"No gods or kings, only man"

[nixubaby]

Having just played through the first Bioshock and half of the second one, an interesting thought crossed my mind. Would Andrew Ryans "utopia" work in real life? The idea of a society separate from outside politics and economy. A city with no religion. But most of all a community in wich everyone can rise to their full potential without the restriction of ethical dilemmas.
Might sound good in theory, but how about in practise? share your thoughts!

 

[Lullabye]

Nuh-uhn. No way. Notta. Nope. Never.
People are assholes. Someone's bound to fuck it up. You know what I say is true.

 

[TheNamlessGuy]

DELETED

 

[reg42]

Nope. No way. It's like communism; great on paper, not so great in practice.

 

[CK76]

Only if it was voluntary and small and everyone was really committed and anyone not could leave (such as offspring).

Be hard to sustain.

 

[Spoonius]

No. Without guidelines to govern their actions, a person becomes unrestricted, and thus, all their forbidden desire is unleashed, and there is nothing to ensure their cooperation with other human beings on any ethical, legal or sociocultural level.

The city would become a giant tomb.

 

[Quad08]

Nothing but idealistic nonsense

 

[Woodsey]

Without religion? Yes.

Without ethics? No. Not at all.

You can't give a person that much power, because they won't be able to stop.

 

[Mother Yeti]

I take it you are not familiar with the works of Ayn Rand.

 

[Daveman]

If it didn't work in the game world I doubt it'd work in the real, more sane world.

 

[nixubaby]

Nope. No way. It's like communism; great on paper, not so great in practice.

Don´t get me wrong, I am not very keen on turning to communism but the main cause of it failing in history has mostly been due poor and corrupt leadership.

 

[Three Eyed Cyclops]

I suggest if that idea intrigued you, then you should read Atlas Shrug by Ayn Rand. She is the figure head of this ideology.

OT: Although at first thought it seems to be a great idea, after much thought, most people find the idea to be bad. IMO I don't think it will work. I think the only way for society to operate is within a common set of ethics that place some limitations on personal freedoms.

 

[TetsuoKaneda]

People suck, it's true. It'd have to be a very small, sustained community...think no more than a hundred at the most. And even then, you'd have to make sure they weren't dedicated to ruining the dream, as that'd get people against you quick. But overall, it wouldn't collapse into a tomb like everyone is thinking...I mean, hell, there are lawless communities based on BF Skinner's work that still exist to this day...

 

[PDizzle418]

here's was the problem with Ryan's ideal, it wasn't communism it was capitalism to the most extreme without any government or any help.

Playing through the second one Ryan is upset about soup kitchens and how Lamb is helping those who are down on their luck because it goes against his ideal.

To Ryan business success is everything and he was among the most successful and when people began to out do him and get more support than him, he got confused and he got mad. He thought that everyone in rapture shared his idea of unrelenting capitalism. Unfortunately for every company that succeeds there are many that fail and fall by the wayside and Ryan was so good at what he did that he destroy a lot of competition. Also with the onset of Adam many people turned into criminals and addicts causing an already faltering society to finally break and implode on itself.

Ideally everyone would have their own business and it would have some healthy competition. But when you compete against Ryan, who is an all or nothing sort of guy people got driven out of business and they got bitter.

So if Ryan had been able to regulate himself it may have succeeded more, and if he had been a bit of a philanthropist people would have seen him as the good guy not the bad guy they tried to escape by coming to rapture in the first place.

 

[reg42]

Nope. No way. It's like communism; great on paper, not so great in practice.

Don´t get me wrong, I am not very keen on turning to communism but the main cause of it failing in history has mostly been due poor and corrupt leadership.

Exactly. We as a people cannot all be equal; I just don't think it's possible.

 

[Sir Strange Of The House Lycan]

It would be the land of do as you please.
But since human nature makes us assholes,the land of do as you please would be more fucked up then "_____"*
Then again I have a friend who may disagree with me.
I may just go get him if he doesn't arrive soon.

[sup]*Fill in something disturbing here[/sup]

 

[Doitpow]

I take it you are not familiar with the works of Ayn Rand.

The widely discredited-openly bitter about bitter about her birthplace-ridiculed by the entire academic world for over half a century-based on fundamental misunderstandings about human cognition Ayn Rand? or a different one?

It's weird how popular objectivism has become in the wake of Bioshock. Especially as it was a game about it's flaws. It's like nationalism become popular in the wake of medal of honor.

 

[SeanTheSheep]

There's a possibility of it working, but you'd have to think every part through a lot, and then have volunteers who are dedicated to the experiment fully.

It was mainly an intelligent way of adding in a clever backstory that gives us our setting in an interesting environment.

 

[tkioz]

Utopia can not work, utopia will never work without altering the basic human condition to the point where you are no long human. Utopia literally means nowhere, even the guy that came up with the concept didn't think it could work.

I could spend a day and a half arguing my points, I have spent a lot of time thinking about it in the past, yes I am a sad git, but it basically boils down to people are dicks, and no that's not something we can change, we need to be dicks for the world to work, we need to want, we need to desire, if we weren't dicks we'd of never killed off all the other sub-human races and crawled out of the jungle.

 

[tkioz]

Nope. No way. It's like communism; great on paper, not so great in practice.

Actually communism has never been fully tested, if I recall correctly the part where it all went tits up has been the early middle part of communism, the part where everyone is under the jackboot, later on comes the good communism, at least in theory.

Again the problem with communism is people are dicks.