Online Escapism

The internet is regularly used as a retreat away from the trials and annoyances of offline life, a realm of comparative pleasure and, sometimes, safety.  This can lead to statements contrasting the internet with reality, as if online activities exist independent of reality itself.  It may even seem like a trivial thing to correct, but random, casual statements like this can actually be connected to a major misunderstanding of what exactly makes something a part of reality.  When stupid comments are tolerated, stupidity is what is ultimately tolerated.

If the internet exists, it is by necessity a part of reality, as reality encompasses everything that is true and everything that exists.  Therefore, it cannot be true that the internet is somehow separate from reality, given that the internet can actually be accessed from a plethora of electronic devices.  It must either be something real or something that is at least really part of human perceptions of reality.  It can be used to temporarily find relief from personal problems, certainly, but the internet could not be accessible outside of what is real--at least a real part of human experiences.

Perceptions themselves, even when they are not connected with aspects of reality beyond the perceptions, are still a real part of conscious experience and therefore are real, after all!  It follows that even if one's sensory perceptions of the external world do not represent the true nature of the external world (an example would be if it turned out to be true that an object that is being looked at doesn't truly exist and is only a visual hallucination or mental construct), the internet is still a part of the world one can perceive, and it is thus not something wholly separate from reality.

Of course it is possible to forsake offline responsibilities and pursuits for the sake of online escapism, yet this is far from the internet being a portal through which users escape reality by going into another part of reality (any attempt to say that anything outside of reality exists is doomed for immediate philosophical failure).  There is no such thing as something that can be experienced that is beyond the scope of reality itself, even if the only part of reality involved is the reality of subjective sensory perceptions.  Ideas contrary to this would not be uttered or even privately held to if adherence to rationalism was widespread.

Escapism through the internet, which is merely one of many ways the internet can be useful, is only possible if the internet is at least part of the reality of our sensory perceptions.  In one sense, this might be and hopefully is obvious even to many non-rationalists, but common language suggests that certain people do actually believe that there is a distinction between the internet and the rest of reality.  Perhaps some people who use such phrases do not truly mean something so asinine, but imprecise language can be a direct indicator of a problematic belief.

The Irrationality Of Pursuing Peace At All Costs

It is paradoxically the case that pursuing peace at the expense of all else can easily result in the very thing that a person hoped to steer away from.  There are many destructive outcomes that are inevitable or likely when peace is regarded more highly than truth, but some of them defeat the entire purpose of trying to appease others in the first place.  Of course, it is pointless to regard truth, the thing that drives so much interpersonal conflict in one form or another, as secondary to tranquility whether or not it can be self-defeating, and there are still other reasons to criticize a total fixation on peace.

Those who seek peace for its own sake are hypocrites if they make any exceptions to this goal, but at best their drive for the absence of conflict will result in trivializing problems, tolerating false ideologies, or making positive assumptions about others.  There is nothing irrational about preferring peace to conflict, but it is inherently irrational to prioritize peace over rationality and remain silent when people live as if there is nothing more authoritative than their own desires.  Moreover, a lack of alignment with truth is not the only side effect when peace is exalted above all else.

Not only is it philosophically invalid to ever prioritize anything over truth, as to sidestep or trivialize truth is self-refuting (one could only be valid in attacking or ignoring truth if one was backed by a true ideology), but it is also counterproductive to group unity itself to seek peace for the mere sake of peace.  When people either do not acknowledge genuine relational problems or refuse to do anything to resolve them lest peace be disrupted, everyone involved is in a situation that now has a higher chance of exploding later on.

Thus, disunity becomes a greater probability when relational and ideological problems are set aside in order to foster a superficial, misleading sense of tranquility.  Of course, many people who seek peace without concern for what the peace is based around are not rational enough to reason this out.  They are too focused on maintaining meaningless peace to bother looking to reason rather than their own desire for conflict to cease.  If they did, they might realize that some means of avoiding conflict only make it more likely in the future.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

The Philosophical Usefulness Of Leisure

Some things are casually dismissed as if they are antithetical to philosophy despite the fact that they are just other parts of reality to dissect.  Leisure, while it is clearly less central to the nature of human existence than many other existential and spiritual issues, still plays a role in life that can be stabilizing, rejuvenating, and inspiring.  Although leisure is on some level less philosophically intensive than other subjects, how a person enjoys leisure is not separated from their worldview.

After all, each person carries their worldview into whatever leisurely activity they choose to participate in.  A rationalistic Christian will not cease to be a rationalistic Christian if they watch a lighthearted film, and the same is true if that person engages in some other relatively trivial activity.  Rest and the leisure it can provide are not enemies of thorough, sound intellectualism.  If anything, leisure provides people with an entire category of concepts and experiences that themselves need to be understood, all while allowing the psychologically or physically weary an opportunity to recharge.

Of course, some people not only naturally think about explicitly philosophical matters no matter what they are doing in a given moment, but they also enjoy doing so and feel empowered by it.  These people carry their worldviews into whatever they do in an additional sense: they are consciously reflecting on, analyzing, or revisiting philosophical concepts of some kind all throughout their day.  It takes little to no effort for them to constantly focus on matters of reality and worldview.

Not everyone has this characteristic, and not everyone has to have it.  It is not a moral fault to not possess it.  However, all should be prepared to consider an important concept wherever it might be brought up.  If a situation demands that one contemplate an unexpected experience or any philosophical issues directly associated with it, leisure needs to be postponed.  Philosophical reflection is more important thing than personal relaxation, after all--even though the two are by no means mutually exclusive.

The Errors Of Mere Christianity (Part 4)

The first three posts in this series have refuted some of C.S. Lewis's most popular stances on moral epistemology in the first parts of Mere Christianity, a trend that will continue here.  As usual, Lewis stops short of the true nuance of reality on either an epistemological or metaphysical level, whether it comes to the nature of reason, the cosmos, the uncaused cause, or Christian morality.  Yes, he towers above the petty evangelical churchgoers who so zealously invoke his name, but this does not make him a sound philosopher.  It means that the evangelical community, including evangelicals who at least somewhat care about apologetics and broader philosophy, is even more attached to logical fallacies than Lewis was.

Consider the following set of claims in Mere Christianity.  For the context of the following quote, see parts one, two, and three.  These statements would fit in right alongside evangelical assumptions about moral knowledge, but there are a number of clear, major errors.


"Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness.  It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness.  It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with the Power--it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.  When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor." (31-32)


No one "knows" if they are morally diseased outside the context of a moralistic sort of theism, and proving the uncaused cause exists does not prove the existence of morality.  This is because all other kinds of moral stances reduce down to subjective feelings or arbitrary preferences, either on an individual or societal level.  The existence of objective values is ultimately up in the air--but there is still a great deal of evidence for Christianity that falls short of logical proofs.  This means, inescapably, that Christian values are not known to be true, but it is still both true and knowable that there is evidence for Christian values.  After all, there cannot be evidence for Christianity's particular claims about history and theology without the values of Christianity therefore also having support by extension.

A person worthy of the title Christian comes to Christianity because it seems to be true, not because they feel guilty about actions or thoughts that may or may not even be immoral.  Left to themselves, humans have no way of knowing in what ways they have violated moral obligations because morality itself has nothing to do with human preferences or perceptions, meaning that no one could ever know if morality even exists because of guilt, a sense of moral satisfaction, or the approval of others.  In truth, anyone who is a Christian because of conscience is a deluded fool who has made false assumptions about the nature of moral feelings.

It is shortly after this that Lewis begins elaborating on how the concept of morality is metaphysically connected to theism.  However, he makes a grave mistake when he sets up his comments about pantheism, conflating pantheism with the notion that God is amoral:


"People who all believe in God can be divided according to the sort of God they believe in.  There are two very different ideas on this subject.  One of them is the idea that He is beyond good and evil.  We humans call one thing good and another thing bad.  But according to some people that is merely our human point of view . . . The other and opposite idea is that God is quite definitely 'good' or 'righteous', a God who takes sides . . . The first of these views--the one that thinks God beyond good and evil--is called Pantheism." (36)


This excerpt actually straw mans pantheism.  Pantheism is expressed in one of two primary ways.  Either God is said to be synonymous with the physical cosmos, in which case God and matter would be identical (an impossible metaphysical framework), or God is said to be synonymous with all things that exist.  In neither case is pantheism necessarily amoral.  Even if this was true, it does not follow that pantheism is the main or only form of theism that treats God as beyond moral categories.  An amoral brand of deism or even an amoral but personal deity would entail exactly this, and yet it is not because God and the physical universe are synonymous!  It would be because the uncaused cause does not have to have a moral nature in order to be the uncaused cause.

Game Review--Crysis Remastered (Switch)

"We lost contact with Dr. Rosenthal a week ago when the North Korean military locked down the island.  Two days ago, we picked up a distress signal from the team's research vessel.  Someone down there wants to be found.
--Prophet, Crysis Remastered


The original release of Crysis introduced a science fiction shooter franchise that is often remembered fondly and held in high regard.  2020 has brought a remaster of this modern classic to the Switch (and to other current generation consoles), and it is easily one of the best games of its genre on the system.  Players observe events through the first-person gaze of Nomad, a member of an elite American group of soldiers outfitted with nanosuits, with the suit being one of the core gameplay functions that somewhat distinguishes Crysis from many other shooters.  Crysis Remastered succeeds as a strategic action shooter featuring the mystery of alien antagonists that have been present on Earth for millennia.

Production Values

Very smooth and clear graphics bring the digital portrayal of North Korea and an alien force to the Switch's small screen (at least it is small on the Switch Lite), making Crysis Remastered one of the better Switch ports of its kind as far as visuals are concerned, except for when close views of the vegetation are concerned.  Despite the general clarity of the graphics, encounters with multiple enemies can bring brief but very obvious slowdown.  Otherwise, there is little to criticize about the visuals of Crysis on the Switch besides occasional problems with environmental details suddenly appearing as the player approaches.  The voice acting is likewise handled well, and the North Korean soldiers are supposed to actually speak in Korean instead of English on the highest difficulty level!

Gameplay

Partially destructible environments and different options for how to approach enemies are some of the foundational components of how Crysis approaches combat.  Concerning the latter, players can sneak by enemies altogether using careful movements or a cloaking function (which is addressed further below), leave or reposition themselves during active firefights by crouching behind cover and using the cloaking function (as unaware enemies continue firing where they once were), or engage North Koreans and aliens directly.

Nomad's suit, equipped with several abilities that can make combat or moving to objectives easier, can be vital to navigating certain encounters.  The suit has "Maximum Speed," "Maximum Armor," and "Cloaking" settings that can be activated one at a time until an energy reserve runs out and needs several seconds to recharge.  As helpful as these abilities can be, they actually do little to prevent player deaths thanks to the AI's tendency to still shoot at you even when cloaked and to overpower the enhanced armor setting in only a handful of shots.

Even on normal difficulty, Crysis can be a very challenging game.  Enemies only need to shoot you about three to five times at almost any range to kill you.  When they are using submachine guns or assault rifles, it does not take long for them to fire that many rounds at you unless there is cover in the way.  Frequent autosaves at checkpoints does lessen the impact of the difficulty somewhat, but it is still very easy to die even when using the suit's cloaking and armor abilities.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A team of American marines outfitted with special nanosuits attempts to extract a captive scientist from an island near North Korea, but an entity of unknown origin kills a member of the group and several North Koreans, alerting the marines that some other faction with advanced technology is present.  North Korean forces have actually mined their way to a resting site for alien beings that seem on the precipice of launching a larger assault on the planet.


Intellectual Content

International politics and the issue of extraterrestrial life are distinctly philosophical matters, but Crysis uses them to build a fictional world rather than prompt philosophical themes.  Collectible hunting is absent from Crysis, so exploration is largely profitable only because it can lead to finding ammunition and avoiding certain enemies.  There is still a potentially intellectual side to the combat, however.  The ease of dying and the abilities of the playable character's suit mean that strategizing can be highly advantageous in some cases.


Conclusion

Crysis Remastered is one of the relatively few shooters that have been ported from other consoles to the Switch (alongside titles like Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus), and its presence will be a welcome thing to fans of iconic first-person shooters from the last two console generations.  Once again, the Switch has been demonstrated to be capable of handling console shooters that were considered massive and technically challenging for a handheld gaming system!  This remaster has its own technical issues, most notably the periodic slowdown during combat, but it is yet another victory for Switch ports.  Crysis is not a particularly long game, as a competent or experienced player could easily finish the campaign in less than 10 hours, although it has other distinct strengths that could appease genre fans.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  Enemies can be grabbed and thrown a short distance or shot.  Only mild blood is shown.
 2.  Profanity:  Variants of "damn" and "fuck" are used.

A Myth About The Free Market

An economy is not a tool of moral correction; it is a system comprised of whatever production and purchases are conducted in a given place, whatever the beliefs and actions of that economy's vendors are.  It might be suggested from time to time that a free market, or a set of economic transactions consumers and sellers voluntarily enter into with minimal or no government regulation, can weed out irrational or immoral ideas from a culture as consumers stop buying from sellers who adhere to those ideas.

