Milford Cubicle said:
I still don't understand the relevancy of said philosophical gobbledygook to Fallout 3. Maybe I'm just not a philosophical man?
It's not particularly relevant.
More of a throw-away dig at a major element in Rand's Objectivist fiction (like
Anthem,
The Fountainhead,
Atlas Shrugged). Her work is rather big on what I would call "philosopher kings" -- in reference to Dostoevsky rather than Plato. Rand's was self-professed individualist and definitely a fan of "great man" theories of history. She fancied that great men who drive history with their big ideas are more important than their often petty and small-minded societies -- "man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress". For example, in
The Fountainhead, a brilliant architect blows up a project of his after it is perverted by small-minded "altruists"; in
Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, probably her most famous character, leads a kind of strike by inventors and businessmen, who remove themselves from the world and start a hidden quasi-utopia based on "rational self-interest", and everybody else is left mewling for them to come back. Powerful people who don't act like Objectivists are depicted as manipulators and demagogues.
Talking about it in terms of stealing things is pretty weird because Rand was rather obsessed with property rights, though. An Objectivist would likely say that stealing everything in sight is an indication that the hero is not, in fact, acting out of "rational self-interest".
-- Alex