| | I am not trying to say that BioShock is a bad game. What I am saying is that the game does deride Objectivism. Evidence points to that whether any of us love or hate the game, or whether any of us love or hate Objectivism. Whether you find that bad is up to you.
To say that the game doesn't criticize Objectivism, but instead criticizes genetic engineering, doesn't pan out.
When we say that the game doesn't bash Objectivism, I think we could benefit from clarifying what we mean by that.
If a game could only be considered "Objectivism-bashing" if its primary intent was to deride Objectivism, then it is not "Objectivism-bashing." Ken Levine's main intention was to create a shooting game. The vilification of Objectivism was an afterthought.
Further, if the game could only be "Objectivism-bashing" if it said, "You shouldn't read Ayn Rand's books," then it would not be "Objectivism-bashing." Ken Levine is fine with your reading all of Ayn Rand's books.
However, the game does deliberately paint Objectivism in a negative light.
Also, the vilification of technological progress does contradict Objectivism. There's nothing inherently bad about using genetics to play God with Mother Nature, when you aren't violating anyone else's rights to life, liberty, and private property. Objectivism is largely pro-technology, and it is very difficult to find an Objectivist who shares the fears that environmentalists and certain evangelical Christians have about biotechnology, embryonic stem cell research, germline genetic engineering, and therapeutic human cloning.
Most significantly, the game's theme seems to revolve around hubris, much like Oedipus's hubris.
Oedipus Rex is the opposite of a Horatio Alger story. Oedipus is basically a Horatio Alger hero in the sense that he wants to be responsible for himself and take charge of his own fate. But for him to simply take individual responsibility and pride himself upon it is sinful, and he has to be smote by higher powers. There is a similar theme in the stories of Phaeton, Icarus, and Arachne.
And note that Ayn Rand mentioned Phaeton, Icarus, and Aranchne, and she sided with all of them.
Edgar Cayce's telling of the Atlantis story is not only similar in theme to BioShock, but similar to Oedipus Rex. Cayce said that the people of Atlantis were sophisticated with their technology, and it made them arrogant. And so their technology eventually sowed the seeds of their destruction, and caused the continent to sink beneath the ocean.
Frankenstein has that theme, wherein Dr. Frankenstein has good intentions, but he is so arrogant in his single-minded goal of creating progress for mankind that his achievement eventually turns against him and becomes his undoing. He is smote, just like Oedipus and Icarus.
And then we come to BioShock. Andrew Ryan isn't trying to cheat anyone in the beginning. He's idealistic like Victor Frankenstein. But there is much hubris in his idealism, and so his achievement turns against him, and his glorious enterprise becomes the source of his humiliation. He is smote like Oedipus and Dr. Frankenstein before him. And he's so hubristic that he's unrepentant to the very end.
Every "rise and fall" story of some self-made man, like Citizen Kane, is in the anti-Horatio Alger, Oedipus tradition. The same goes for all of these Frankenstein stories about the misguided businessman whose corporation accidentally creates a monster that kills everyone.
That's the traditional, fatalistic, pessimistic view.
Ayn Rand, by contrast, sides with the Horatio Alger view. She has that can-do attitude, where you can aim for the stars, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and -- unlike Oedipus, Dr. Frankenstein, and Andrew Ryan -- actually succeed in the end. Isn't it nice to see the ambitious, trailblazing inventor win for a change? That's what we see in the victory of a Howard Roark and a Hank Rearden. :-)
And why does Andrew Ryan suffer from all this hubris in the first place? It's because of his unshakable devotion to an ideology that caricatures Objectivism.
The game isn't "anti-Objectivist" in the sense that it is telling you not to read Objectivist books. It is "anti-Objectivist" in the sense that the idealism that makes so many people passionate about Objectivism, is subjected to ridicule.
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