Power to the polity

Post 3 of 4 in the superhuman augmentation and political philosophy sequence

After the material technology of Halo, the biotechnology of BioShock is the second-closest to reality of the three extensions of human ability.

In Rapture, the underwater city of BioShock, technology was initially at about the level of the real-world 1940s. Soon, however, breakthroughs by the many geniuses who had migrated there accelerated their tech beyond that of the present world--though unevenly, with a relative absence of computers and an abundance of biomodifications.

These biomodifications appear to have proliferated much like mobile phones, with wide varieties available at various price points throughout the city. Heck, they eventually were sold in vending machines and could be applied to one's body like changing batteries.

There were dozens of vending machines, selling everything from candy and film to the aforementioned biomodifications--and as the city descended into civil war, guns. The biomods became more violent, too. Not just limited to improving athleticism or granting mild elemental or telekinetic powers, they became weapons in their own right.

And thus, Rapture's defense was democratized, or perhaps its police force was dissolved. In any case, the city lost its monopoly on force, the central principle of all governments. The story of BioShock is thus in some sense a meditation on what would happen if the people truly ruled--if they had the ability to impose the implicit will of the majority by force.

Andrew Ryan's comments on the matter, left in the audio diaries found around the city, parallel Aristotle's remarks in the Politics. Both effectively suggest that democracy, fully implemented by self-interested citizens, leads to the public appropriation of the wealth of the rich by force.

Aristotle sets his analysis of democracy in one of three pairs of governments: those by an individual, those by a group, and those by the multitudes. Each pair has a noble and a corrupt variant, corresponding to the motivations of the rulers. If the rulers are virtuous, if they rule for the city, then the government will be correspondingly virtuous and successful. If they rule for themselves, however, the government will be corrupt and fail.

Andrew Ryan saw Rapture as a virtuous democracy, or what Aristotle might have called constitutional government or a polity. In practice, however, Ryan ran Rapture as more of a dictatorship or (in better times) an oligopoly.

As Aristotle predicted, however, the many--if sufficiently strong to overcome the oligopolists--will revolt against the (rich) few, particularly if the many were stars in the outside world and seek to reclaim their glory. Without anybody valuing the preservation of Rapture for its own sake, the dream of Rapture may have been doomed from the start.


Next: Jedi aristocracy