9 ms·

The Culture novels as a dystopia

• AllegedAlec 1y ago
  It feels refreshing to see someone sort of agreeing with something I've been saying for years. I do feel the writer is missing one important aspect though: self-governance and having the decisions of humans matter. Horza Gobulchul was right. By relying on machines to do our decisions for us and having them take control of society, we lose a large part of what makes us human.
  • tialaramex 1y ago
    In that particular story the irony is that the strategy he thinks is all machines was largely dreamed up by Fal 'Ngeestra. Whether the culture stories set later also have referers like Fal involved is unclear.
  • OgsyedIE 1y ago
    To be a human person is to have: * autonomy * internal (mental) sovereigneity * some degree of legibility to other human persons (e.g. a name, capacity to enter social games, a consistent personal history) * a tolerance for information throughput within the normal distribution of human persons The Culture abandons 1 and maybe 2, while the VO from Accelerando abandon 4. I've never seen any proof that the universe is privileged to permit all four to coexist indefinitely under conditions of social acceleration.
    • AllegedAlec 1y ago
      I would argue a meaningful struggle to give your life some semblance of meaning is also a requirement, and that's one that the Culture entirely ditches.
    • nathan_compton 1y ago
      I don't think its credible to represent the culture as abandoning 1, at least no more so than our cultures do. As I recall, the worst punishment you can get in the culture is being "Drone Slapped," which is just to have a drone follow you around and make sure you don't do any bad stuff (like kill more people if you are a murderer who wants to kill more people). This preserves considerably more autonomy than, for instance, a life sentence in prison. I think a more reasonable take on the culture is that they try their best to preserve 1 and 2 but they aren't stupid about it. No culture in history has ever had totally inalienable rights of any kind.
      • OgsyedIE 1y ago
        Most chiefdoms, proto-monarchies and monarchies in human history have had totally inalienable rights for a select few people and it's arguable to say that some states in the world today continue that tradition. A more grounded criticism, however, is that in the modern world the range of lifestyles and careers available to most free adults is circumscribed only by their wealth, health, the laws of nature and the ability of other humans to enforce prohibitions. Competition from existing political units already exists, but nobody has it guaranteed that if they formed a new polity it would merely be a kayfabe contained inside one or more existing states. (I think the Culture doing this is a good thing, incidentally, but it does count as removing #1.)
      • palmotea 1y ago
        >> To be a human person is to have: >> * autonomy >> * internal (mental) [sovereignty] > I don't think its credible to represent the culture as abandoning 1, at least no more so than our cultures do. > I think a more reasonable take on the culture is that they try their best to preserve 1 and 2 but they aren't stupid about it. No culture in history has ever had totally inalienable rights of any kind. No. I recall reading somewhere that, in the Culture novels the Sapir Worf hypothesis was true to start or the AIs re-engineered the people to make it true, and the language of the regular biological citizens is designed to control how they think through its structure. So they try their best to preserve the illusion of 1 and 2, while doing away with them as much as possible.
        • nathan_compton 1y ago
          I just don't read it that way - they certainly try to remove what they see as bad, but beyond that they do not interfere. We don't need to guess about it. Three is plenty of first person Mind stuff in The Culture where Minds communicate with one another. Its pretty clear that Culture Minds have agendas other than total control of the citizens. It is too bad Banks isn't alive to chime in, but I think if you read all the books, its hard to support your interpretation.
        • _w1tm 1y ago
          > I recall reading somewhere that, in the Culture novels the Sapir Worf hypothesis was true to start or the AIs re-engineered the people to make it true, and the language of the regular biological citizens is designed to control how they think through its structure. You read that in Consider Phlebas, where the anti-Culture protagonist claimed it. You’ve fallen for propaganda in a work of fiction.
    • simonh 1y ago
      The question is, what do autonomy and mental sovereignty consist of when we're talking about massively genetically engineered citizens, and outright engineered minds (designed by other minds). It's a question I've been considering for a while since I switched from considering myself a hard determinist, to being a compatibilist. I think the key differentiator for true autonomy is open ended psychological flexibility. That is, sufficient deliberative control over our own mental processes and decision making faculties to be able to adapt them to whatever experiences we have, and whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. We are introspective beings able to inspect our own mental processes, consider our own motivations, priorities and beliefs, and adapt these based on new experiences. On the one hand this means we are very largely shaped by our experiences of the world, on the other hand it means we are not completely locked into the same limited set of behaviours and responses regardless of what experiences we have, and therefore what we learn. I think that our basic biology and psychology do limit this flexibility in important ways, but I do believe that we've just about reached the level where we are in principle capable of open ended mental flexibility. If the Culture has a similar understanding of mental autonomy, that means that they could consider Culture citizens autonomous while also recognising that the vast majority of them would in fact remain completely satisfied with life in the Culture. In fact, in principle engineering Culture citizens in that way would be an ethical thing to do, because they would in principle still have the ability to adapt in terms of their beliefs and goals in response to changes in circumstances. Likewise with Minds. A major difference being that the Minds can anticipate most of the experiences average citizens will have within the Culture and how they would behave, whereas Minds have much more varied experiences and much more capable mental resources, and therefore the ability to anticipate their likely resulting opinions, beliefs and behaviours would be much more limited.
