3 ms·
Is there any story about the Culture from within? I mean, how do the billions, that are not involved in Contact, actually live? I suspect we would find that gro
by rini17 9y ago
Is there any story about the Culture from within? I mean, how do the billions, that are not involved in Contact, actually live? I suspect we would find that grossly disgusting, and it would destroy carefully constructed appeal of the whole civilization.
- louithethrid 9y agoActually there are. Its mostly hobbys, games, thrill seeking sports, entertainment and useless projects (like the desert spanning gondolas at masab orbital). So its basically californication with BackUps. I find the - the ""Amish take over"" reply intersting. Maybee we can fathom for a moment the idea of cultural symbiosis here. Religious fundamentalism is self-destructive at its core- it always leads to civil war in infinite circles. But encased as a sort of mitochondria, either internal in enclaves or a filtered external refugee stream, it might be what propells a liberal society onwards, while - we -the components kept within wither away in the long run.
- thinkingemote 9y agoActually your comment seems to me to be exactly describing the conflict between the Iridians and the Culture. Iridians would see the masses of people in the Culture as being grossly idle, wasted, no meaning, and themselves as having meaning, value, and good worth. The article does pretty much say that the Culture can be grossly disgusting from the point of view outside. To answer the question straight: people in the Culture live a life of leisure, they can do whatever, they can change their bodies at will and emotions, everything is a hobby.
- animal531 9y agoThis was one of the reasons I enjoyed Consider Phlebas. It's basically an outsider looking in (and in a very unfavourable and biased way).
- aalleavitch 9y agoThere are plenty of descriptions of life inside The Culture; they essentially spend their time partying and finding increasingly complex ways to entertain themselves in an environment free of danger or responsibilities. Banks does depict plenty of members of the Culture as really shallow individuals, but their lives are not totally without conflict (largely emotional and intellectual), and there are plenty of people who decide they want to actually take on some sort of responsibility (like those who join contact), and people in the Culture are given that opportunity if they ask for it. One of the great things about the way Banks depicts the Culture is that within the bounds of the Culture’s morality people are free to live any way they choose, and even outside of those bounds they are free to form splinter groups that live differently (like the Zetetic Elench).
- rini17 9y agoRight - no group "within the bunds of Culture morality" is described closely anywhere. Everything Banks writes about revolves around the Contact or the fringe groups or other civilizations. We are left to imagination as to "the homeland", and my imagination makes me wary.
- aalleavitch 9y agoExcession and Player of Games both have sections of the book that take place inside the Culture and show some of their day-to-day lives. They just don’t spend much time there because there’s relatively little interesting conflict to show.
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoNone of the stories are completely about the Culture from within, but Look to Windward goes into a fair amount of detail about life in the Culture and Excession contains some details at the beginning of the story and in flashbacks to earlier in a character's life.