Whether the people contributing to or benefitting from an economy are morally upright or despicable cannot usually be determined by simply leaving the free market to itself, as a truly free market reflects only the consensual transactions of various parties, as opposed to the intellectual soundness and moral standing of those parties.  Allowing a free market to "take care of" some ideological or moral problem in a society is at best a gamble, and at worst is apathy.  The decisions of the actors in a free market are not a part of justice.

For example, if a business owner holding to a relativistic, racist, or sexist idea was shrugged at by people who simply think that "the free market will take care of it" if people avoid that establishment out of dislike of the owner's worldview, the ones shrugging at the offense are at least guilty of either tolerance or leaving suppression of the idea to chance.  There is no way to know if strangers truly will boycott a business for philosophical or moral reasons, but, even then, loss of economic profits from a boycott is hardly the most effective way to deal with such stupidity.

A free market is simply not a valid way to truly rectify a society's ideological flaws.  It is never problematic for someone to boycott a particular business out of legitimate objections to the owner's ideologies, but it is irrational to think that hoping others do so is the best way to change the moral standing of a community or business.  Refutation and justice are the solutions to every ideological blight on a society.  The free market is amoral in itself, even if a free market is not an immoral thing in itself.

Amber Heard's Example

Many people pretend like women cannot or do not abuse men, and then they ignore obvious examples of such abuse involving figures who are at least somewhat visible in the public eye.  Even if no specific examples of female-male abuse were ever brought forward, though, it would not follow that there are therefore no cases of it, and examples are not necessary to prove that it is possible for women to abuse men in the first place.  However, a recent celebrity example illustrates just how difficult it can be to get Western culture to take female-abuse seriously on any level.

Actress Amber Heard, former wife of Johnny Depp, claimed that Johnny Depp physically abused her before audio evidence surfaced showing that she has admitted to inflicting abusive behavior on her former husband.  She seems to have cut off part of his finger, thrown objects such as pots at him, and defecated on his bed.  In self-defense, the former two actions would not be inherently wrong, whether they are performed by a man or a woman.  However, there is no evidence that this was the case--and there is much evidence that Amber Heard is simply a cruel, sexist, egoistic person.

A seeming mountain of evidence indicates that Heard is a clear contemporary example of a woman who has abused her husband.  She has received the deserved condemnation of some, but she has also been ignored, like many other women who physically abuse men, in the name of patriarchal values that make men especially vulnerable to being pressured into silence over abuse.  Any true feminist/egalitarian would never regard Amber--or any other woman who abuses her male significant other--any differently than they would regard a man who physically abuses his wife.

Moreover, a true egalitarian would never tolerate the irrational beliefs and sexist stereotypes behind the dismissal of male victims.  Even if the number of male victims of unjust violence from the opposite gender was far smaller than the number of female victims, an individual case of female-male domestic violence would not be less important than an individual case of male-female domestic violence simply because of the gender of the perpetrator and the victim.  Silence on behalf of male victims from people who are vocal about acknowledging female victims reveals a scathing hypocrisy.

The Logical Impossibility Of Endgame's Ideas About Time Travel

It is logically, hypothetically possible to travel from one point in time to the next, even if there is no known technological way to do such a thing at the current time.  It is also logically possible to portray time travel in entertainment without including any contradictory or philosophically false notions about time.  Nevertheless, movies like The Terminator and Avengers: Endgame, no matter how artistically competent they might be, feature problematic types of time travel.  The latter film is even more thoroughly wrong in its descriptions of time travel than many others because a mouthpiece character for the writers directly makes false statements about how time travel would work.

Bruce Banner, the mouthpiece in question, says that changing the past does not change the future because revisiting the past makes it the new "present," which allegedly negates the linear progression of time.  This approach to time travel is at least somewhat unique in cinematic storytelling, and many time travel movies that explicitly confirm a more conventional flow of time end up contradicting themselves in some important way.  However, it has a major problem: it is not just slightly wrong, but entirely asinine.

The flaw is that while any sort of theoretical time travel by necessity means that the time traveler experiences the past (or future) moment they traveled to as if it is the present, it still is just an individual moment on a timeline that must give way to the moments that follow.  Since it is past events that set up future events, it is logically impossible for the past not to shape the future!  Of course, the events of Endgame actually show that this fact cannot be avoided in either life or storytelling.

There are actually multiple examples of the characters who believe this notion about time contradicting themselves.  One of the most blatant is the very premise of the film: the entire reason why the Avengers use time travel to collect the Infinity Stones in order to undo Thanos's snap is to change the future by changing the past.  Without this goal, the story of the movie could not have been constructed.  It is so fundamental to the film that it is odd that a character presented as intelligent would suggest this concept.

In addition to this prominent contradiction, the entire reason Captain America returned the Infinity Stones to their former positions near the end of the film was to prevent diverging timelines, which would only be necessary if the past does shape the future.  Endgame's plot contradicts itself here and elsewhere because it is logically impossible for time to be anything other than a linear duration in which psychological and physical events determine what comes next.

Nothing about the basic story of Endgame would have needed to be changed if this self-defeating claim about time travel was simply left out of the dialogue, but filmmakers often have a difficult time explaining time travel while integrating it into their stories without some sort of logical contradiction emerging.  Perhaps the popularity of nonlinear or otherwise contradictory ideas about time due to philosophically invalid ideas within entertainment.  Even sheer ignorance about otherwise basic logical facts is closer to rationality than believing in contradictory ideas!

Masturbating In Marriage

Masturbation is unique among sexual acts because it alone can be enjoyed on an individual level apart from reproduction or pleasuring a partner.  It is an act of pleasure that neither needs to involve anyone else (or at least their physical presence, as mental or physical imagery of certain individuals of the opposite gender might greatly enhance masturbation) nor be aimed at anything other than one's own subjective pleasure.  While all other sexual acts can be pursued out of a focus on an individual's experience, no others require anything more than a person's own body.

Since masturbation is performed on a person by his or her own hands (or perhaps with sex toys as well), it is inescapably focused on a person's will or personal experience of pleasure.  Married individuals who both seek to sexually please their spouses and pleasure themselves might sometimes feel torn between the two desires, even if not all people can relate to either impulse.  Moreover, the other spouse might feel overlooked or hurt at the thought of their partner masturbating for the sake of personal excitement.

If a married person masturbates outside of a mutual masturbation context, he or she has done nothing that disrespects their partner or the relationship.  This is true even in cases where the masturbating spouse (if both do not practice it) prefers masturbation to sex with their partner.  Sexual preferences are subjective, and a person's commitment to and understanding of their spouse it not automatically reflected by their preferences.  Craving masturbation more than sex with a spouse is not a sign of coldness or dismissal.