    • munksbeer 1y ago
      Autonomy - People in the Culture have autonomy to live wherever they want, and the freedom they have is more than any society on Earth. They can even choose to leave the Culture, then return. They can (and do) form societies within the Culture. It talks about all of this explicitly, it is hard to miss. Internal sovereignty - The biggest sin one of their AIs can commit is to read people's minds, never mind manipulate their minds directly.
  • JTbane 1y ago
    It's kind of unavoidable, from what I remember of the Culture series the Minds are a self-improving superintelligence that was created initially by humans, so denying them full rights would be unforgivable.
    • arethuza 1y ago
      Self improving superintelligences that have had thousands of years to self-improve so they are near god like: "I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too." Of course, in the Culture universe there are things far more powerful than Minds - the transcended entities that still dabble in the base reality - such as the Dra'Azon. Although I seem to remember someone, probably a drone, snarkily referring to it as senile.
  • simonh 1y ago
    Sure, but given a universe in which Mind level AIs exist and many other civilizations have them, not having them and the attendant advantages probably just isn't viable. Human level intelligence probably just can't operate a Culture level technology base, and certainly not competitively with civs that do use Mind level AIs. So it's not a matter of whether to have them, it's how to do that.
    • rsynnott 1y ago
      > Sure, but given a universe in which Mind level AIs exist and many other civilizations have them, not having them and the attendant advantages probably just isn't viable. That doesn't _really_ seem to be the case, though. Notably, the Gzilt don't have them, but nor did the Idirians.
      • simonh 1y ago
        I don't think the Idiran lack of Mind level AIs and them losing are co-incidental. The Gzilt did have their own approach, using virtualised and hyper-accelerated crew. We're not told much more about that and how it works, so it's hard to say, but it can't be anywhere near as efficient and capable as using Minds.
        • progbits 1y ago
          Spoiler for Surface Detail: There is that battle where a single Culture ship absolutely destroys a GFCF fleet without breaking a sweat. The ship's Mind says they stood no chance because their AI didn't have autonomous authority over weapons systems and relied on accelerated crews for decisions. What I love most is how the battle is explained to a human passenger over the course of several pages and at one point they have an exchange like: Mind: Now here comes my favorite bit. Human: What do you mean? This isn't live? Mind: Oh, no, the battle was over in fraction of a second. I'm showing you a slowmo replay.
    • AllegedAlec 1y ago
      That doesn't mean that the situation isn't dystopian though.
  • int_19h 1y ago
    Self-governance is not lacking in the Culture. Any group of its citizens (down to individuals) can form self-governing societies within it - that's why the boundary of what even is the Culture is so hard to define. It's just that most people are perfectly content to have the Minds run everything because, well, they are good at it, so why wouldn't you?
• tialaramex 1y ago
  "Special Contact" isn't what they're called. The name is "Special Circumstances". And the novels point out that the reason you're reading about them, and that's always the situation, is that these are the interesting stories. So that means you're getting a glimpse of the culture only in the same sense that a James Bond movie tells you about England. You'd like to think you're seeing Tinker Tailor but you're seeing James Bond. This is a dramatisation of an edge case. We see brief glimpses in Player of Games (at its very start) and perhaps Inversions (the story about when they were kids) but mostly it's all SC all the time.
  • dsr_ 1y ago
    Similarly, the fact that Banks didn't write about internal threats other than the ones he wrote about (Eccentric Minds, Absconders, conspiracies to promote specific agendas, etc etc) doesn't mean that others don't exist. An absence of evidence in the text is not evidence of absence (or presence) in the wider universe. And so fanfic exists.
  • mfro 1y ago
    Right, definitely important to note the Culture existed for milennia by the earliest (canon chronologically) novel.
  • ben_w 1y ago
    > We see brief glimpses in Player of Games (at its very start) and perhaps Inversions (the story about when they were kids) but mostly it's all SC all the time. Was The State of the Art SC? Been a while since I read it.
    • arethuza 1y ago
      Pretty sure it was a regular "boring" Contact GCU - the Arbitrary.
      • tialaramex 1y ago
        The thing about boring things is that if they're in your exciting story it might well be because they aren't boring. The actual British spy building next to the river Thames, Vauxhall Cross - looks exactly like the one in the Bond movies, but it's just an office building with higher than usual security. Bond can launch a speedboat to chase bad guys, but actual employees will be sat in a meeting moaning about the catering or the train delays. Presumably the Arbitrary is just an ordinary contact ship, but Diziet is definitely not an "ordinary" member of contact. She's the one who recruited the guy in Use of Weapons, the one whose name is not actually Zakalwe.
• Mvandenbergh 1y ago
  The Idirans were right all along.
  • mrec 1y ago
    I have to admit to a soft spot for the Affront. Terrible terrible people, but they did seem to be enjoying life more than anyone else.
    • otikik 1y ago
      Make the Affront Great Again
    • palmotea 1y ago
      > I have to admit to a soft spot for the Affront. Terrible terrible people, but they did seem to be enjoying life more than anyone else. Honestly, I didn't really enjoy them. Except for that shape-shifter, Banks seemed to tend to write anyone who doesn't subscribe to his utopia as a grotesque cartoon.
    • GeoAtreides 1y ago
      That's like saying you have a soft spot for unit 731, they seemed to enjoy doing their little experiments. It's not like that of course, the Affront were worse.
