Bioshock: a criticism of capitalism and objectivism?

[Michael Archer]

I love those audio logs. What a great character!

 

Ryan is right. At war, times are desperate. Have you been listening to Leonard Peikoff's podcast? There was one where he said that because we're at war, we shouldn't let a mosque be built and ground zero.

 

Ryan needed to destroy Atlas in the quickest, most efficient way possible. Questioning things would objectively make him look weak; he couldn't afford that. Questioning should happen after the war takes place.

 

It has been a long time for me as well, so I don't have many examples on hand, but I remember many a corpse being left along with a log by Sullivan detailing the death of the party in question. The lady Sander Cohen had a rivalry with springs to mind, killing her was a favor, as does the wall of corpses outside Ryan's office. Remember the signs near your bathysphere demanding freedom, or people being corralled into Apollo Square at gunpoint?

 

Oh shit; I'm reading the Bioshock wiki now. Ryan murdered Anna Culpepper because she was writing songs that disagreed with him? Yeah, this is murder. I'm still trying to find a way why this was justified; I don't think I will find one. I just really, really, like Andrew Ryan.

 

I disregarded the signs as akin to people demanding freedom in the Soviet Union as a justification for the Bolsheviks.

 

I thought the Apollo Square massacre was media hype and propaganda? I could be wrong about that.

 

I just reread your post. The elimination of political and ideological opponents by forceful means is another topic, for a longer discussion

 

I just reread my post too. That really did make me sound like a dick. I'll clarify now:

 

but what could make you justify Langford's gassing? Her only crime was an extremely limited association with Fontaine, which only consisted of briefly speaking to Jack, and her death serves a clear example of Ryan's paranoia at that point. She wasn't even helping you, she only reacted when Ryan killed all the trees and cut off the air., before that she had years of valuable service to Ryan, creating Arcadia, selling oxygen, etc..., her death was obvious murder.

 

In the United States and Canada (and I would imagine other first world countries), prisoners can file a writ of Habeas Corpus if they think they were imprisoned unfairly. Rights of the accused, as Ayn Rand put it, "The rights of the accused are not a primary—they are a consequence derived from a man’s inalienable, individual rights. A consequence cannot survive the destruction of its cause. What good will it do you to be protected in the rare emergency of a false arrest, if you are treated as the rightless subject of an unlimited government in your daily life?"

 

In 1861, Lincoln was elected into the White House. And then there was actual rioting, decelerations of succession yada, yada, yada, over half a million people died.

 

Lincoln was (and is to this day) sharply criticized for suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus during the war. When I heard about this, this really startled me, so I wrote to Leonard Peikoff and asked him what he thought about this. While I didn't get a response from him personally, I got a response from a guy named Tore Boeckmann who Peikoff said he had "great confidence in his knowledge and

intellectual ability."

 

This is what he said:

 

"In wartime, the enemy has no rights. The common libertarian criticism of

Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus is unfounded. The Constitution

authorizes the suspension in wartime and rebellion. Lincoln was responding

to actual rioting, insurrection, and acts of treason. Remember, a conspiracy

of treasonous slaveholders were using force against a legitimate government

in the name of the supposed "right" to hold human beings in chains, as

property."

 

How is this related? I view Ryan's de-oxygenating of Arcadia similar to Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus, for the same reasons. Ryan had actual rioting, insurrection and treason in the name of the right to own the fruits of another's labor. Ryan's government was founded on Objectivism which is a legitimate basis, as I'm sure you'd agree.

 

Julie's attempt to reverse the oxygen thing supply made her an enemy of the state. When you're at war, you don't treat the enemy-people who are trying to bring down the very values for which your government stands (such as habeas corpus and the rights of the accused) the same way you treat purse snatchers. This is what I mean when I said Ryan rightfully suppressed enemies of the state.

 

It would be different if Ryan was actually a tyrant and his government was illegitimate. Was it? That's the question. If it was, then Julie's execution would've been immoral and evil.

