Could Andrew Ryan have the right idea?

[me and my dog]

If you don't know what I mean,then go play Bioshock.

Now I don't mean that someone could build an underwater city that features giant men in diving suits protecting creepy little girls and people with super powers going insane.

Andrew Ryan built rapture because he wanted to get away from the constant threats from governments and the wars over religion. Of course Bioshock takes place during the cold war so the world was filled with corrupt governments in the form of both the soviet union and the USA at the time. He obviously wanted to get away from the constant threat of a nuclear holocaust.

He did not believe in the idea of being a part of a group. He believed that true power comes from the individual. Also one of the main reasons that rapture collapsed was because plasmids made everyone insane. If there were no plasmids, then rapture might have been able to thrive into something better.

The down sides were that Andrew Ryan did not really believe in morality and believed that the rich should be great and the poor should be forgotten about(which actually helped make rapture collapse).

I was thinking "what if Andrew Ryan's ideas of the individual be used in real life? Could they be used in real life and how would people probably react to them?

I am just looking for opinions so please KEEP IT CLEAN.

Also just so know, I am a christian. I don't personally believe that Andrew Ryan is our savior or anything like that. I just thought that his ideas made sense. So do you think that the ideas could help build society or do you think that we will end up just like rapture(minus the superpowers)?

 

[DustyDrB]

Ayn Rand.
Just so I'm the first one to say it.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

... Uh.

The entire point of the game was Ryan's (Rand's) naive idealism being crushed by the weight of human nature.

Rand was a moron because she hated communism and felt all semblance to it was wrong.

 

[Swarley]

Ayn Rand
Andrew Ryan

 

[JuryNelson]

Ayn Rand
Andrew Ryan

MINDBLOW

 

[me and my dog]

Ayn Rand.
Just so I'm the first one to say it.

Bloody Ninjas...

...yeah, OP. your late to the party. Go seek out Ayn Rand and the various discussions involving her, cos Andrew Ryan's character is pretty much based on her work. Andrew Ryan as a character, and the effects his beliefs have, are in effect just a discussion on Ayn Rand's ideas.

And in short, I would have to disagree. Leaving the poor behind while watching the rich grow richer is kind of hard to avoid with this kind of thinking. it also, to me, seems to be a very primal, selfish and fairly backward way of thinking.

Well I just assumed that most of the gaming community had never heard of atlas shrugged(unless they read the wiki) or did not know who Ayn Rand is. So I did not mention it.Especially since the topic was bioshock, not ayn rands works. There were not any underwater cities or superpowers in atlas shrugged.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

Well I just assumed that most of the gaming community had never heard of atlas shrugged(unless they read the wiki) or did not know who Ayn Rand. So I did not mention it.

Maybe in '07. Now you can't mention anything about bioshock without someone launching into an anti-rand diatribe.

 

[Daveman]

Considering how well it worked out for him... I'm going to go with NO.

 

[JuryNelson]

He believed that true power comes from the individual. Also one of the main reasons that rapture collapsed was because plasmids made everyone insane. If there were no plasmids, then rapture might have been able to thrive into something better.

Yeah, dude. You really need to read Ayn Rand.

It all seems like a really good idea when you're out of high school and trying to fit in, and the idea that maybe the world is just wrong is incredibly appealing, but it's also massively reductive.

Ayn Rand's philosophy?on which Andrew Ryan's philosophy is based?was a reaction to communism, and bore no real relation to reality. That's why all her characters say and do exactly what they're thinking all the time. They aren't characters, they're allegory.

Think tanks do exist, though, where the best & the brightest just come up with ideas. But it should also be said that Rand loved the hell out of capitalism. So if you are awesome at something, just go be awesome at it.

But no, Andrew Ryan didn't really have the right idea, because he wanted to let crazy people go beyond the people who were telling them they were crazy.

That and society is not a bunch of individuals. Society is society and behaves differently than individual interests. A person is smart, rational, generous, capable of making decisions and weighing risks. People are stupid, short-sighted and massively selfish.

 

[JuryNelson]

Especially since the topic was bioshock, not ayn rands works. There were not any underwater cities or superpowers in atlas shrugged.

Except you specifically said you didn't mean the underwater city or the superpowers.
So?

 

[me and my dog]

He believed that true power comes from the individual. Also one of the main reasons that rapture collapsed was because plasmids made everyone insane. If there were no plasmids, then rapture might have been able to thrive into something better.

Yeah, dude. You really need to read Ayn Rand.

It all seems like a really good idea when you're out of high school and trying to fit in, and the idea that maybe the world is just wrong is incredibly appealing, but it's also massively reductive.

Ayn Rand's philosophy?on which Andrew Ryan's philosophy is based?was a reaction to communism, and bore no real relation to reality. That's why all her characters say and do exactly what they're thinking all the time. They aren't characters, they're allegory.

Think tanks do exist, though, where the best & the brightest just come up with ideas. But it should also be said that Rand loved the hell out of capitalism. So if you are awesome at something, just go be awesome at it.

But no, Andrew Ryan didn't really have the right idea, because he wanted to let crazy people go beyond the people who were telling them they were crazy.

That and society is not a bunch of individuals. Society is society and behaves differently than individual interests. A person is smart, rational, generous, capable of making decisions and weighing risks. People are stupid, short-sighted and massively selfish.