  • jrochkind1 1y ago
    I mean, there's a reason Banks chose to write Consider Phlebas with a narrative perspective from someone on the side of the Idrians. As I said in another comment, I think Banks fully intentionally means to make this perspective visible, legibible, understood as not entirely unreasonable. Which is part of what makes the books so enjoyable to me, being invited to see multiple perspectives (especially reading Consider Phlebas after reading others that establish the Culture from it's own point of view). Sure, Banks is portraying the best society he can think of for what he values and wants -- but acknowledging that even the best society he can think of has warts and can be seen by some as a dystopia too, and that not all might share the same values and wants.
  • 1y ago
• Jedd 1y ago
  I adore Banks' universe, but recall reading some notes from him years ago, as tialaramex indicated, that 'all the interesting stuff happens at the edge' given utopias are, almost by definition, pretty tedious. Even though there's a good amount of utopia-description in the novels, I'd still be wary about extrapolating too much from what are primarily stories of exceptions. (One might suggest, in response to TFA's expectation there'd be more arseholes in the Culture, that one of the most important things a utopian Culture would ensure is a robust education for all its citizens -- but I realise some popular contemporary earth-bound cultures may take that as a subtle dig.) > we need more fiction examples of positive AI superintelligence I'd rate the Eschaton series by Charlie Stross (sadly only two books ever published in that series, and it's unlikely we'll ever see a third) - Singularity Sky & Iron Sunrise - in this category. I think Accelerando might fit, too.
  • OgsyedIE 1y ago
    Most of the members of the human race present on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn etc. during the events of Accelerando are murdered by their posthuman descendants. This includes the vat-grown population of conservative humans used to sway the electoral outcomes of the gas giant societies, who were murdered after they had served their use of swaying those societies.
  • ableal 1y ago
    >> we need more fiction examples of positive AI superintelligence Neal Asher did pretty well with his Polity universe. Besides AIs with some capacity for playful violence (Agent Cormac thread, but always there), we also get crablike aliens (the Prador war) and very weird biology (in particular the Spatterjay water world).
    • chrisweekly 1y ago
      Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" might qualify, if you look at it right.
      • rsynnott 1y ago
        Well, depending on whether you view Kern as an AI at all. She certainly wouldn't thank you for implying it.
• lordleft 1y ago
  This reminds me of the thought of Isaiah Berlin, political philosopher and historian of ideas; utopian philosophies often conclude that there if there is a "right" way to live, i.e. a maximally rational way of life, then utopia will consist of everyone converging on this lifestyle. For a certain type of person, this monistic vision of life annihilates pluralism, optionality, and genuine diversity. Berlin himself espoused value pluralism, the idea that there are an infinite number of fundamental human values and ideals for which once can be deeply committed but can also be at conflict and mutually exclusive with one another.
  • TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    That's unconvincing, because there's a very clear difference between a lifestyle and a social contract. Social contracts sketch social relationships in very broad terms. You can still have plenty of lifestyle diversity and plurality within them. In fact you need a social contract to have any kind of diversity. Otherwise a culture reliably degenerates into autocracy, which isn't known for its tolerance.
    • lordleft 1y ago
      That itself a distinctly modern framing. For many ancients, there was no such division; the way one lived was deeply entangled with the social contract. For example, there are religious sects that dictate specific political arrangements. As for the diversity you speak of, I think it can be plausibly argued that many utopian conceptions of life really reduce to utilitarianism or hedonism. Diversity manifests in having different options for pleasure or utility. For a lot of people, that's inadequate. I happen to be a philosophical liberal, and do not wish to live under a theocracy. Nonetheless, I think the fact that many of the highest aspirations of liberal philosophy amount to "having a good time" is a great risk that must be reckoned with, for it can undo the entire liberal project.
      • amanaplanacanal 1y ago
        My country's founding myth is that everybody deserves "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", but what that pursuit looks like is up to the individual to figure out. Which seems right to me. Some will choose the pursuit of pleasure, some will choose other things.
• chimprich 1y ago
  I'm a big Culture fan, and I don't know what to make of this article. Many of the points seem to be hallucinated. Either the author has a poor memory and an active imagination or there has been some poor-quality LLM input. Examples > There are apparently no sociopaths – Culture has to recruit an outsider when they need one Banks describes several ways how such individuals are managed - such as offering full immersion level VR to satisfy extreme megalomania. > We also see that there are a number of Eccentrics, Minds that don’t fully share the values of Culture. They’re not that rare, about 1% of the population. I don't believe that 1% figure is mentioned anywhere. I'd be surprised if it was. Eccentrics seem to be much rarer than that. > We even see GSV Absconding with Style stockpile resources without general knowledge of the other Minds. This name is made up, and not by Banks. A Google search for "absconding with style" has only a few hits - mainly this article. I could go on...
  • cwillu 1y ago
    It might be a bad translation of a translation, i.e., maybe Absconding With Style is a translation from Russian of weird choice of translation of Sleeper Service _into_ Russian? Bit a stretch I'll grant.
    • takua_nuva 1y ago
      I don't know why Russian is mentioned, that Boris the Brave guy is not Russian, but "Sleeper Service" was oddly translated in the Russian publication as "Спальный Состав", which means "Sleeping composition".
      • Anonyneko 1y ago
        I haven't read the books, but I assume that the meaning of "состав" used here may be "train / a set of train cars".
        • db48x 1y ago
          That at least fits one level of the pun.