 

I love Bioshock 2 more than the first because of thrusting the player into the role of a strong individual character who is rediscovering his humanity and identity whilst battling a clearly villianized Collectivist/Altruist on a personal mission to rescue the only person to ever matter to him, all the while showing the grander side of the once great Ryan while heightening his tragedy by showing how far he has come, on top of what I felt was much improved gameplay. the only flaw being the horrible, tacked on multiplayer put in by the marketing department.

 

Multiplayer was terrible. Wanna hear the worst part? Because you leveled up so quickly, I thought it would take me no time at all to get to level forty and get that achievement. By the time I was level thirty, it took forever, but it was too late to turn back...

 

Why didn't I like Bioshock 2? Possibly because there was not enough Andrew Ryan. Maybe it was because gameplay revolved around babysitting Little Sisters while they extracted ADAM (I hate escort missions). Maybe it's because I thought the ending was unsatisfying. But it's probably because the only good parts (I thought) were the parts that reminded me of the first game.

 

Also, Bioshock 1's opening sequence was one of the best (if not the best) I've ever seen. Bioshock 2 had a disappointing opening sequence; there was no interactivity (which differs video games from movies). It would've been cool if they treated the opening sequence like a tutorial level. When Lamb tells you to take out your pistol, the game would say "Use right analog stick to aim" and then you would have to maneuver it to your head. Then when she said "fire" it would say "press right trigger to fire" and the game would not let you continue until you did this.

 

If Infinite were to come out today, I would not buy it. Bioshock 1 and 2 appealed to me because of the whole Objectivism thing. That's gone in Infinite.

[Arby]

Ok, multistep reply mode engaged. I have listened to his podcast in the past, but haven't kept up on recent editions.

 

Integrity is a key philosophical property, identity. proceeding without ever stopping to consider or question the consistency, let alone the rationality of one's actions produces the hypocritical delusions such as those Ryan came to suffer. that quote by Miss Rand is regarding individual rights, its meaning is not to disregard the rights of the accused, especially when they are inconvenient, but of the secondary nature of those rights to individual rights. Lincoln's response was, as your quote demonstrated, appropriate. Ryan's enemies were motivated partially by forceful ideologies and criminal actions, i.e. lamb and Fonataine, but the people of Rapture were not solely followers of them. The Rapture Civil War has its roots in Lamb, and later Fontaine,'s instigation of Ryan. They were the thugs and thieves he'd built rapture to escape. His battle with them was legitimate, but his reaction came in the form of increasingly greater infractions against the rights of the people of the city, who responded in kind with demands that he end his campaigns and restore order and rights to the city. He refused. I would like to think that a large portion of these people were the ones recruited by Atlas, along with the savages he'd farmed a crop of with his poorhouses and other initiatives to stir up an anti-Ryan underclass of thugs. It would be these people who would fight and die for rights that Ryan would no longer acknowledge, let alone defend.

 

Regarding the legitimacy of Ryan's government. I have always thought that it's basis derived from property. In it's earliest stages Ryan was the sole developer and creator, and thus owner, of Rapture. It was his and anyone within it was subject to his authority. As the city grew other people came to own property. The exact question is how was the official governing body formed. As far as I know this was never made explicit, but I believe Ryan was selected to lead the city because of his patriarchal role in its development. When a government was formed, Rapture ceased being his city and became the property of the people (metaphorically, I'm unsure how to precisely define this as I know governments cannot own property, but Rand never got around to defining the specifics of this area of government. I think Peikoff did something on it, but I can't remember.) and Ryan ceased holding sole authority over it, he was subject to their law, and most importantly their rights whether recognized by his government or not. I think that under the circumstances, his actions had as much legitimacy as King George did over the former Colonies and his actions were just as condemnable. His philosophy was never expressly stated to be Objectivism, but whatever it was, he ceased to practice it with full consistency and deviated to ever increasing degrees as he persecuted the people of the city. He didn't suspend habeas corpus and put down Dr. Langford out of defense of the rights of those under his charge, instead he murdered a defenseless woman, even if she was associating with a known criminal who was actively trying to overthrow his government, he had lost all legitimacy. It was a criminal versus a tyrant at that point. He did own Arcadia, and it was his property he destroyed, but in doing so it would extinguish all air in the city, killing all inhabitants. Many were splicers, for whom death would be justice, but not all were and his actions would be further murders in the name of holding onto the city which he no longer rightfully held claim to.

