Individuals in the Culture are free to state whatever they want, that doesn't mean the civilization executes it. Taking the thought (not action) of one individu

Individuals in the Culture are free to state whatever they want, that doesn't mean the civilization executes it. Taking the thought (not action) of one individual in a civilization that has on the order of trillions of individuals is hardly being fair to your representation of the Culture. In addition, whereas in our world, such a person would likely be Twitter shamed into oblivion, even if they had such a thought as teenager, in the Culture they would have a reasonable argument with other humans and Minds that would attempt to convince them of the foolishness of pursuing a genocidal agenda. The Culture tries to preserve life as much as possible. For context, what actually ends up happening is that Earth is left to its own devices. The Culture is dedicated to doing the right thing, but that right thing isn't always easy to figure out. To quote the State of the Art: [Diziet Sma asking the Ship Mind] "How certain do we have to be? How long must we make them wait? Who elected us God?" [The ship] "Diziet... that question is being asked all the time, and put in as many different ways we have the wit to devise (...) and that moral equation is being re-assessed every nanosecond of every day of every year, and every time we find some place like Earth -- no matter what way the decision [to interfere or not] goes -- we come closer to knowing the truth. But we can never be absolutely certain... I'm the smartest thing for a hundred light years' radius, and by a factor of about a million (...) but even I can't predict where a snooker ball's going to end up after more than six collisions."