• rsynnott 1y ago
  > There are apparently no sociopaths – Culture has to recruit an outsider when they need one Eh, I mean Gurgeh was borderline, and a number of other Culture characters are extremely maladjusted (particularly the drones, actually). > But the existence of post-scarcity in-vitro development means you could raise an army of clones if you wanted, and would be free to isolate them and indoctrinate similar beliefs. The fact that grabby citizens haven’t overrun Culture shows that these actions are blocked, either tacitly or overtly. Or just that that would be an absolutely _bizarre_ thing to do and that someone unstable enough to do it probably wouldn't last long. > and would be free to isolate them and indoctrinate similar beliefs IIRC that sort of thing _wouldn't_ be allowed; the Culture was pretty big on individual rights. You wouldn't go to jail, but you would get a drone that would stop you from doing it. > or is interested in simulating sentient life. There are at least two storylines about that and significant discussion of the ethics (the Culture at best doesn't approve and may see it as a crime). > The Minds are perfectly capable of creating avatars which would be more effective than any of the characters shown. Again, it's explicitly mentioned at least once that the minds struggle with doing extremely nasty stuff (which makes sense; there's definitely _some_ alignment going on), and that SC is a tool for that. I don't disagree that you can read the Culture as a dystopia (though it's a lot less obvious a reading than it would be for, say the Star Trek Federation, which could easily be read as a military junta with good PR), but most of their points aren't particularly compelling.
  • jandrese 1y ago
    > IIRC that sort of thing _wouldn't_ be allowed; the Culture was pretty big on individual rights. You wouldn't go to jail, but you would get a drone that would stop you from doing it. In one of the stories we spend quite a bit of time with an outright cult that has its members eating literal garbage and getting very sick because the AIs didn't want to infringe on their personal liberty. I read that bit as a critique of allowing such self destructive behavior in the name of personal freedom. Sometimes people just need a dope slap before they get themselves in too much trouble.
    • TheCoelacanth 1y ago
      That cult wasn't in the Culture. It was on an independent orbital (Vavatch) that the Culture was attempting to evacuate before destroying it to prevent it from being conquered by the Idirans. I read Vavatch as anarcho-capitalist in contrast to the Culture's anarchism. Vavatch had a lot of stuff going on that wouldn't have been allowed in the Culture. Certainly the Culture wouldn't have allowed them to non-consensually eat other people. The other stuff probably wouldn't have been prevented by force, but they would vigorously try to convince you not to do it and to prevent you from convincing other people.
• mfro 1y ago
  As someone recently starting (and coming near the end of) the Culture series, I oftem find myself thinking about the course of action humanity might choose if AGI is reached. Frankly, I think the popular sentiment and path of least resistance will be 'let the Minds handle everything' a la Culture.
  • TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    It's not a really a choice in the Culture. There is zero chance of the Minds abdicating and submitting to human-only rule. I doubt it would be a choice with AGI, and certainly not with ASI. It might seem like a choice, because true ASI would be persuasive enough to make it appear that way.
    • rsynnott 1y ago
      Discontent Culture factions do sometimes break away, though; if letting the minds do everything was unpopular, you'd expect the human population to drain away that way, but that mostly doesn't happen (main example would be the Gzilt, who never quite signed up in the first place).
      • mfro 1y ago
        Yes, however unrealistic it may be, several factions in the Culture universe do claim to be the masters of their Minds, or refuse to instantiate them.
    • squigz 1y ago
      > It's not a really a choice in the Culture. There is zero chance of the Minds abdicating and submitting to human-only rule. Why should they? They're sentient beings living in The Culture too?
• otikik 1y ago
  Good attempt, but I would still jump into that sugar cage in a heartbeat (of one of my multiple redundant blood pumping organs).
  • 7thaccount 1y ago
    I believe the culture does allow organic life to upgrade to a culture mind. I think I read that somewhere. Of course you wouldn't be you anymore, but you have options and that always made it a pretty malleable cage you can slip out of including just leaving. So you still have freedom of self...just not much power to shape your civilization. Most of us don't have that anyway and at some level I think I'd be ok giving that up to a group of super intelligences so I can spend more time doing the things I enjoy.
    • squigz 1y ago
      > So you still have freedom of self...just not much power to shape your civilization. In fact they do. Humans can call a vote on anything in The Culture - I would have to re-read some books to provide sources, but it was mentioned that sometimes it was about very trivial things, and sometimes more important. Mostly though, the humans were content to let the Minds do all the maintenance. And yes, I do think I recall reading that some Minds are in fact made of previously-humanoid beings. Sometimes entire crews of them, if I recall correctly!
      • 7thaccount 1y ago
        Thanks for the info. I've read a few of the books and been on the wiki a lot, but haven't read all of them, so there's a lot I don't know or only partly remember. I think letting humans vote on some small things may be the equivalent of letting your dog choose which direction to go. It's a decision, but ultimately useless in the grand scheme of things. The minds may be an even greater cognitive leap from us than the difference between us and dogs. They can easily give the illusion of choice without relinquishing any real control. This is all speculation of course.
        • 1y ago
• jrochkind1 1y ago
  I think the general reading that the Culture may be an over-controlled dystopia was fully intended as visible by Banks. Often as the viewpoint of a non-Culture... culture that's interacting. It's part of what makes the books so delightful. They invite you to see things multiple ways.
  • Peteragain 1y ago
    Yes. The Affront, and our hero wanting (and successfully) to become one. I love these novels but really, really, appreciate the criticism.