 

Sorry for wall-o-text.

[Arby]

Multiplayer was terrible. Wanna hear the worst part? Because you leveled up so quickly, I thought it would take me no time at all to get to level forty and get that achievement. By the time I was level thirty, it took forever, but it was too late to turn back...

 

Why didn't I like Bioshock 2? Possibly because there was not enough Andrew Ryan. Maybe it was because gameplay revolved around babysitting Little Sisters while they extracted ADAM (I hate escort missions). Maybe it's because I thought the ending was unsatisfying. But it's probably because the only good parts (I thought) were the parts that reminded me of the first game.

 

Also, Bioshock 1's opening sequence was one of the best (if not the best) I've ever seen. Bioshock 2 had a disappointing opening sequence; there was no interactivity (which differs video games from movies). It would've been cool if they treated the opening sequence like a tutorial level. When Lamb tells you to take out your pistol, the game would say "Use right analog stick to aim" and then you would have to maneuver it to your head. Then when she said "fire" it would say "press right trigger to fire" and the game would not let you continue until you did this.

 

If Infinite were to come out today, I would not buy it. Bioshock 1 and 2 appealed to me because of the whole Objectivism thing. That's gone in Infinite.

 

I'm with you on escort missions in general, I especially didn't like the one at the end of the first Bioshock, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the gathering sequences in 2, I love the series's gameplay, so much variety, and I always had a new opportunity to see how I would take the greatest advantage of my location to defend the sister as best I could. I have to say they're my favorite part of the regular gameplay. As for the ending, it was probably the most personally satisfying I've ever had in a game. It was warm and fuzzy, the villain got justice they deserved, Elanor became a powerful and moral individual free to start a new life as you gained immortality as her father, forever on her shoulder. I have to say that while I like how the ending is influenced by your choices, I only received what I consider the best ending (the happy one where Lamb dies) by misunderstanding Gracie's misunderstanding of your situation with Elanor. If you kill all three you get my favorite ending. Kill the others but spare Gracie, and Elanor talks about mercy instead of justice and Lamb lives.

[Michael Archer]

No need to apologize about your wall of text; it was a good read.

 

A society based on rights derived from the right to property could have some issues as all rights (including the right to property) come from life as the standard.

 

I guess a strike against Ryan is that we don't really know how his government worked; for all we know, he could've been the benevolent monarch, which could allow him to turn it into a dictatorship. He did murder his girlfriend, so I guess he isn't the greatest guy in the world.

 

Ryan was at war and during war, the enemy has no rights. When Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, he did it for all rebelling states. It's not just the soldiers who lost it, it was the civilians too (I hear many civilians were brutally killed during Sherman's March to the Sea-the campaign that one the war for the Union). Langford was helping Atlas who was a violent enemy of the state; that's treason. In response to your proposition that it was wrong for Ryan to turn off the air because of the truly innocent lives that would be lost: Ryan can not be blamed when innocent people die when he acts in retaliation. The blame goes to who started hostilities.

 

This is, of course, assuming Ryan's government was legitimate (I'm starting to question that; I just assumed it was because of the whole speech at the beginning).

[Ross Scott]

This is just my opinion, but for me, Bioshock was one of the most disappointing games I've ever played. Not BAD, but disappointing. It was disappointing for me on two levels. One, I saw the early beta or alpha tests of it (which incidentally had better graphics than the final version, but that's besides the point) along with commentary all the way through explaining what the player should expect from the game. It made it sound like there was this incredible semi-linear world that you could influence and make decisions that would affect the society of it. From a story, gameplay, and interaction perspective it sounded like some sort of hybrid between Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis, and maybe Gothic. I could be wrong, but I think remember them talking about a real moral grey area in the game. It obviously didn't turn out like this at all. In addition to being totally linear and not really having any choice on how you shape the society, the "grey area" was whether or not you should kill crying little girls or not. Yeah, that's deep. So it was disappointing in raising my expectations and is another reason I try to avoid all hype with a game or movie nowadays.

