>The Culture tries to raise up every lesser species of aliens to their own level of hedonist, post-scarcity wealth and technology. That's not strictly true thr

>The Culture tries to raise up every lesser species of aliens to their own level of hedonist, post-scarcity wealth and technology. That's not strictly true throughout the series (I'll avoid any spoilers here), in many situations, civilizations are denied certain technologies by the Culture in the novels. I just finished reading the entire series and there's always quite a bit of skepticism from both members of the "Culture" and members of other civilizations as to the value and positive impact of The Culture's intervention/meddling. I'd say that Banks is pretty even handed with that, although he usually seems to fall on the side of "Special Circumstances." All that said, it's definitely worth the read.