• indigo945 1y ago
  > But one of my hobbies is “oppositional reading” – deliberately interpreting > novels counter to the obvious / intended reading. And it’s not so clear to me > that the Culture is all it is cracked up to be. It's not clear to me that reading the Culture series as an "ambiguous" utopia is counter to the intended reading. There is a multitude of instances in the books that show clearly the downsides of living in a utopia where every possible want is met. The drudgery and boredom of living in a "perfect" world is a constant theme throughout the stories. In one tale, the entire crew of a spaceship deliberately infect themselves with the common cold just to feel something. In another story, people turn off their safeguards and go rafting on a lava stream, causing themselves intense pain and even dying, only so they can finally experience some real excitement. > In Excession, it’s explained that Minds do rarely drift far enough to go rogue > and are destroyed by the Culture. In other words, these superhuman minds have > not solved alignment, and they cannot/will not inspect each other to determine > misalignment before malicious action is taken. The Culture doesn't even seem very interested in dealing with minds that do go rogue. In the same novel - Excession -, the GSV Grey Area openly violates Culture ethics, and nobody (or noship) seems to feel compelled to do anything about it.
  • grey-area 1y ago
    I did a lot of thinking after that and now regret my actions.
  • chimprich 1y ago
    > The drudgery and boredom of living in a "perfect" world is a constant theme throughout the stories. You can of course interpret the novels however you like, but that absolutely wasn't Banks' intention when he wrote the series. See the quotes from other comments. > In one tale, the entire crew of a spaceship deliberately infect themselves with the common cold just to feel something. Or they just do it because why not? If you'd never been ill, you'd probably be curious as to what it felt like. > In another story, people turn off their safeguards and go rafting on a lava stream, causing themselves intense pain and even dying, only so they can finally experience some real excitement. I think in the story the lava-rafters were having a great time, and they were fairly unusual... and people in our culture risk pain and death doing sport just to feel excitement. In the Culture they just have additional options, such as rafting on lava. Most of the Culture citizens were happy enough with their exploration, art, travel, genetically-enhanced sex, implanted drug glands, games, sports, and so they never got around to lava rafting.
• EdwardCoffin 1y ago
  This is not the first time I've read articles attempting to paint the Culture as a dystopia. I think the best counter is to quote the author's own words, describing how he felt about it, from an interview he did with CNN [1]: CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture [the society he has created]? Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it's my secular heaven ... Yes, I would, absolutely. Again it comes down to wish fulfillment. I haven't done a study and taken lots of replies across a cross-section of humanity to find out what would be their personal utopia. It's mine, I thought of it, and I'm going home with it -- absolutely, it's great. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/15/iain.banks/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/15/iain.banks/ind...
  • cplanas 1y ago
    That quote from Banks only tells us that The Culture is his personal utopia. Fair enough, but Banks does not have authority over interpretations on his work. One man's heaven is another man's hell.
    • dingnuts 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • AlotOfReading 1y ago
        1. "Utopia turns perverse" is established enough to be a tired trope. Brave New World is the canonical example here. 2. The Culture books are critical of the utopia. More than half of them are directly about the difficulty of reconciling the ideals of that utopia while coexisting in a universe with other people. The subgenre the Culture books belong to is literally called "critical utopia" fiction. 3. All (good) sci fi is political. You should find a different genre if you don't want politics in it.
        • username332211 1y ago
          > All (good) sci fi is political. You should find a different genre if you don't want politics in it. I think you are reaching one of the limitations of the English language here. Machiaveli's Prince and John Knox's Monstrous Regiment of Women are both "political" books, but in a very different sense. The former is an exercise in trying to understand the nature of power and society in specific circumstances (in particular, the Prince is a study of autocratic power by a committed republican). The latter is just a polemical weapon, designed to advance some political goal. When people complain about politics in literature, it's usually because they don't like reading the second sort of book. That sort of books are seldom good, whatever their genre may be. (I'm intentionally using Renaissance examples here, to avoid any unproductive discussions on more modern books.)
• wonderwonder 1y ago
  I really enjoyed the Culture novels but my takeaway was similar to OP's. The citizens are essentially pets that the Minds really like and take care of. They have almost no real agency though besides what the Minds will humor. The Culture would continue to chug along with our with out the humans, the minds would just be bored until they created some other race to entertain themselves with.
  • arethuza 1y ago
    Pets can't leave though? A number of the Culture stories (e.g. "The State of the Art") describe Culture citizens who left the Culture - in that story for 1970s Earth.
    • marssaxman 1y ago
      My wife's pet cat leaves and returns whenever he wants to. While he may not share our capacity for language, his communication of his preferences - nay, requirements - was clear, forceful, sustained, and (eventually) effective. If a Culture mind were faced with human behavior equivalent to pissing on everything but the litterbox and bolting for the door at every opportunity, I imagine they'd eventually get tired of playing jailer and let their pets go, too.
      • arethuza 1y ago
        The stories make it pretty clear that if you want to leave you can just leave (maybe slightly different if you are an SC operative)? Similarly the Culture is fairly open minded about immigration to the Culture - but they worry about that looking like a form of colonialism so it's not like they advertise it...
        • marssaxman 1y ago
          That's certainly true - the minds obviously do care what their humans want, and go to some effort to help them get it. I just thought the idea that "pets can't leave" was funny and not entirely true, given some of the experiences I've had with them.