 

The second way it was disappointing was that it mimicked System Shock 2 to an audacious degree. I remember thinking "are they seriously going to have the EXACT SAME plot twist from SS2 of having the announcer be the bad guy after all? Ah. Yes, they are... wow Bioshock." In addition to mimicking it, it felt much less cohesive. Ghosts felt simply thrown in just because SS2 had them, splicers are the new hybrids, big daddies are the new rumblers. Nurses are the new midwives, medical bay and botany levels are still present etc. The motives of the characters seemed much less believable. The voice acting didn't sound as natural. It wasn't nearly as scary as SS2. So much of it felt like it was simply trying to copy SS2 in a different setting than to make something that made more a little more sense. In my opinion, SS2 is a superior game to Bioshock in every single way except graphics.

 

Finally, as for the Objectivism overtones, I think the waters got too muddied for me looking at everything else to get much value from that. Also it doesn't help that I think Objectivism is such an obviously flawed school of philosophy for applying it to most of reality. Showing its shortcomings to me feels like an expose as to why Santa Claus can't be found at the north pole. I think it only makes sense for especially competitive entrepreneurs or people or people trying to fast track in the business world. For everyone else it isn't really a practical or sustainable viewpoint and certainly isn't how I think of most of the world. I've tried reading Atlas Shrugged, but had to give up after about 80 pages because I found the dialogue downright painful to read (the rest seemed okay, but the dialogue killed it for me). Anyway, sorry if I'm torpedoing your thread, I just felt compelled to rant on Bioshock. I haven't played Bioshock 2.

 

EDIT:

 

To its credit, the intro to Bioshock was literally my favorite part of the game. I loved the plane crash and the discovery of the lighthouse and the sense of initial mystery created from it.

[Axeldeath]

I haven't play SS2 so I wouldn't know how much was copied from it, maybe that's why I found the experience so fresh.

[Michael Archer]

It obviously didn't turn out like this at all. In addition to being totally linear and not really having any choice on how you shape the society, the "grey area" was whether or not you should kill crying little girls or not. Yeah, that's deep. So it was disappointing in raising my expectations and is another reason I try to avoid all hype with a game or movie nowadays.

 

Yup: Mother Theresa or baby-eating, as Yahtzee put it. We'd all like a baby-eating Mother Theresa grey area.

 

The second way it was disappointing was that it mimicked System Shock 2 to an audacious degree. I remember thinking "are they seriously going to have the EXACT SAME plot twist from SS2 of having the announcer be the bad guy after all? Ah. Yes, they are... wow Bioshock."

 

I never played System Shock 2; maybe that's why I thought it was fresh and original.

 

Also it doesn't help that I think Objectivism is such an obviously flawed school of philosophy for applying it to most of reality.

 

No offense Ross, but I find that the only people who think Objectivism is flawed are people that don't fully understand it. I've heard "doesn't work with reality" before; Objectivism states that reality exists independent of reality and is objective. To say it doesn't work with reality is to say that reality is subjective and created by the human mind a.k.a. the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

 

I've tried reading Atlas Shrugged, but had to give up after about 80 pages because I found the dialogue downright painful to read (the rest seemed okay, but the dialogue killed it for me).

 

Really? The dialogue is one of my favorite parts. I love it when Dagny or Hank tell off the socialists and subjectivists. Or I hear there's this great speech at the end...don't spoil it!

[Arby]

To be fair, in the first read, the beginning is slow, and can kill it for some people. In hindsight, the beginning has some of my favorite parts.

[Arby]

 

No offense Ross, but I find that the only people who think Objectivism is flawed are people that don't fully understand it. I've heard "doesn't work with reality" before; Objectivism states that reality exists independent of reality and is objective. To say it doesn't work with reality is to say that reality is subjective and created by the human mind a.k.a. the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

 

Reality is independent of itself? lolwut? To make that clear, its best summed as Existence Exists, and that A is A.

[BTGBullseye]

Its best summed as Existence Exists, and that A is A.

