Hello and welcome to Tea ‘n History, with your hostess, Felicia Angel.
Now, I will admit to being a fan of Keith Olbermann, who is a semi-far left journalist and sports journalist who is now on Al Gore’s Current TV, still keeping the old MSNBC show name of “Countdown”. Granted, I got into the show when I came home, and I don’t always agree with everything he says, but it can be fun to watch.
A number of weeks ago (August 17th), Olbermann reported on his “Worst Persons” segment about PayPal founder Peter Thiel and his donation of $1.25 billion to a group called the Seasteading Institute, a group who promote “the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities” and “enabling innovations with new political and social systems”.
Being a minor-gamer, the first time I heard of seasteading, I thought of a game known as Bioshock. Trust me, this leads into a long circle of logic that, sadly, Olbermann didn’t see…though considering he’s only a year or so on Twitter, I’d say he probably hasn’t heard of the game.
First, we’ll deal with where the idea of Bioshock comes from, for those who don’t know, which is a book known as Atlas Shrugged. Written by Ayn Rand and considered her opus, as well as debated on if it’s a good book or not (I’m reading it currently, and am in the ‘meh’ category), Atlas Shrugged deals with a universe where many of the top innovators and thinkers, as well as the few capitalists as we think of them (be it for good or ill) are either disappearing, attempting to keep their creativity afloat, or just giving up. With the loss of jobs from disappearances of both employers and, sadly, their loss of actual places to work. The main focus is on a woman named Dagney Taggert, one of two children who inherited Taggert Railways, and who is perhaps the only competent person in the entire book (in my opinion, and I’m a bit biased). Dagney is helped by another industrialist, Rearden, who’s created a new type of metal that she wants for her railroad but, due to various attempts to make things “better for the community”, though it’s apparent this is only for a few people, both go on the defensive. Throughout the novel is a sort of mystery over a man named John Galt, the phrase “Who is John Galt?” now becoming a sort of meme that indicates people are uncertain what’s right or wrong or even what’s best for them.
The main point of the book is a 60-page monologue (that I haven’t gotten to but I hear it’s about that long) on a philosophy created by Rand called “Objectivism”, which states that “human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)), as well as promoting the pursuit of only your own happiness and a laissez faire capitalism. For those who don’t know what laissez faire capitalism is, picture your job. Now, picture that your boss can pay you whatever he wants, including lower then minimum-wage, and there is no such thing as unions, worker’s comp, safety instructions, minimal working hours, or anything else. If you see a need and are able to get a loan for a new factory, you too can engage in this type of behavior, but for now, you’re stuck working 16 hours a DAY and having money cut from your paycheck if you fall asleep on the job, take too long to eat lunch, get hurt, or take a break so you can go to the bathroom.
It’s a good and bad thing. Good in that it promotes ideas as needed and creates new markets and items for consumption, bad because most don’t like regulations of business.
This brings us to Bioshock.
Released by 2K Boston (now Irrational Games) in 2007 for the XBox 360, and later released in 2008 for the PS3 by Digital Extremes and in 2009 for the Mac OS by Feral Interactives, BioShock took away so many awards and good reviews when it came out that it’s considered a must-own. The first-person shooter (FPS, for those who aren’t savvy), revolves around the main character entering a world created by a man named Andrew Ryan which holds the objectivist/libertarian viewpoint of no regulation of business, art, or science. When you reach the underwater city, situated in the North Atlantic, you soon realize something is very wrong and, in classic form that many gamers know, you go in to mess up whatever there is and to help the few survivors by killing the dangerous ones.
The story itself is full of twists that should not be spoiled (though probably are, we are on the internet) but the basis is you, through the character of Jack, slowly learn what went wrong in this underwater city called Rapture. The two small spoilers I’ll give are two people you either help or go up against: the first, Dr. Steinman, speaks often of his “goddess” and wishes to see what he can do as a surgeon. This mostly means he’ll kill most of his “subjects” while trying to create a new beauty, a la a Cubist painter. In other words, not a nice man.
The next is an artist, Cohen, who will give you change for a $10 with three $3 and a dollar, and who’s idea of ‘art’ would make Jeffrey Dalmer a bit happy. He wants you to help him with his newest piece of art, which requires you to kill his old protogees and bring back pieces.
Now, back to our seasteading and Peter Thiel. Thiel’s idea is to set up a libertarian utopia, hence his donations over the years. He even states he was inspired by Atlas Shrugged. Considering also that one article says the idea is to “start from scratch–free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place” for these floating islands (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html), some people would raise objections due to various points, which include the sea-cities being a crackpot idea, the lack of urban planning, and even with some residents of San Francisco who live on the water or waterfront “wishing them luck” and pointing out that “it’s not always easy” (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/01/MN1T1JB0FJ.DTL&tsp=1). The founder and many of those who buy into the seasteading feel they should have a “consumer-oriented” place, as well as wanting to have either a libertarian or objectivist viewpoint for their new ‘countries’. He appeared as part of Olbermann’s “Worst Persons” due to wanting to create the libertarian “utopia” and with Olbermann objecting due to the point that most of the ideals of many libertarians and objectivists don’t, to him, seem realistic. Also, they would apparently be in “Doctor Strangelove”… Again, I don’t always agree with him.
So yes, sometimes the truth is stranger then fiction, and if I have to go and save one of those platforms from itself, I and the rest of the gaming community will probably either find that very funny, or very sad.
Or both.
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