Of course, transparent communication between spouses can clarify this even if neither party reasoned it out previously.  It is always ideal for the health of a marriage for husbands and wives to mutually feel free to share their genuine desires, preferences, and perceptions, and communicating one's sexuality is a crucial part of this.  After all, any explicitly sexual components of a marriage are all that separate marriages and any other romantic relationships from platonic friendships with either gender!

There is always the option of a couple masturbating together, a form of masturbation that includes both an emphasis on self-pleasuring and an emphasis on the emotional, sexual bond between both spouses.  Mutual masturbation can even include an emphasis on sensual imagery of other members of the opposite gender, just as masturbation that has nothing to do with one's spouse can.  As long as both spouses are rational, they are entirely capable of understanding themselves, each other, and the nature of marriage and masturbation.

Game Review--BioShock 2 Remastered (Switch)

"Each of us has a moral duty to increase the common joy, and ease the common pain.  Alone, we are nothing, mere engines of self-interest.  Together, we are the Family, and through unity we transcend the self."
--Sofia Lamb, BioShock 2 Remastered

"Mother believed this world is irredeemable, but she was wrong, Father.  We are utopia, you and I . . ."
--Eleanor, BioShock 2 Remastered


Players of the original BioShock fought the large creatures known as Big Daddies at multiple points in the game, either because the story demanded it or because they needed resources or ADAM.  Bioshock 2 returns to the underwater city of Rapture, but it puts players in control of a Big Daddy, dramatically reorienting the perspective of the story.  Rapture may be a familiar setting for some, but playing as a Big Daddy is not the only major change.  The weapon roster has changed, the hacking process is smoother and less disruptive of the regular gameplay, and Little Sisters can now be transported around and protected.  Moreover, the thematic focus of BioShock 2 is the dangers of collectivism, as opposed to the dangers of egoistic individualism in the first game.  The primary villain is even perhaps the greatest female video game villain of the 2010s and highlights the general lack of developed female villains in gaming.

Production Values

The graphics look slightly more polished this time around (compared to those of BioShock Remastered), with somewhat clearer animations for character models like those of the other Big Daddies.  BioShock 2 Remastered runs at a consistent framerate even when multiple enemies attack Delta in the same room.  It is not the most visually impressive game on the Switch, but that is hardly surprising since it is a port of a game originally released in 2010.  The sound design of Rapture is as integral as the visuals in the worldbuilding of the first BioShock, and BioShock 2 does not fail to match its predecessor when it comes to the quality of its sound.  Since many details of the worldbuilding are established in audio logs that can be skipped entirely, the quality of the voice acting needs this constancy.

Gameplay

Returning to Rapture does not mean that BioShock 2 does nothing to vary the parts of the environment accessible to players, as Delta has to walk around on the ocean floor on several occasions.  Observant players can even find extra ADAM, the genetic material that allows for plasmid powers, when traveling in the water.  Delta's arsenal of weapons and devices has also been expanded, containing the signature drill of the most iconic class of Big Daddy, a rivet gun, and a remote hacking device.  Those who admired the Big Daddies in the first BioShock has the chance to use Delta's suit and weapons to explore, protect Little Sisters while they gather ADAM from corpses, and solve puzzles in the sequel.

Hacking has been simplified and can now provide optional benefits beyond price reductions, like getting a free medical kit or giving hacked turrets damage bonuses.  In order to obtain these bonuses, players must successfully hack by meeting a specific requirement that is unecessary to simply take control of a machine.  Hacking is not even the only secondary mechanic that has been redone for BioShock 2.  Instead of taking still photographs graded on clarity and positioning of the subject, the returning camera item films the player's fight with the subject and gives points for using a variety of attacks rather than just the same plasmid or weapon.  Scoring well enough repeatedly can unlock new moves, tonics, and damage bonuses!

The included Minerva's Den DLC is worth mentioning for its depth and length.  This DLC campaign tells a full, self-contained story separate from the main campaign's while providing at least one new plasmid and a new weapon.  The Gravity Well plasmid lets players advance the main story by opening special locks or unleash a gravitational distortion in combat, which pulls enemies and items into a vortex before spitting them out.  A new ion laser weapon with three ammo variations is another innovative change to BioShock 2's gameplay options, cutting through enemies with a continuous beam.  Minerva's Den, thanks to its story and gameplay additions, is one of the finest examples of post-release DLC.

Story

Subject Delta, a prototype Big Daddy from the days before Rapture's collapse, is ambushed when a woman takes his Little Sister and uses mind control to bring him to shoot himself.  Years later, he somehow finds himself alive and searches for Eleanor, his missing Little Sister who now sends him telepathic messages and offers assistance.  Sofia Lamb, the woman responsible for killing Delta, seeks to create a collectivist utopia of perfect collaboration, selflessness, and unity, using the now grown Eleanor for her own purposes.  Delta fights to free his symbolic daughter and end a new brand of tyranny.

In Minerva's Den, Subject Sigma, a different Big Daddy, searches for a supercomputer called The Thinker that can control various aspects of Rapture.  Sigma's journey leads him to a grand revelation about himself, concluding a DLC that is designed as well as many other primary campaign's are in other games with an abrupt narrative twist.


Intellectual Content

BioShock 2 contrasts Andrew Ryan's ideology behind Rapture with that of a new sophist who replaces a set of assumptions mingled with several falsities with a worldview that is completely submerged in contradictions.  Andrew Ryan is guilty of fallacious ideologies and moral apathy, but Sofia Lamb is an open metaphysical relativist who holds that reason is a construct of consensus and that individuals cannot avoid biases without group intervention.  Her errors are therefore greater and more foundational than the comparatively self-contained errors and assumptions Ryan clings to.  Due to the opposing nature of Ryan's egoism and Lamb's collectivism, she represents the perfect ideologies to target after the first game's excellent deconstruction of egoism and scientific dystopias.  The point of the sequel is that collectivism is not the solution to egoism.

In the first BioShock, Ryan says that all individuals truly care about is themselves: Lamb's worldview holds that non-selfish focus on the self to be tyranny that inevitably harms others.  Any individual with power is therefore a tyrant according to her, and the extent to which they are not dedicated to equalizing the wellbeing of every other person is the extent to which they are slaves to evil.  The worst of her false philosophical ideas is her cultural relativism regarding metaphysical truth itself.  She is not just a moral relativist, which would already be ironic given that she seems to believe that collectivism is morally obligatory.  Lamb makes the self-refuting, logically impossible claim that truth is created by human groups.