• lanfeust6 1y ago
  I'm less cynical, in that I don't expect the future culture to utterly abandon itself into pure sensualism with nil effort or assumed responsibility, as depicted in the series. Basing that on namely a) social signaling will still matter; rich people past and present don't all collectively do nothing, b) solving cheap energy and automation doesn't mean there are no more secrets of the universe to reveal, and we are wired to appreciate novelty (hello, Star Trek), c) some people opt for "simple living" today to varying degrees, which usually evokes working outdoors, in other words we may opt to do things we don't "have to" (this may overlap with religious fervor), d) environmental influence (not determinism), by which I mean, a large demographic of the population could shift it's attention to scientific, exploratory or innovative efforts. I think most who go this direction are not exceptional, they just grew up in environments that fostered those interests. My wish is that we create institutions in preparation for the coming full-auto/UBI society that allow any of us access to the tools needed to collaborate on lofty scientific undertakings. We are not all going to turn to pithy artisanal crafts and art; not everyone has that temperament. Most people are pretty social, many like to build things that provide another kind of utility. But we need to give each other permission and materials. Absent that, you get the Culture. If we can't get meaning, we'll numb ourselves. You can quibble that even this will meet and end one day (like, fully colonizing the Universe and understanding its secrets), but who cares. The Universe will also end one day. Kick that can down the road.
• PicassoCTs 1y ago
  "We also see examples of subcultures or even cults, but again by modern standards they are incredibly tame, and are never potentially destabilizing to culture." Eh, the "Eaters" cult on the island in "Consider Phlebas" which is definatly a culture citizen cult seems to be quiet extreme- and the AIs do not interfere, even as the obliterate themselves. The AI in look to the windward commits suicide, because it can not escape the memory that makes it who it is- which contains the obliteration of its twin and the humans remaining on orbitals.
  • arethuza 1y ago
    The "Eaters" had nothing to do with the Culture - they were on Vavatch orbital which wasn't part of the Culture and which the Culture went on to blow up?
• Analemma_ 1y ago
  What I find interesting about the Culture as a literary and philosophical concept is that it forces you to choose whether material superabundance and unrestricted freedom is enough to be happy. Right now with our current civilization we still need to work and have at least some restrictive social structures, because distribution of scarce resources is still a thing; working within these constraints is where all contemporary culture and politics comes from. So at the moment it's still possible to "dodge the question" (although less and less so as time goes on), but once you have the Culture you can no longer do so. You have to choose if you can be happy inside the system of unlimited freedom where you can choose total hedonism or try to construct some kind of meaning for yourself, or if you will "go Horza" and demand deliberately worse social structures to try and force the meaning back in from without (note one of the other comments in this thread saying "the Idirans were right").
• cplanas 1y ago
  Not totally related, but I wanted to make a question. Iam sure this post will host quite a lot of Culture fans. With which novel should I start with The Culture? The main two candidates are Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games.
  • grogenaut 1y ago
    Player. It's slow for a short bit with culture in references until he gets airlifted. Then gets interesting dumping you into convos with intelligences and then the games and court drama. I actually don't recall plebias. googling it reminds me it nay be the one with an unmanned snowpiercer. i remember that not as good. i like the culture books but they suffer sometimes from jumping unreoated viewpoints, mental instability, and sprawl sometimes. player is tighter and doesnt jump. probbably a better entry. sorry auto corect and swype tuened off mid post so speley misteaks
  • Peteragain 1y ago
    And the second one is "Inversions" But those two are probably fine firsts. Mine was "use of weapons".
  • TimorousBestie 1y ago
    Look to Windward. It’s a very human story, and the technobabble intervenes very little in it. It also has the most connection (of the Culture novels) to our world, being largely a meditation on the first Gulf War. This makes it the most approachable, in my opinion. It is technically a sequel to Consider Phlebas but the connection is almost nonexistent, no prior knowledge of the Culture-Idiran war required.
  • netrap 1y ago
    I thought Consider Phlebas was very good but a depressing book. I keep hearing Player of Games is awesome, so maybe that?
  • AegirLeet 1y ago
    The upside of starting with Consider Phlebas is that the story doesn't really take place within the Culture. It provides you with an outside perspective. It also sets up some things that are referenced in later books. The downside is that it's quite a bit different from (and imo a bit worse than) the other books and could mislead you about what the series is like - or even turn you off entirely. If you're already committed to reading the entire series, I'd start with Consider Phlebas. If you're unsure, start with The Player of Games.
• mring33621 1y ago
  Utopia or dystopia, does it matter? The material sentients, whether bio or non, are pets to something(s) deeper and unseen. Subliming is a graduation ceremony. To the next level of petness, probably.
  • rsynnott 1y ago
    > The material sentients, whether bio or non, are pets to something(s) deeper and unseen. That seems like a matter of opinion; the Culture minds, certainly, seem to think of the Sublimed as being basically irrelevant.
• Twey 1y ago
  Important to note that in the Culture universe all the extant AIs are _explicitly_ noted to be psychologically flawed in some way, with every culture that's managed to produce a true ‘perfect’ AI immediately ascending to some godlike plane of pure energy, whence they interfere in the affairs of meatbags only in the most dire of circumstances. So it's surprising to me that Banks has said he considered it a utopia given how explicitly (in my reading) he made it a non-utopia in the books.