Ah, but A can also be ա, një, bat, একটি, един, un, 一, en, een, isang, ein, ένα, એક, yon, एक, sebuah, ಒಂದು, на, o, ஒரு, ఒక, bir, ایک, אַ, or even 1. (1 on a base 26 numeric translation of the English language)

 

That's one interpretation of "A".

 

 

This is part of why Objectivism doesn't work in real life... It doesn't cover any of the different viewpoints, which are definitely there, and rarely the same between individuals. It also can't work when things are unknown.

[Michael Archer]

Hurp a Durp, I just noticed that typo now. Correction: "Reality exists independent of consciousness; that it's objective."

 

Bullseye, a characteristic defines its identity. The characteristic of A is that it is A. If you say "A doesn't have any characteristics" then A doesn't exist. If that's the case, how can you say "A doesn't have any characteristics?"

 

If A is not A, nothing can logically exist.

[BTGBullseye]

Hurp a Durp, I just noticed that typo now. Correction: "Reality exists independent of consciousness; that it's objective."

 

Bullseye, a characteristic defines its identity. The characteristic of A is that it is A. If you say "A doesn't have any characteristics" then A doesn't exist. If that's the case, how can you say "A doesn't have any characteristics?"

 

If A is not A, nothing can logically exist.

I didn't say "A" didn't exist, I just said that what it means is different to different people base on their viewpoints. Reality is different from different viewpoints, regardless of the fact that it is the same reality that is observed.

 

Objectivism says that someone can see reality from all viewpoints. (omniscient) Nothing has the ability to see everything from all viewpoints except God.

[Michael Archer]

Remember: reality exists independent of consciousness i.e. it doesn't matter if there are different viewpoints of "A". The Law of Identity says that "A is A" and that is it. Values can be ascribed to "A" by different people (people choose their own values), but it's fundamentally the same thing. Kind of like how 1=1+0. 1 and 1+0 are different statements, but they're fundamentally the same thing. A real life example would be our perception of a chair: You might say "A comfy place to rest and relax; this is a value I want to pursue" and I could say "A tool for promoting sloth and obesity; I do not want to pursue this." Although we've chosen different values, the objects we perceive are fundamentally the same thing i.e. the chair is a chair and not a table.

 

"A is A" is an axiom and in order to try to refute it, you actually have to agree to it. If you say "A is not A and is instead B" then you're accepting that something exists that is called "A" and the identity of "A" is that it is "A." The characteristics of "A" are all those characters you posted earlier, but they're all identical: they're all "A." Something that exists can only have one identity and the identity of "A" is that it is "A." It's a bit confusing, I'll admit.

 

Objectivism does not claim humans are omniscient; it claims that reality exists independent of consciousness and that existence exists ("A is A") and if it exists it's knowable. This does not mean we know everything, it just means that knowledge is possible but it has to be obtained through the use of reason.

[Ross Scott]

No offense Ross, but I find that the only people who think Objectivism is flawed are people that don't fully understand it. I've heard "doesn't work with reality" before; Objectivism states that reality exists independent of reality and is objective. To say it doesn't work with reality is to say that reality is subjective and created by the human mind a.k.a. the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Maybe my understanding of it is lacking, but in general, I understand it as an extension of rational egoism. By "applying to most of reality" I meant that I think there are many situations where Objectivism fails to explain a lot of human behavior and / or fails to account for some behaviors that would be considered immoral by almost any other standard.

 

Really? The dialogue is one of my favorite parts. I love it when Dagny or Hank tell off the socialists and subjectivists. Or I hear there's this great speech at the end...don't spoil it!

The immediate problem I had with the dialogue is all of the side characters seemed to be speaking like they existed SOLEY to be an opposing viewpoint that didn't sound very believable to me of how real people behave. My memory on it is too fuzzy to remember the specifics, but I remember thinking conversations like these would never take place between anyone who wasn't senile.

[BTGBullseye]

Objectivism does not claim humans are omniscient; it claims that reality exists independent of consciousness and that existence exists ("A is A") and if it exists it's knowable. This does not mean we know everything, it just means that knowledge is possible but it has to be obtained through the use of reason.