Truth is grounded in logic, meaning the existence of truth itself is self-evident.  No one can doubt, reject, or flee from the objective nature of logical truths without standing on the very thing they are trying to back away from.  Sound deductive reasoning cannot be false, and several other logical facts (like the law of non-contradiction) share this self-verifying nature.  Reason is not invalidated when people dispute or deny it.  On the contrary, it is people like Sofia Lamb whose worldviews are objectively false.  Since all aspects of reality hinge on reason, to reject the self-verifying nature of logic and its objectivity is to reject reality itself.  Sofia Lamb is therefore guilty of the ultimate offense against reason--a denial of the self-evidence of logical axioms, the only things that must be inherently true whether or not anything else is.


Conclusion

Almost every aspect of BioShock 2's gameplay improves the mechanics of the original.  There are great similarities between the first two games in the series, yet there are plenty of contrasting elements, like the playable characters and the themes.  BioShock 2 does an excellent job of approaching Rapture again while inverting some of the primary aspects of the first game, giving players of both entries a highly thorough look into one of the most unique video game locations to date.  Moreover, both games warn against different sides of the same coin of tyrrany: neither the egoism of Andrew Ryan nor the collectivism of Sofia Lamb can deliver humankind from its gravest problems.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  BioShock was never a particularly gory franchise, but blood is shown when enemies are attacked with many weapons, especially when Delta holds a whirling drill against them.
 2.  Profanity:  Words like "bitch" and "bastard" are used, sometimes in audio logs rather than the story's main dialogue.

Nudity And Crucifixion: An Evangelical Hypocrisy

The degrading exposure of a victim's naked, tortured body was a key aspect of Roman crucifixion as described by historical sources.  It not only would have served to exemplify the broader degradation and helplessness of crucifixion victims, but it also would have displayed any marks of torture the victims had already suffered, which evidenced the other injustices the criminals may have received beforehand.  The Biblical account of Jesus' crucifixion itself is consistent with the evidence for forced nudity in Roman crucifixion [1], and many pastors have drawn attention to this.  Many of those same pastors would also not disagree with the idea that Jesus alone did not deserve crucifixion, which, if true (the Bible totally contradicts this asinine claim), would mean other victims did.

Ultimately, without realizing the thoroughness of their own stupidity and inconsistency, the typical evangelical would agree with the claim that voluntary public nudity is Biblically immoral while also agreeing with the claim that the thieves crucified alongside Jesus deserved the punishment Roman law assigned to them, which included forced nudity and other unbiblical tortures.  There is also the ironic cultural relativism inherent in approving of both Roman crucifixion and modern prison sentences for the same crimes, but it is already obvious from other examples that evangelicals are cultural relativists when it comes to the details of matters like justice.

The hypocrisy surrounding nudity and crucifixion, however, is far less visible to many who either support or criticize evangelicalism (I have only met one other person who claimed to have heard of this hypocrisy being brought up, and I have never met anyone who claimed to have discovered this on their own).  It is nonetheless an inconsistency that exposes the backwards legalism that most Western Christians at least superficially agree with when they encounter it.  The Christians in question literally think that a person sins by choosing to exhibit their naked bodies and thinks that it was just for the Roman Empire to have numerous people crucified while in a state of total, involuntary nudity.

This set of cognitively dissonant beliefs is the exact opposite of what the Bible actually teaches on both matters.  Voluntary nudity is blatantly nonsinful on the Christian worldview [2], and everything about Roman crucifixion is utterly antithetical to Biblical criminal justice laws [3], including the forced nudity that amplified the psychological torture for victims.  The Evangelical world has inverted its collective stances on these matters, even if approval of Roman crucifixion in the cases of victims other than Jesus is subtle except when certain pastors or writers explicitly express it either to emphasize the sinlessness of Jesus or to grossly mischaracterize the kind of treatment some people deserve from others.

Only a fool would believe either of these things on an individual basis after reflecting rationally on what the Bible actually teaches about nudity and criminal justice, and only a greater fool would adhere to both ideas when they contradict each other.  Of course, that is precisely what evangelicals are: whether the issue is their legalistic additions to Biblical teachings about morality in the name of slippery slope fallacies and non sequiturs, their apathy or hostility towards genuine rationalism, their insistence that reason and belief in unproven concepts are compatible, or their sexual prudery, evangelicals are deluded by irrational and unbiblical beliefs.  The deep evangelical hypocrisy concerning nudity and its relationship to Roman crucifixion is less obvious to many people, but it remains a clear example of intellectual and moral incompetence.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/jesus-nudity-on-cross.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/06/nudity-in-ancient-jewish-culture.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html

The Errors Of Mere Christianity (Part 3)

In the first entry in this series, I examined C.S. Lewis's epistemologically faulty claims about scientific and moral laws as articulated in the first few pages of Mere Christianity, and the second entry focused on his dangerous and false claims that all cultures ultimately have shallow differences in their values.  I will not cover everything in Mere Christianity, as not everything Lewis says is false, even if much of it is, as well as because different chapters do not always cover subjects that are particularly distinct.  This continuation will center on Lewis's further statements about general epistemology and the deep differences between cultural and individual values.

Between the page I last quoted in part two and the page quoted below, Lewis elaborates accurately on how conscience is distinct from various other impulses because it makes people feel certain ways about other desires, but he quickly returns to errors when he begins unveiling his core epistemology.  Lewis openly suggests that we are inherently dependent on other people to learn even certain basic mathematical facts, as if absolutely no one would ever have any idea of what the concept of multiplication is without being directly taught specific multiplication tables at school:


"We all learned the multiplication table at school.  A child who grew up alone on a desert island would not know it.  But surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human invention, something human beings have made up for themselves and might have made different if they liked?  I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent Behavior from parents and teachers, and friends and books, just as we learn everything else.  But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which might have been different . . . and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths." (12)


Here, C.S. Lewis misunderstands the very foundations of knowledge, as he credits social learning with being the means by which people learn mathematical truths--and most or all other foundational truths from which others can be reasoned.  However, multiplication could never be discovered if there was no first person to recognize it, which means that it is both possible and necessary for someone to reason this out apart from the help of others!  Multiplication is part of mathematics, which reduces down to logic, and logic is accessible by mere contemplation.

Everyone is capable of discovering truths about logic, their own conscious existence and psychology, and their own perceptions without any social input or prompting.  Of course, few people will do this on their own, but it is not beyond anyone's reach.  Autonomous reasoning is necessary even when others bring up logical facts that one could have thought of on one's own, as the only alternatives are blind acceptance, blind refusal, or neutrality.  Knowledge is not possible from hearsay alone, unless one means knowledge of what the hearsay is (as opposed to whether it is true), yet this is not what most people mean when they talk about social learning.

