BioShock recently celebrated its 15th anniversary. Below, we take a closer look at how Rapture’s iconic setting reflects real-world liberal philosophy.
BioShock’s Rapture always felt like someone else’s dream from the start. You don’t always have a lighthouse, but most of the time you want your city to serve your interests and needs.
Libertarians have misunderstood society’s problems and tried to apply top-down thinking to new settlements in remote areas, far from government rules and regulations. It’s easy to do, but the compromises that come with restricted individual freedoms are often part of what makes society the place people want it to be.
After all, when people are completely free and left only to their own decisions and desires, they are not looked after by anyone and are not responsible, so at that point you are really part of something. Can you create something truly detached from everything without leaving it all? Or will it just be less than what you had in the first place? A man with ideas and visions that are likely to hurt the group.
Fifteen years ago, BioShock flooded the world with the magic, wonder, and horror of what an isolated city built with absolute personal freedom in mind might look like. Everything from the art they created to the science they explored was subject to this freedom, for better or worse. And in the process, Andrew Ryan’s Rapture went further than any real attempt to make a city successful either below or above water.
Irrational Games has never been shy about exploring the horrors of men left alone with their own ideas and devices, but the studio also needs to embellish some pieces to make a good video game. was.
Bioshock goes even further, and what happens when remote settlements, influenced and driven by objectivism and the ideals of individuals like Ayn Rand, take off and are completely isolated from the rest of the world? BioShock explored how citizens behave when their political and/or philosophical ideas and dreams are repressed, and how business behaves when they are only encouraged but not actually regulated. We investigated how the big names in the world act.
It’s a big-budget video game, so it won’t be long before people can shoot lightning blasts, fire bands, or bee swarms out of their hands, but Irrational Games also We’ve pushed back the corners of the game. The more realistic impact of holding belief systems about what is actually happening and the people affected by it. The cities of Rapture allowed the ideas and motivations of landlords and shareholders to dominate everyday humans. (Can you imagine?!)
Still, fictional fascist aquariums have more in common with sea colonization attempts than I thought, and I’m not talking plumbing or good music.
Irrational Games gave us a glimpse of minarchism, a form of libertarianism that has been at work for some time in Rapture, but the player’s experience begins in the middle of the ocean. From there, they venture into an isolated lighthouse, a ruined underwater city torn to tatters by civil war, and the very two things that drove him to the sea, the titles of both God and King, essentially. Found the man holding, but was now taking him across the sea.
Rapture’s most basic texts are entirely Andrew Ryan’s monologues, presenting the idea of Rapture as a city, thinking of the world as Ryan, the city’s founder and eventual ruler, and It is used to market to the viewers.
The player character hears a recording of Ryan’s now-famous quote as he makes his way under the lighthouse via a small submarine pod, but below lies the surface ocean. They don’t realize that they can be more dangerous than waves.
“I’m Andrew Ryan. I’m here to ask you a question. A man doesn’t deserve to sweat his forehead? ‘No!’ I’m saying ‘No! ‘It belongs to God,’ says the Vatican man. ‘No! ‘ says a Moscow man, ‘It belongs to everyone. I rejected those answers; instead I chose another. I chose the impossible. A city where men are not bound by petty morals, and great men are not bound by small things! And with a sweat on your brow, Rapture can be your city too. ”
Andrew Ryan was the founder of Rapture, and his ideas and influence, and even the reason he became disillusioned with the world, weren’t all that different from the most prominent real-life libertarian sea settlers.
Ryan fled to the United States as a boy after being forced to flee his native Russia to escape political violence. He made a lot of money in several businesses, especially oil, but after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policy began aimed directly at helping the poor, among other political mandates, His devotion to America turned into disillusionment.
Ryan believed that socialism and collectivism were the great evils afflicting the country. America’s use of atomic bombs against Japan during World War II proved to be too much, but not for the reasons you might think. was the catalyst to start working on an underwater utopia, but mainly because it raised issues with countries that use science and technology as weapons in warfare, and they had no problem raising issues with war crimes. .
The beginnings of the real-life Republic of Minerva aren’t too far off from the beginnings of Rapture, and its main founders aren’t all that similar to Ryan either.Michael Oliver was saved by Allied Forces During the death march from Dachau, one of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. He immigrated to the United States and amassed wealth in his various business ventures, including land development companies and the sale of gold and silver coins.
Like Ryan, Oliver was shaken by the direction of the United States. He also shared a belief with Ryan that America was doing too much to help the poor with its social welfare programs, disputing what he saw as a war against the free enterprise system. .
By 1968, Oliver had self-published a book entitled A New Constitution for a New Nation, about his own constitution and how his liberal society would function without a government that went too far. showed the idea of Like Ryan, his beliefs reflected the objectivism and property rights of Ayn Rand and other prominent libertarians of his time.
His book, thanks to additional support and investment from other wealthy people who share his beliefs and vision, has brought him to the attention and facilitated the establishment of the Ocean Life Research Foundation. The purpose of this organization is easier said than done. It is to create an autonomous country independent from the United States and all other nations. a free and autonomous nation.
The open ocean felt like the perfect place for him. he needed to find a way to make it happen.
By 1971, he and other investors were pouring large amounts of sand over the shallow waters of Minerva Reef. Their plan, too, was to fill the new utopia with like-minded people. In fact, groups they disagree with, such as the collectivists despised by Andrew Ryan, Republic of Minerva.
Less than a year later, the settlers were driven out Tonga, A nearby Polynesian island that actually had sufficient legal rights in the area to do so. 8 feet above sea level, down the drain, Oliver began minting and selling currency for his fake country. It could be purchased with real money and was all to help raise money, but raising money didn’t solve his one key problem of Minerva’s failure. It was that the region belonged to an existing country.
There have been several small attempts to recapture the failed dreams of the Republic of Minerva, but all hope has been washed away at sea. Evidence is the last piece of leftover currency, often for sale on eBay. Much more than it ever was worth.
of Seasteading Institute With some differences, it follows in the footsteps of the Republic of Minerva. The organization was founded by software engineer and political economy theorist Patri Friedman and is financially backed by the co-founders of PayPal. peter teal. The organization’s website states that it believes in creating floating cities that “enable the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas about how to coexist.”
The website also says: “Enrich the poor, cure the sick, feed the hungry, clean the air, restore the oceans, live in harmony with nature, keep the world running sustainably and stop fighting.” ‘ said.
The organization’s ultimate goal now seems to be to experiment with floating cities that bubble over and next to other cities. This is the city where 2013’s BioShock Infinite, the sequel to BioShock, floats high above the clouds.
The Seasteading Institute has yet to reach BioShock Infinite’s cloud heights, aiming instead for resorts and residences. it is off the coastFreedman says the goal is both to build new settlements that can exist alongside other cities and to disrupt and influence existing governments.
This has been difficult and progress has been slow, as the Seasteading Institute’s goals do not really align with existing governments or countries. This is made difficult as the organization requires a great deal of support from other countries to get off the ground, giving it a parasitic dynamic with existing societies and governments.
That said, given the situation in BioShock Infinite’s floating city of Columbia, this is probably not a bad thing. In fact, we’ve seen how it went. More than once. over and over again. And I’ve also seen breadboys. I love breadboys.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the quest to colonize the oceans will continue as the climate crisis worsens and the wealthy continue to look for solutions that only they can think of and benefit from. Let’s hope that something will come out of the people screaming and shooting guns as the reefs are sanded down and civil wars continue unabated.
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