agree with you?
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Big Daddies were owned by Fontaine, not by Ryan. Fontaine and Ryan were literally opposing faction leaders in the Rapture civil war.
I even mentioned how Big Daddies do NOTHING to stop the hordes of cannibals because they’re not there to enforce any laws.
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That’s not anarchism you’re describing, maybe you’re thinking of "anarcho"capitalism?
Anarchy:
No order, no laws, no rulers.
Obviously the existence of Ryan and the city council defeats that ideal, but that was only true before the fall.
The issue is that finitebanjo has conflated the two different meanings of Anarchy. Donpiano is talking about contemporary anarchism, a mode of governance without authority structures. One that argues that hierarchies and centralized power is the root of most of humanities ails. Governance is still performed, but it’s on an individual level between peers where each member of the group is an active part in decision making.
Finitebanjo is talking about anarchy, the state of lawlessness that arises when the state fails to perform its governing duties. Most associated with riots and looting. The problem is when they call it “anarchism in it’s truest form”, they’re conflating the state of lawlessness when the state abandons an area with a system of governance. It is not the same thing.
Contemporary Anarchism doesn’t actually exist even in fiction, though, unless there is only one person because otherwise there will always be disputes between the people until a centralized power structure forms.
I thank you for trying to mediate but both me and my opponents know exactly what I am saying.
A democratic power structure is decentralized.
Thank you for adding nothing to yet another exchange.
Ah yes, such trivialities like the answer to your conundrum are meaningless to someone as proudly ignorant on a topic as yourself. My bad.
Anarchism is full of rules and laws, though. Arguably, one aspect of anarchism is replacing rulers with rules as far as possible, but that’s possibly a contentious phrasing.
And when your rules conflict with your neighbor’s rules? I guess they’ll just have to murder you. Just like Rapture.
I don’t think you’re engaging in good faith here, not sure why. For what it’s worth, in your example, the negotiation of rules with the goal of consensus finding and avoidance of unjust exertion of power plays a major role in anarchist practices. Anomic states of existence and anarchic ones are far apart. The former leads to kings and conquest, the latter to tedious discussions about minutiae of daily existence.
There are reasons why anarchist groups are hard to infiltrate by cops
What’s good faith about me describing a horde of lawless cannibal spleen collectors and you coming in here and argueing “um actually the orphan spleen harvesting has a complex and fair system of distribution so actually its a good thing superior to regulated capitalism”.
No they’re saying the spleen harvesters are NOT anarchists at all.
Almost like it doesn’t take a deep and thoughtful deconstruction of Ayn Rand to knock the whole thing over.
A libertarian that doesn’t understand satire, what a shock.
What a bioshock
A 12 year old can deconstruct objectivism and see how its DOA because I did it in middle school for an advanced English course. We read this trash book called “The Girl Who Owned a City” that was some guys attempt at teaching Rand’s bullshit to children. The book boils down to “be a heartless warlord who hoards supplies and throws hot oil on desperate children who come seeking food”.
I think it’s kind of a logical conclusion to science and technology when not constrained by ethics, morality or other regulations aimed at safety as one would find in a Libertarian’s wet dream. It might not be superpowered mutants, but more like human experimentation like the Nazis did or nuclear weapons that go boom when you don’t want them to because you’re being careless about safety.
Also, wasn’t the true downfall of the city more because of the power struggle between Atlas and Ryan? There is a whole subplot about the class war happening in the city along with a rebellion, but I haven’t played it in so long I don’t recall all the details. Ot if that even matters because didnt they turn out to be the same guy just manipulating you? 🤔
Fuck. Gonna make me play through Bioshock again.
Yup. As Atlas puts it:
These sad saps. They come to Rapture thinking they’re gonna be captains of industry, but they all forget that somebody’s gotta scrub the toilets.
Ryan likes to talk about “the chain” and being in control, but he also used and discarded his associates and the moment he was no longer in absolute control, he started murdering people and using pheromones to mind-control splicers.
It might not be superpowered mutants, but more like human experimentation like the Nazis
What do you think the human experimentation’s goal was?
I mean… I guess it depends which nazi scientist was doing the experiments. One of them had some pretty wild ideas and is where the basis for a lot of the supernatural BS in the Wolfenstein games came from. Forgot his name tho… 🤔
third ball
Libertarian’s wet dream
Please don’t conflate Objectivism and Libertarianism. They’re different, and Ayn Rand hated Libertarians. Objectivism is all about selfishness (maximize personal benefit), whereas Libertarianism is all about minimizing harm between people (initiation of force, NAP).
Let’s use an example of someone creating a dangerous product and someone gets hurt. An Objectivist would say “oops!” whereas the Libertarian would say the seller should be legally liable for damages and criminally liable if they knew about the danger and didn’t properly disclose/prevent it, otherwise it’s an initiation of force.
Objectivists believe in maximum freedom. Libertarians believe your freedoms end where mine begin. They’re different.
I’ve already depicted you as the Sander Cohen and myself as the Atlas.
Yeah, I hate when underwater Randism with injectable superpowers.
It’s a fictional universe.
Ayn Rand isn’t really studied if you do a philiosophy degree. She’s more on the literature side of “philosophy” as opposed to belonging to the analytic tradition or whatever.
Philosophy fiction
Like the way science fiction isn’t science, but less cool.
Yes, I suppose it’s similar to Herman Hesse or maybe Borges… except those two are quite cool
Borges
borges sucks ass. his book of short stories was basically “yo dawg, this reminds of a story of when I was in a bar an the old guy told me of a story that when he was a boy in a cafe, an old guy told him the story of some ancient gaucho…”
People were easier to entertain back in the day. There is also a clear line between Borges and modern short story authors like Ted Chiang who take what he started and develop it further.
And her main contribution is that unextended phenomina can override physical reality (!?!?!)
No Gods or Kings or Mans.
Only Dinosaur.
Open the door.
Get on the floor.
Nae King! Nae Quin! Nae Laird!
We won’t be fooled again?
Verrrrrrrrry complicated documents!
Wee free men?!
Ach wheel
Return to monke
No Gods, No Kings…
Only Bus
- Makes a shallow analysis of a piece of media
- Piece of media appears to be shallow
I’m a genius, and this piece of media is dumb