Lewis also suddenly treats moral impulses as if they must be instilled in someone by other people when it is conscience, not social norms, that persuades many people that moral obligations exist.  Social conditioning merely shapes what is already present in many cases.  Of course, conscience informs us about our own moral feelings, meaning that the actual existence of morality and which obligations it entails are a matter of separate inquiry.  Conscience is not a path to knowledge of anything other than one's own mind.


"I conclude then, that though the difference between people's ideas of Decent Behavior often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of Behavior at all, yet the things we are bound to think about these differences really prove just the opposite." (14)


What people think about moral ideas--unless they have truly made no assumptions and analyzed their own hearts, thoughts, and cultures rationalistically--does not reflect anything other than their own perceptions and assumptions.  In other words, it is impossible for anyone to know that morality exists because of so-called moral experience or moral claims from various cultures.  The first is subjective and the latter is arbitrary and in conflict with itself.  A culture that prides itself on pursuing "justice" while treating people differently based on their gender or race and advocating for torturous legal penalties is fundamentally different from one that prides itself on pursuing justice while treating justice as a social construct.  Contrary to what Lewis writes, no one is forced to accept a specific moral system after surveying the historical record and their own culture.

The Evolution Of Scientific Theories

As more sensory information becomes available, scientific ideas are adapted or discarded in order to fit whatever new observations can then be made.  At all times, there are truths about scientific laws, and every claim about science is by necessity either true or false even though it is logically possible for all scientific laws to change; it is the perceptions and awareness of scientific laws that evolve, not the scientific laws themselves.  The theories that are used to explain or understand scientific laws evolve even if scientific laws remain constant over time and space, as sensory experiences suggest is indeed the case.

It should therefore be unsurprising to those who are aware of this that the documented progression of scientific discoveries has many examples of theories that have been revised, validly criticized, or rejected altogether.  The time and place in which a person lives will determine the major consensus about scientific theories that they will be exposed to.  It follows that anyone who truly thinks that their generation has embraced or identified scientific theories that are "obviously" true has little to no understanding of the actual nature of the scientific method.

Someone who believes whatever predominant scientific theories are associated with their era is guilty of assumptions as it is, as only that which is logically demonstrated can be believed without error, and all aspects of science beyond one's own immediate sensory perceptions and the intersection of logic and scientific epistemology are philosophically up in the air.  However, such a person has not only made the logical mistake of making assumptions, but they have also let the chance circumstances of their birth, geography and time, dictate what they believe about science.

They might look back at former scientific ideas in the historical record and scoff at how "primitive" or "false" past consensus has been, at the same time ironically accepting a consensus that they cannot verify and that is likely to itself be rejected eventually.  If they truly care about scientific accuracy, then, they will abstain from holding to scientific ideas that cannot be proven to correspond to reality beyond their perceptions.  It is one thing to believe that one is perceiving a phenomena like gravity, and immediate perceptions cannot be illusory.

It is another thing entirely to believe whatever incomplete, unprovable theories are attributed by others to the empirical phenomena that one's own self directly perceives.  A slave to cultural circumstances accepts scientific paradigms even if he or she understands their speculative, unverifiable nature, whereas a slave to truth does not even bother to credit science with anything more than probabilistic, perception-based practicality.  A consistent seeker of objective truth looks to reason, while a halfhearted or misguided seeker of truth looks to a lesser tool such as science.

Christian Libertarianism

Political libertarianism itself is not contrary to Christian theology, but the ideas of some libertarians are.  Libertarianism is the Biblical approach to government, and yet this does not mean that everything associated with secular libertarianism is a component of Biblical politics.  As such, it is important to clarify what Christian libertarianism specifically entails, given rhat there are so many positive or negative assumptions made about the fundamental nature of political libertarianism.  For example, libertarianism as a basic ideology is sometimes thought to be a framework that justifies a selfish withdrawal away from others in favor of needless personal liberty, but this is neither what secular libertarianism nor Christian libertarianism are about.

Christian libertarianism--that is, libertarian political philosophy that is actually rooted in Biblical ethics rather than a vague, pseudo-Christian backdrop--is about enforcing the criminal punishments of Mosaic Law in order to strive towards a just society and allowing individuals to live as they wish as long as they are not objectively sinning by Biblical standards (meaning everything from public nudity to violent entertainment to erotic media should never be criminalized except in the specific cases where an actual divine law is violated).  There is no other foundation for libertarianism in the Bible.

In other words, Christian libertarianism is inherently theonomist.  There is otherwise nothing to consistently, definitively distinguish Christian and secular libertarian stances.  The Biblical role of government is nothing but defending the human rights of its citizens through inflicting just legal penalties on those who have committed sins with the status of crimes, as well as through military means when threatened by tyrannical outsiders, and Mosaic Law details which penalties are just for various crimes.  Any unecessary, contradictory, or unjust governmental actions fall outside of this.

It is impossible to truly shape a libertarian system into its Biblical form when the penalties are arbitrarily chosen based on popularity, emotion, or happenstance.  Justice, being the foundational structure of all morality, is not culturally relative; either a punishment is just or unjust across all times and cultures, or the only alternative is moral nihilism.  No Christian will pretend like the Bible supports cultural relativism with regards to criminal justice if they care about justice itself rather than about personal or societal feelings about justice.

It is this necessary inflexibility that puts Christian libertarianism at odds with several ideas put forth by some secular libertarians, such as the notion that abortion should not be treated as a criminal matter.  However, no aspect of Christian libertarianism contradicts any consistent application of libertarianism that does not have the adjective "Christian" before it.  As those who would claim that libertarianism does not need theonomy in ordercto be legitimized, secular libertarians have nothing to appeal to beyond existing government norms or subjective impulses, rendering their very basis for an ethical government nonexistent.

Abstinence From Voting

Conservatives and liberals alike often try to scare people into voting for their respective presidential candidate by encouraging fear, no matter how disproportionate or baseless that fear may be in light of a given political issue.  One of the more popular tactics is to attempt to frighten or shame those who realize the stupidity of both parties into voting for one of them despite their thorough problems when a morally consistent voter would otherwise refuse to vote for either.  Zealous imbeciles from both major parties who use this tactic describe voting as if not voting for any candidate somehow adds a vote for the candidate of the other party.