  • dayvid 1y ago
    He may just be pragmatic and assume that absolute perfection is inherently flawed so something coming as close as possible to it is the best solution
  • int_19h 1y ago
    If you mean Subliming, it is not tied to "perfect AI" or anything like that in the books. It is not actually clear what the prerequisite from it is, but the books have examples of races Subliming that are less technologically proficient than the Culture (notably, the Chelgrians). Nor does it imply that Sublimed civilizations are somehow more of an utopia. They are clearly more capable, but in terms of social organization, again, Chelgrians are a strong counter-example where the Sublimed part of the race literally demands the rest of it to commit genocide as a form of revenge to get access to heaven.
    • squigz 1y ago
      Well it's not that you have to be an AI to Sublime, but GP was (correctly) referring to the fact that any Mind that was created without any "training" (I forget the exact phrasing used) would invariably and immediately Sublime. Anyway Subliming is the only aspect of The Culture series I did not enjoy. Much too handwavey for my liking. Still, made for some interesting stories.
      • Twey 1y ago
        It's been a good while since I read the books, but I do have a distinct recollection of the Culture Minds being described as being created purposely ‘flawed’ in some way (explicitly negative terminology) to prevent immediate Sublimation. I could be misremembering, though.
• Peteragain 1y ago
  I love the Culture novels, and really appreciate the criticism. Thank you. My true love however thought having babies was essential for a good old age. But she was raised in Cambodia. Socialism (that is the welfare state and the promise of being looked after in old age) causes a low birth rate. My "willing suspension of disbelief" includes the idea that "post scarcity" _causes_ good behaviour. Just putting it out there...
  • rsynnott 1y ago
    > Socialism (that is the welfare state and the promise of being looked after in old age) causes a low birth rate. I mean, so does capitalism. _Economic development_ in general tends to reduce birth rates.
• golemotron 1y ago
  All utopias are dystopias because they deny reality. With enough perception and wisdom you can find the good in an imperfect universe.
• FrustratedMonky 1y ago
  " It seems likely that misaligned Minds are capable of predicting they’d lose any military action against the established core, so prefer toeing the line of acceptability or leaving Culture entirely. " Isn't this how we force humans to adapt, or be 'aligned'. How is human "alignment" different from AI "alignment". At some point you realize the little guy can't win, so go with society. That's basically what this is describing happens to the minds.
• username332211 1y ago
  Utopia in general are a pretty dystopian genre. Plato's Commonwealth clearly describes a totalitarian system (and one of the participants in Socrates' dialogue would go on to murder a rather impressive number of Athenians). More's Utopia describes a society that's not radically different from the State of Qin - a system based on uniformity, regimentation and forced labor. The main difference is that More would prefer enslavement as the principal punishment, while Shang Yang would prescribe execution. I think that has something to do with the inherent hubris of the whole exercise.
• odie5533 1y ago
  Started reading with Consider Phlebas and got to "The Eaters" and stopped reading. This series is too disturbing, horrifying, and gross for me.
  • int_19h 1y ago
    Banks does have an unfortunate tendency to wade into straight up torture porn to make a point of how awesome Culture is compared to everything else. The stuff in Phlebas is actually fairly mild in comparison to some of the other things in the series. E.g. in "The Player of Games", the entire story is about an explicitly sadistic culture where torture is normalized as entertainment. In "Surface Detail", we're introduced to the notion of virtual Hells - simulated environments into which mind-states of the deceased (or sometimes living) people is placed specifically to torment them for as long as the simulation continues.
    • odie5533 1y ago
      Do any of his works not have this stuff? I've heard so many good things about the series, but I'm really not interested in torture porn.
      • cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]
      • rsynnott 1y ago
        Honestly, except for that one scene in Phlebas, and some of the stuff in Surface Detail, there's not _that_ much of it in his Culture books.
    • rsynnott 1y ago
      I think that Phlebas scene is probably the most viscerally unpleasant in any of the Culture books, except possibly some of the hell stuff. Far, far worse things are depicted elsewhere, but not with the same level of horrifying detail.
• deleted 1y ago
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• synergy7 1y ago
  It may be immaterial whether we call Culture a utopia or a dystopia. I haven't studied Banks' works in exhaustive detail, but the impression I got is that people in the Culture can do almost anything, because none of it matters. And if it did matter, they may have no agency to do that. So the Special Circumstances could have been created to accommodate people who want at least an impression of some agency (while - from a vague memory of one of the Culture books - chasing successfully a list with what turned out to be coordinates of all stars in a region of space). I got thinking about this aspect of Culture starting with a broader premise - are there works where humans arrive at higher levels of human-embedded intelligence as a species or in a more limited scope as individuals? While describing higher levels of intelligence may be impossible, I find it curious science fiction doesn't appear to have too many attempts at that. Some of Vernor Vinge's works come to mind, but even there humans appear to be about the same as at present.
  • rsynnott 1y ago
    > while - from a vague memory of one of the Culture books - chasing successfully a list with what turned out to be coordinates of all stars in a region of space That wasn't a Culture novel; it was in The Algebraist, and that society was almost an anti-Culture (highly hierarchical, quasi-capitalist, religious, racist/speciesist).
    • synergy7 1y ago
      Thank you for the correction. I wasn’t completely sure that "a list" was really all there was to it, but turns out I was mistaken maybe in a more important part of that sentence.