Well the topic was not whether Ayn Rands got the better. It was if Andrew Ryan has got the better idea. I just said bioshock instead of Ayn rand because this is a gaming website. Also more people have probably heard of Bioshock than atlas shrugged.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

That and society is not a bunch of individuals. Society is society and behaves differently than individual interests. A person is smart, rational, generous, capable of making decisions and weighing risks. People are stupid, short-sighted and massively selfish.

Thats a nice quote, but its not without flaws. Its true because the only way to accurately represent the interests of more than a single person is to reduce the complexity of their interests until no conflicts remain.

Society is nothing more than the sum of it's parts, but government can't operate on that level. Thus it must redefine society in a small number of broad, manageable strokes.

 

[me and my dog]

Especially since the topic was bioshock, not ayn rands works. There were not any underwater cities or superpowers in atlas shrugged.

Except you specifically said you didn't mean the underwater city or the superpowers.
So?

What I meant was the situation was different than the one in atlas shrugged. Even if the philosophy was the same, the setting is still completely different. Also this is a game website so that is why I talked about Bioshock. Most people have probably heard of bioshock than they have ayn rand. Also the topic was not about bioshock or Ayn rand. It was about how would they work in real life today.

 

[Talvi]

The original idea of a city which isn't governed by religion, democracy or monarchy is good however it does throw up a series of complications such as; if this city isn't ruled by a form of government, how can it truly function? This, unfortunately, resulted in Rapture's demise with the experimentation of genetics which, if you listen to majority of audio diaries, becomes a form of sick obsession. In short, no, Andrew Ryan's idea wasn't brilliant and it ended up royally messing up for him as (spoiler) he's killed by his own son.

I love this game. Bioshock 2 was an abomination

 

[Cynical skeptic]

No, Ayn Rand ideas are flawed and would not function, they are horrifying in implementation and worse in effect. You would see the end of any form of freedom of creation, why? here is why

I am super company A, I live in a world where I have no checks
You are tiny company B, who wants to make a new awsome product vastly better then any thing I can make.
I have all the money in the world
You have a great idea
I get all Standerd Oil on your ass and shut you down at every corner
Your awsome product of win, never exists, my lame product of shat, contintues to be the only player because it got in at the right time to dominate early.

AYN RAND IS NOT A POLITICAL GOD, JUST A GREEDY PRICK

...

Thats funny, because your example is the first half of Atlas Shrugged. Guy named Rearden makes a new form of metal thats twice as strong and half the weight of steel. His every attempt at application gets blocked and undermined by the large corporations with tons of government inroads this material would eradicate. To be clear, Rearden is the good guy in his situation. After that it devolves into gobbeldygook, but hey, no one is perfect.

 

[JuryNelson]

Especially since the topic was bioshock, not ayn rands works. There were not any underwater cities or superpowers in atlas shrugged.

Except you specifically said you didn't mean the underwater city or the superpowers.
So?

What I meant was the situation was different than the one in atlas shrugged. Even if the philosophy was the same, the setting is still completely different. Also this is a game website so that is why I talked about Bioshock. Most people have probably heard of bioshock than they have ayn rand. Also the topic was not about bioshock or Ayn rand. It was about how would they work in real life today.

Well, okay then...

It all seems like a really good idea when you're out of high school and trying to fit in, and the idea that maybe the world is just wrong is incredibly appealing, but it's also massively reductive.

Andrew Ryan's philosophywas a reaction to censorship, and bore no real relation to reality. That's why all his allies say and do exactly what they're thinking all the time. They aren't characters, they're allegory.

Think tanks do exist, though, where the best & the brightest just come up with ideas. But it should also be said that Ryan loved the hell out of capitalism. So if you are awesome at something, just go be awesome at it.

But no, Andrew Ryan didn't really have the right idea, because he wanted to let crazy people go beyond the people who were telling them they were crazy.

That and society is not a bunch of individuals. Society is society and behaves differently than individual interests. A person is smart, rational, generous, capable of making decisions and weighing risks. People are stupid, short-sighted and massively selfish.


If you mean the situation of putting people who are good at something together and letting them work, that happens all the time. It's called a supergroup. Or a think tank. Or a business.

 

[JuryNelson]

That and society is not a bunch of individuals. Society is society and behaves differently than individual interests. A person is smart, rational, generous, capable of making decisions and weighing risks. People are stupid, short-sighted and massively selfish.

Thats a nice quote, but its not without flaws. Its true because the only way to accurately represent the interests of more than a single person is to reduce the complexity of their interests until no conflicts remain.

Society is nothing more than the sum of it's parts, but government can't operate on that level. Thus it must redefine society in a small number of broad, manageable strokes.

There's a book by, I think, Howard Bloom (been a while since I read it) called the Lucifer Principle. He collects a bunch of other people's work, so I don't think it's all his ideas, but it's all about the Superorganism, and how, when humans get together in groups, the group becomes, if not more than, then something other than the sum of its parts.

Call it groupthink, call it mob mentality, call it the superorganism. It's a very functionalist perspective, but things don't work the way they should work, they work the way they WORK.

And that, I think, is the problem with Rand/Ryan's "Let's put all the most individual of individuals together and screw everybody else." New hierarchies would emerge, and all those self-interests would make the halls a noisy place.