Abstaining from a vote, by definition, cannot be a vote for any candidate in an election.  In order to vote for someone, a person must participate in voting, which is the opposite of what abstaining from a vote is.  No candidate gains support in an election when someone rejects all contenders and refuses to back any of them.  At most, refraining from voting withholds support for a candidate, and this in no way adds to the numbers of any side.  Anyone who insists that this is not true is merely stupid, afraid, or both at the same time.

Voting is not one of the exceptionally rare scenarios where a person's actions or inaction all bring moral guilt (for examples of this, see here [1]).  In not voting, a person is not committing some heinous evil, but it is entirely possible for there to be situations where supporting either primary candidate in an election is itself an immoral thing.  A vote reveals either support for an ideology or toleration of its intellectual and moral shortcomings, so it is not as if it is an inherently positive thing to vote simply for the sake of participating in elections, as some suggest.

Conservatism and liberalism are both riddled with assumptions, contradictions, and hypocrisies, so it should not be surprising when their candidates fail to meet the minimum leadership qualifications of rationality, consistency, and moral character.  A voter cannot be rational and think that an irrational candidate is intelligent, moreover, and neither can a voter care about justice while mistaking a candidate with unjust ideologies for a servant of justice.  Contrarily, a voter's own worldview is at least somewhat reflected in the philosophy and character of whoever they vote for.

Although it does not logically follow from the fact that someone is governed that they have a right to vote on how they are governed (and democratic structures have nothing to do with truth as it is), the ability to vote is still not a trivial thing that can be used without the potential to dramatically change certain outcomes.  The person who votes recklessly or based on fallacious ideas is not rescuing America, but they might be potentially damning it further.  Ironically, this is the thing people who attack others for not voting accuse the latter of.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-morality-of-vows.html

Men Are Relational

Women are visual; women are relational.  Men are visual; men are relational.  These truths about sexuality are easy to verify, but the first and fourth statements are very often denied by those of a conservative mindset--and inconsistently affirmed by many liberals.  Centuries of social conditioning have embedded arbitrary norms into Western culture so deeply that even today men might still feel like there is something wrong with them simply for yearning for deep, mutual emotional vulnerability with their friends of either gender and their significant others.  Such desires are considered normal when expressed by women, but men are socially pressured to pretend like they cannot relate to them at all.

The ramifications for how sexuality is perceived are extensive.  Since women are typically treated as asexuals or demisexuals, their own sexual needs and capacity for sexual assault ignored or denied entirely, but men are expected or even encouraged to bond with their spouses on a mostly physical level.  According to the proponents of these sexist ideas, relational factors are almost never responsible for sexual arousal on the part of men, and men's sexual attraction to certain women (most men are not attracted to all women by any means) is not triggered or affected by relational closeness in any significant way.  This is just one of many assumptions some people make about men simply because they are men.

As reason and honest experiences reveal, many men who are capable of experiencing sexual attraction, if not all of them, would experience a deeper attraction to their girlfriends or wives if they were connected with them on a holistic emotional level!  Men are no less social than women are, just as women are no less visual than men are.  Any disparities are between individuals only, and even then the disparities usually have more to do with social conditioning than individual traits.  Human behavior always reduces down to one or the other rather than to gender.  Repeatedly being told that men lack complex or intense emotions other than anger and sexual feelings that have nothing to do with relational attachment can drive many men to withhold their true emotions, perhaps to avoid misunderstandings or unjust mockery.

Women are not hyperemotional beings that crave or require relational dependence upon men and have little to no interest in the appearance of the male body, and men are not hypervisual beings that have no genuine concern for knowing the particular women they are sexually attracted to in a very emotionally intimate way.  Men are capable of far more relational attachments than stereotypes about male emotions and sexuality have ever hinted at.  It is the diminishing but still-present influence of patriarchal ideas that has led Western culture as a whole to regard men as simplistic, emotionally shallow beings that never experience any kind of sexual attraction other than a visual or physical kind.

The Artistic And Thematic Potential Of Video Games

Whether it is because of negative stereotypes about people who play video games or misunderstandings about the storytelling or thematic potential of gaming, video games are sometimes regarded as an inferior form of art despite their immense popularity.  The format is even now seen by some as lacking the artistic or thematic potential of movies, books, and even television or streaming shows.  Ironically, not only can gaming replicate practically every strength of other forms of art and entertainment, but they can surpass them in some ways.

It is the interactive components of gaming, along with the typically greater scope of video games, that can elevate video games to a higher level of potential than any other format of entertainment.  Voice and motion capture performances, text-based reading (at least in the case of gamebooks), complex plots, significant themes, and emotional impact can be found in other types of entertainment, but books lack sensory stimulation, and movies lack input (and sometimes scope), while video games can still appeal to imagination and cinematic presentation.  Games have inherent advantages over other mediums as far as immersion goes.

Indeed, the primary limitations of gaming's ability to impact people are the biases against gaming and the greater expense of many video games as opposed to that of books and films.  Besides these hindrances, there is nothing about video games that impairs their ability to reach audiences with the same level of artistic quality, philosophical depth, and emotional appeal that movies do.  The potential of gaming is even greater than other storytelling and entertainment formats due to the enhanced sensory nature of the experience and the need for player input.  Not all games make the most of this potential, but neither do all books and films make the most of their medium's particular strengths.

There never was a basis for the imbecilic position that video games are not art, as has been fallaciously claimed by some like Roger Ebert, but, given the advances in the gaming world in the last two decades, it is also imbecilic to claim that video games are barred access to artistic and thematic/philosophical excellence.  Gaming can merge key parts of the best that cinema and literature have with artistic elements unique only to itself.  Now, this does not lessen the artistic, philosophical, or personal significance of other entertainment mediums, but it does expose an irony in the stance of those who treat video games as pointless and inferior to the former.

Cinema and literature are not more sophisticated or legitimate forms of artistic expression and entertainment than video games, although some examples from each category are more sophisticated or important than certain examples from the other categories.  If anything, they have less to offer than gaming in some senses.  This, however, does not diminish their own wealth of potential--multiple formats can accomplish many of the same artistic and thematic objectives without detracting from the ability of other formats to do the same.  One is free to enjoy whichever format is to one's subjective liking without misrepresenting what any of the formats can offer.