Then you're agreeing that humans can't physically be fully "objective" then? That's all there is to it, no one besides an omniscient being can truly be "objective", therefore it isn't realistic for any human to use Objectivism, or claim to be "objective" in any significant way.

[The Hamburglar]

While I thought BioShock was a good game with a pretty okay story (For this generation mind you) I felt it was immensely shallow in that it just felt like a glorified remake or System Shock 2, seriously, almost everything is there.

Wrench=Wrench.

Splicers=Hybrids

Plasmids=Psionic Powers

In both games the A.I Partner betrays you by revealing they are actually an enemy.

Tennenbaum sounds like she has the same voice actress as Delacroix, who was the other human in SS2 who was capable of survival, Tennenbaum is the other human in BioShock who is capable of survival.

Ghostly apparitions also make a star studded return.

Ryan creates Rapture and loses control of it = Shodan creates The Many and loses control of it.

Atlas reveals himself as Fontaine and you're taking part in a civil war between him and Ryan = Polito reveals herself to be Shodan and that you're talking part in a civil war between her and The Many.

The terrible final boss fight also makes a return.

 

I don't even know what Ken Levine is trying to do.

[Michael Archer]

Hamburglar, did you see Yahtzee's review?

 

"The psions are now plasmids, the hybrids are now splicers and the wrench is now...well, a wrench, but it's a different kind of wrench."

 

The immediate problem I had with the dialogue is all of the side characters seemed to be speaking like they existed SOLEY to be an opposing viewpoint that didn't sound very believable to me of how real people behave. My memory on it is too fuzzy to remember the specifics, but I remember thinking conversations like these would never take place between anyone who wasn't senile.

 

Yeah, I got that feeling too. The villains are incredibly shallow; all they say is, "Hey, look at me! I'm a socialist! Down with the capitalist pigs!"

 

By "applying to most of reality" I meant that I think there are many situations where Objectivism fails to explain a lot of human behavior and / or fails to account for some behaviors that would be considered immoral by almost any other standard.

 

What kind of behaviors would these be?

 

Then you're agreeing that humans can't physically be fully "objective" then? That's all there is to it, no one besides an omniscient being can truly be "objective", therefore it isn't realistic for any human to use Objectivism, or claim to be "objective" in any significant way.

 

That's not what I said. I said that Objectivism holds that reality is objective (your thoughts and feelings have no impact on reality) and that humans can view things objectively e.g. a human can point to an objective chair and say "I know for certain and objectively that this is a chair." They are not omniscient i.e. they don't know all things to the extent outside human cognition and outside of context since this is by definition impossible. They can know things, but knowledge is contextual.

[BTGBullseye]

humans can view things objectively e.g. a human can point to an objective chair and say "I know for certain and objectively that this is a chair."

Looking at what appears to be a chair, does not make it a chair. There are many ways to fool the senses, thereby removing all possibility of true objectivity.

 

Humans cannot be fully objective.

[The Hamburglar]

Hamburglar, did you see Yahtzee's review?

 

"The psions are now plasmids, the hybrids are now splicers and the wrench is now...well, a wrench, but it's a different kind of wrench."

 

 

I do love Yahtzee's reviews, but I felt that about BioShock when I first played it. It's still good mind you.

[Michael Archer]

Bullseye, everything in existence has an identity and only one identity. If it exists, it has an identity and therefore it can be known.

 

You're right that just because you look at a chair, does not make it a chair. Humans do not decide reality, rather they perceive it. So, if perception gathers conclusive evidence and that conclusive evidence says that it's a chair, then we are objectively certain that it is a chair, contextually. If you say, "it could be a sink and you're perceiving it incorrectly because you might be plugged into a machine that's distorting all your senses (i.e. The Matrix); you never know!", I would simply dismiss that as an arbitrary claim, since there's no way to prove it right or wrong; unless you provided evidence it did not function as a chair.

 

To say we can never be certain of anything is a blatant contradiction. This means that no knowledge is possible and assumes omniscience as the standard for knowledge (it's not). Also, if nobody can be certain of everything, that means everybody can be certain of anything they want--you can't refute that if you accept the first claim. It's a paradox.