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Comment by palmotea | Hacker News Reader

> Always loved Iain M Banks' Culture series and it's very sad that he's not with us any more. If I could pick any fictional civ to live in, it'd be up there.

I've never really found the Culture to be that optimistic. The people are basically pets, the vast majority of which seem occupy themselves with vapid shit, and the "important" jobs humans have are actually unnecessary (as the "Minds" can do everything better).

I thought the Gzilt from the last book had a better path of development than the Culture. It seems they took every opportunity to keep humans (in some form) in control at every level (e.g. no "Minds" on their ships, just groups of emulated humans running at accelerated speeds to achieve the same effect).

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But that's a choice. Humans in the Culture can change their form and body to basically be whatever they want: with some caution expressed for changes which might not leave meaningful back conversions.

The humans we see are human because they choose to be.

The thing about The Culture is the universe doesn't bend to make being human the default or particularly good: it is an old world where technology surpasses limitations in almost every way imaginable - if you choose. You can also just decide to go lava rafting, where the agreed rules are materials just barely up to task.

Yeah, and you have to keep in mind that "human" in the Culture is an extremely broad category. A Klingon or a Ferengi or even something substantially weirder would count as human to the Culture.

When they visit 1970s Earth in State of the Art, they have to be very selective about who they send because many of them would stick out like a sore thumb even after cosmetic surgery.

Why is humans having to work forever even when it's totally unnecessary more optimistic than utopia where work is just a vacation for when you get bored of doing human things?

> Why is humans having to work forever even when it's totally unnecessary more optimistic than utopia where work is just a vacation for when you get bored of doing human things?

Because, IMHO, having some sort of meaningful occupation is good. The bad thing is actually the loss of power and control over your own life and your society that comes with it in our world.

In the Culture, I get the impression that most of the people are essentially dumb little lap dogs, who have little idea of how anything works, occupying themselves with social-media-tier stuff. There are still "people" who have to get the work done, but they're non-human which means the society is really a non-human one.

> I get the impression that most of the people are essentially dumb little lap dogs, who have little idea of how anything works, occupying themselves with social-media-tier stuff. There are still "people" who have to get the work done, but they're non-human which means the society is really a non-human one.

Is that really any different from our modern society other than the robots freeing the more capable or more dutiful humans from the chores? The central critique of most human systems of governance is that they place power in the hands of the idle/corrupt rather than the productive (left and right, they just disagree on which parts of society are productive). Putting all the power in the hands of the people doing all the work is the ideal solution for most people, we just don't have self-sacrificing civic-minded slaves to force the drudgery on.

> Is that really any different from our modern society other than the robots freeing the more capable or more dutiful humans from the chores?

Yes it is, because our modern society is still a human society. Humans in culture society are more the like dogs in ours, perhaps loved and cared for, but it's not their story.

> Putting all the power in the hands of the people doing all the work is the ideal solution for most people, we just don't have self-sacrificing civic-minded slaves to force the drudgery on.

The problem in the Culture is that they effectively put all the power in the hands of the "Minds." I have no problem with a Roomba or toilet-cleaning robot handling true drudgery. But the interesting or important shit should be for people.

In the Culture novels, there was some pretty radical genetic engineering going on (to the point of enabling alien reproductive compatibility). You'd think they could have done some of that to make "self-sacrificing civic-mindedness" very fun and satisfying, instead of going all-in on vapid hedonism stuff (which what you see whenever you catch glimpses of the bulk of culture citizens).

It's not explicitly stated, but I get the impression that Culture citizens are generally very pro-social and willing to sacrifice for others' benefits and may well have been engineered with that aim.

They were willing to sacrifice nearly a trillion lives in the Idiran war, which was voted on by the entire population. Even after that vote, it was very easy to opt-out and I get the sense that most of those who did were motivated by genuine pacifism rather than personal fear.

The most dangerous and uncomfortable jobs like Special Circumstances and Contact seem to have an enormous surplus of volunteers and it's even hinted that there might not be any need for humans to do most of those jobs; they exist just because humans want to do them.

>vapid shit

>important jobs

As with all Culture critiques, this one boils down, again, to existentialism. Yes, we live in an meaningless universe and we brush against the absurd every day. That doesn't make The Culture any less of an utopia. And if you think it's not a true utopia, then I suggest reading Camus.

I think it is a credit to the world building in the Culture novels that fans can disagree and debate so much on whether it is utopian or dystopian, and that's a discussion that characters in the books have too!

Personally I love it and I wish we could have a few of the wise Minds among us now.

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