Game Review--BioShock Remastered (Switch)

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question.  Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?  'No,' says the man in Washington.  'It belongs to the poor.'  'No,' says the man in the Vatican.  'It belongs to God.'  'No,' says the man in Moscow.  'It belongs to everyone.'  I rejected those answers.  Instead, I chose something different.  I chose the impossible.  I chose . . . Rapture."
--Andrew Ryan, BioShock Remastered

"All roads in Rapture lead to Ryan."
--Atlas, BioShock Remastered


The year 2020 may have been a disaster for many people thus far, but Switch owners have seen a significant number of ports to the console in the past few months, ranging from Crysis Remastered to Borderlands: Legendary Collection to BioShock: The Collection.  Regarding the last of the three examples, the first game in the BioShock trilogy introduces the underwater city of Rapture, a "haven" founded to escape the influence of external governments, religious influence, and Soviet communism.  Rapture was dedicated to freedom from the surface world's moral conventions and to business, science, and the grand experiences of its inhabitants as they genetically modified their bodies at will.  The men and women of Rapture, however, live in no utopia.  Rapture exemplifies the potential disaster that awaits when individualism is combined with egoism and moral nihilism.

Production Values

Some character models can be blurry and pixelated.  After all, BioShock Remastered is a version of a 13 year old game from two console generations ago that has been ported to the first console-handheld hybrid; it was never likely to have graphics as crisp and smooth as Luigi's Mansion 3 or Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3.  The game nonetheless manages to run without any slowdown (in my experience), but its most ambitious aspects have nothing to do with the graphics.  The blatantly philosophical themes and unique setting are its biggest assets alongside combat and upgrade mechanics.  It is the setting and the themes and not the basic plot itself that make the context of the gameplay so spectacular, but the former are so strong that the simplicity of the general story the player directly experiences does not hurt the game very much.

Gameplay

BioShock's mechanics are based around combat, exploration, and mild puzzles involving the manipulation of water (or what seems to be water) as it flows from one point to another.  Plenty of optional items make both fighting Rapture's leftover inhabitants and solving puzzles easier--early on, it can be quite easy to use scarce ammunition and die during enemy encounters.  Dying returns you to the nearest Vita-Chamber, a respawn station, with a portion of your health restored, similar to the respawn mechanic in Borderlands.  Genetic modification tools called plasmids make survival easier, and the first is acquired very close to the beginning of the game.

Plasmids alter the user's genetic code to enable them to perform otherwise impossible actions like firing electricity or fire from their hands.  Like tonics (which provide passive bonuses as opposed to a plasmid's player-triggered nature) and firearms, they can be enhanced for more damage throughout the game.  The plasmid, tonic, and weapon upgrade systems become far deeper than they may initially seems as a wide variety of offensive and defensive abilities are made available.  In order to purchase some of them, one must spend ADAM, which is a somewhat rare substance, adding strategic layers to plasmid purchases.

All categories of items and abilities are particularly useful against enemies like Big Daddies, armored foes that protect small girls called Little Sisters as they search for ADAM.  If a Big Daddy that happens to be with a Little Sister is killed, its Little Sister can be harvested for her ADAM and thus the player can access more ADAM-based upgrades like more powerful plasmids and health extensions.  However, Little Sisters can also be spared and reverted back into the normal state as a human child.  This does not immediately yield as much ADAM, but a woman in Rapture gives special gifts that include additional ADAM when Little Sisters are consistently rescued.

Other features that help set BioShock's gameplay apart from that of other shooters are less central than plasmids.  A camera found partway through the game unlocks permanent research bonuses for taking pictures of specific enemy types, which can be very helpful in certain fights.  There is also additional content like a "Museum of Orphaned Concepts" that lets you walk around displays of rejected character models and read about the design process, a director's commentary with entries found in many levels, and special challenges that are somewhat comparable to the optional challenges in the God of War games (at least the ones before the PS4 reboot, which I have not played).  The first two are fairly uncommon in video games, which makes BioShock all the more unique.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A man named Jack survives a plane crash over an ocean and swims to a mysterious tower protruding out of the water, which contains a stairway that leads downward to a pod.  Jack takes the pod to the underwater city of Rapture and soon learns it was built by a businessman named Andrew Ryan to escape moral scrutiny and dominant ideas about social responsibility.  Rapture has fallen into disarray, with deformed scavengers roaming around and Big Daddies escorting Little Sisters to corpses to find ADAM.  Amidst all of this, a man named Atlas communicates with Jack and guides him along, helping him move closer to finding Andrew Ryan.


Intellectual Content

Timed puzzles must be solved to hack security bots, cameras, and vending machines, and cleverly hidden pathways must be found to discover certain optional items, but BioShock's intellectual core is its intentional, explicitly philosophical exploration of what a society built on almost unregulated pursuit of self-gratification, genetic manipulation, and free will without moral responsibility looks like.  Ultimately, Bioshock does acknowledge that free will can triumph over genetic conditioning, and players are allowed to choose to save the Little Sisters over selfishly killing them for maximum ADAM, but the game never flinches away from how selfishness can infect every aspect of a culture and rot that society.

When the hyper-egoism of Rapture gave way to genetic experimentation within the framework of relatively unrestrained desire, even Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum, a scientist who oversaw the creation of the Little Sisters, recounts a realization she had about physical evolution in an audio log.  She acknowledges that genetic manipulation has bettered every aspect of human nature other than moral character, and it is this that contributed to the deterioration of Rapture.  Isolation in an underwater city cannot prevent a dystopia if the people living there choose irrationality, moral relativism, egoism, and freedom from everything but subjective desires.

Individualism, capitalism, and libertarianism are not selfish ideologies; egoistic individualism, egoistic capitalism, and egoistic libertarianism are selfish and therefore they can be incredibly destructive to individuals and groups.  Rapture is an example of how political systems built on egoism set themselves up for gratuitous infighting, power vacuums, and collapse, yet individualism was not the reason it destroyed itself.  Self-interest is not selfishness; a disregard for obligations to other people is.  It is not self-interest, capitalism, or scientific progress that damned Rapture, but Ryan's seeming moral nihilism (a logical consequence of his atheism whether that is the reason he retreated away from morality or not) and isolationism.


Conclusion

Despite the immense potential of entertainment to explore philosophical ideas, it is somewhat rare to find a mainstream work of any medium that truly is thorough in how it develops its themes.  Video games have an even greater potential for this because of the interactive components, and games like BioShock do not let that go to waste.  Entertainment in all of its forms--novels, TV or streaming shows, movies, or video games--is elevated when artists take philosophical concepts seriously and attempt to communicate something about those ideas in their work.  BioShock boasts thematic depth, but it also boasts a standout setting, a progression system that carries over to subsequent playthroughs with the new game plus mode, and abilities that fit the themes of genetic manipulation very well.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  Blood is seen when many enemies are shot.  Enemies can be killed in less bloody ways, such as by electrification while in water or by fire.
 2.  Profanity:  Although most of the game has little to no profanity, "goddamn, "fuck," and "bastard" are used on occasion.