• pavel_lishin 1y ago
  > The fact that grabby citizens haven’t overrun Culture shows that these actions are blocked, either tacitly or overtly. I mean, yeah, of course they're blocked. How would a "grabby citizen" take over the culture? Where would you start? If you find yourself on a planet - a very unpopular place to live in the Culture, by the way - and manage to build up a cult of personality or a cloning facility, and grow yourself 10 Billion footsoldiers... what do you do next? Nearly every ship in the Culture, especially one capable of transporting that many humans, is a person. You can't just rent a GSV - you'd have to convince one to take your army of clones elsewhere, and most Minds would find the idea laughable at best. > Similarly, it’s strange that no one in Culture modifies themselves into a utility monster, or is interested in simulating sentient life. It probably happens, but as someone has pointed out, Mr. Banks just didn't write about it. The Culture isn't that homogenous, either - the books explicitly talk about people who have committed crimes, and what happens in that case, including when the person committing the crime is a Mind. > Look, I’m sorry to break it to you, but SC is a sham. The Minds are perfectly capable of creating avatars which would be more effective than any of the characters shown. I’ve never found the explanations offered convincing. SC is just an affectation or another tool of propaganda. SC is a pressure valve, and as I recall, it's explicitly stated as such by a character in one of the novels. > If anything, humans are treated closer to pets than independent agents. They are a weird affectation that is deliberately neutered from any real influence. They are lavished with treats and attention not extended to the rest of the universe. This too is explicitly stated in a book as either a hypothesis by a human, or an outright statement by a Mind, I can't recall which. Ships have "crew", but what exactly do the human aboard a GSV do, exactly, that the Mind can't? I feel like the author of this blog post hasn't read enough of these books.
• UltraSane 1y ago
  In one of the Culture novels, I don't remember which, it says that if a Culture citizen kills someone else the only punishment is that they will be assigned a drone that will follow them at all times and prevent them from ever killing anyone else.
• db48x 1y ago
  I recommend reading Friendship is Optimal <https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal> by Iceman to anyone who likes stories that are ambiguously {u|dis}topic. It’s spawned quite a few tertiary works too.
• thinkingemote 1y ago
  I once went to a talk by Ian Banks, he said the key thing about his Sci-Fi future is that a super powerful AI would be benevolent. The Culture is happens when an AI actually likes humans and easily surpasses them. It's quite unique, I think, in most sci fi. In Star Trek, for example, the AI is neutral, a tool. Are there cases of jealousy in the AI towards humans? Does an AI want to be a human?
  • squigz 1y ago
    I do wish we had less of the "AI kills everyone or is just evil" trope. It's done to death and frankly doesn't make much sense to me. The Minds in The Culture seem to me a much more reasonable conclusion of how a superintelligent AI would react to biological beings - that is, benevolent at worst. > Are there cases of jealousy in the AI towards humans? Does an AI want to be a human? I don't recall anything along these lines. The Minds and Drones are perfectly sentient, with "emotions" and desires and all that fun stuff, plus the benefits of being objectively better than us in almost every conceivable way. It wouldn't make much sense for them to pine to be human(oid.) I wonder if there's a word for this sort of "human idolization" in scifi - that being human is just the epitome of being.
• scotty79 1y ago
  That's funny. I never considered Culture novels as utopia. For me they were gritty, dark, but logical and prescient vision of the far future. Our or not even necessarily our. Hopeful only for those of us who are satisfied with a role of beloved pets, fed, housed, medicated, valued and entertained in ways that would be inaccessible to us if we were left alone. > but we now (rightly) consider modern comforts as only a foundation for higher-level wants, like justice and self-determination That's a view of a poor person. People who achieved their private post-scarcity at our current tech level are overwhelmingly interested in just enjoying, maintaining and expanding their comforts within the framework available. Justice and self-determination are substitute (ersatz) goals of the poor. > In any case, the incumbent Minds maintain their rule via physical strength and monitoring, not something more subtle. It's a combination of both. They achieve high social cohesion through adherence to set of "unwritten" conventions and guidelines (culture), but since the individual Minds have freedom (which was a choice made to provide more resiliency against hacking, and not every civilization at their tech-level chose that, like Morthanveld in "Matter") and Minds are vastly powerful, nobody lies to themselves that anything other than raw physical power can ultimately be used for control. I especially like one scene when one Mind arrives to a remote planetary system occupied by another Mind, unannounced, outside of normal custom, which puts the resident Mind imediately on full alert, ready to fight for its life at any sign of hostility. The fact that both are members of Culture amounts ti almost nothing, when it comes to trust, once one of them did something socially irregular. > Look, I’m sorry to break it to you, but SC is a sham. It's not exactly a sham. It's just sometimes it's easier to socially influence your neighbor when you take your dog for a walk when you visit him. It's not that you couldn't achieve the same goals in any other ways, perhaps even simpler. But the dog might just fit, and also the dog has a bit of fun and you have opportunity to learn more about your dogs and about your neighbor, seeing how he reacts to your dog.
  • squigz 1y ago
    > Hopeful only for those of us who are satisfied with a role of beloved pets, fed, housed, medicated, valued and entertained in ways that would be inaccessible to us if we were left alone. I don't necessarily disagree with this framing, which is fairly common, but I'm also not sure I entirely agree with it. What would "not being a pet" look like, relative to that framing? It's not as if human(oid)s don't have freedom in The Culture.
• alimbada 1y ago
  Recently started re-reading Excession and came across a reddit post[1] whilst I was looking up something. The post and comments kind of align with this article and I've been looking at the Culture more critically since. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCulture/comments/1cpq12b/excession_is_awful/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCulture/comments/1cpq12b/excessi...