The culture of The Culture

[Matterplay1]

Came across this article while I was looking for something else. An interesting take on Iain Banks' Culture novels.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicatio...in-m-banks

[Drashner1]

Interesting article, although the author is incorrect on one point, which may somewhat undermine the rest of his premise:

In Look to Windward, the 'terror machine' that attacked the Chelgrian base and killed the assassin character (and his boss as well), disabled all the electronics and computers on the base - except for the cameras - it made a point of keeping those running and of making sure that the Chelgrian government (or those elements of it that were plotting to attack the Culture and kill around 5 billion people) would see what was done to those leading the effort to attack the Culture. Basically (and it may even be explicitly stated in the book, I'd have to check), a message was being sent: Don't mess with us or this or worse will happen to you.

Todd

[stevebowers]

"The magnificent epic of an ambiguous utopia." This was true of the Dispossessed, and true of the (often uncomfortable and challenging) Culture; I would like to think that it is true of OA as well. The Terragen Sphere is a comfortable place to exist in, but a nightmare for anyone who wants to live in a world without gods.

[Matterplay1]

"The magnificent epic of an ambiguous utopia." This was true of the Dispossessed, and true of the (often uncomfortable and challenging) Culture; I would like to think that it is true of OA as well. The Terragen Sphere is a comfortable place to exist in, but a nightmare for anyone who wants to live in a world without gods.

I think we have the advantage over Banks' "Culture" in that since there are multiple authors we have a more diverse set of conceptions of 'The Good' than Banks did. I agree with the author of the piece that Banks' conception of an ideal culture is a bit disturbing and contradictory once you dig into it. We, with our multiple viewpoints, have more different ways to entice, and (again, if you look inside our supposed paradises more ways to disturb) the reader.

One similarity I do note is that we, like Banks, are still children of Western culture and of the 'Enlightenment'. The OA setting's 'Civilized Galaxy' is actually the projection of a fairly narrow set of human values out into the larger universe. Western colonialism on a galactic scale, some might argue. :-) Fortunately for plausibility's sake we do admit that there might be other , equally powerful, metacultures at work outside the 'Sephirotics'.

[Steel Accord]

"The magnificent epic of an ambiguous utopia." This was true of the Dispossessed, and true of the (often uncomfortable and challenging) Culture; I would like to think that it is true of OA as well. The Terragen Sphere is a comfortable place to exist in, but a nightmare for anyone who wants to live in a world without gods.

I think we have the advantage over Banks' "Culture" in that since there are multiple authors we have a more diverse set of conceptions of 'The Good' than Banks did. I agree with the author of the piece that Banks' conception of an ideal culture is a bit disturbing and contradictory once you dig into it. We, with our multiple viewpoints, have more different ways to entice, and (again, if you look inside our supposed paradises more ways to disturb) the reader.

One similarity I do note is that we, like Banks, are still children of Western culture and of the 'Enlightenment'. The OA setting's 'Civilized Galaxy' is actually the projection of a fairly narrow set of human values out into the larger universe. Western colonialism on a galactic scale, some might argue. :-) Fortunately for plausibility's sake we do admit that there might be other , equally powerful, metacultures at work outside the 'Sephirotics'.

I don't see that in the slightest, at least not with the OA material I've read. The Sephirotics are very broad and have many different sophont viewpoints and powerful memes.

It's just as you said even, multiple authors so we all can picture our own utopia and have it exist somewhere but not at the exclusion to another. If you want to stretch it, I suppose one could call provolving "the Terragen's Burden" but that really is stretching it.

On the subject of the Culture, I've only read two of it's books and I would say it's more than similar to the Sephirotics, except maybe a bit more focused, which makes sense.

[stevebowers]

If we have been guilty of western cultural bias when describing the Terragen Sphere that is understandable, since that is the culture we are living in; but if any contributor wants to write about worlds or cultures that are not obviously descended from Enlightenment ideals they are welcome to.

For my own part I often imagine the cultures on the worlds I describe as being moderately or even extremely non-western, or even non humanocentric; but it is difficult to describe these sorts of cultures in a short article. But I must admit that when I imagine the effects of transapient influence on these worlds, I tend to project some sort of post-Enlightenment humanist/rationalist philosophy on the transaps; this could easily be very wide of the mark. There's no reason to expect that transapients would be humanist humanophiles, even if they exist within the Sephirotic Empires.

That might have been Bank's point when he made several of the Mind characters in his books egregious or even sadistic; I'm looking at you, Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints and Grey Area.

[LightBuilder]

"The magnificent epic of an ambiguous utopia." This was true of the Dispossessed, and true of the (often uncomfortable and challenging) Culture; I would like to think that it is true of OA as well. The Terragen Sphere is a comfortable place to exist in, but a nightmare for anyone who wants to live in a world without gods.

I think we have the advantage over Banks' "Culture" in that since there are multiple authors we have a more diverse set of conceptions of 'The Good' than Banks did. I agree with the author of the piece that Banks' conception of an ideal culture is a bit disturbing and contradictory once you dig into it. We, with our multiple viewpoints, have more different ways to entice, and (again, if you look inside our supposed paradises more ways to disturb) the reader.

One similarity I do note is that we, like Banks, are still children of Western culture and of the 'Enlightenment'. The OA setting's 'Civilized Galaxy' is actually the projection of a fairly narrow set of human values out into the larger universe. Western colonialism on a galactic scale, some might argue. :-) Fortunately for plausibility's sake we do admit that there might be other , equally powerful, metacultures at work outside the 'Sephirotics'.

I don't see that in the slightest, at least not with the OA material I've read. The Sephirotics are very broad and have many different sophont viewpoints and powerful memes.

It's just as you said even, multiple authors so we all can picture our own utopia and have it exist somewhere but not at the exclusion to another. If you want to stretch it, I suppose one could call provolving "the Terragen's Burden" but that really is stretching it.

On the subject of the Culture, I've only read two of it's books and I would say it's more than similar to the Sephirotics, except maybe a bit more focused, which makes sense.

While the Sephirotics are wonderfully diverse and allow a great variety of lifestyles and conceptions of the good, they all share one rather glaring feature: rule by the archailects. Modosophonts have no actual say in the direction of their societies. In a few instances, I'm thinking of the Version War specifically, they seem to be little more than game pieces on a unimaginably complex board played for unfathomable goals and reasons.

If your conception of the good involves self-determination, your more or less out of luck in the Sephirotics (and the Culture, for that matter). What's are you options at that point? Join the Backgrounders and live in constant paranoia and in permanent isolation? Push out farther from the Terragen sphere, ever knowing that the wolves are always right at your heels? Not what you'd call tempting options.

[Rynn]

I don't know that modosophonts have no say in the running of their societies. Ultimately that may be true but we've got it mentioned a few places in the canon that local politics can be left to modosophonts (with "local" ranging from neighbourhoods to solar systems depending on the empire). Caveat being that modosophont governments have to operate within the framework defined by the archai, a kind of constitutional monarchy.

[Steel Accord]

"The magnificent epic of an ambiguous utopia." This was true of the Dispossessed, and true of the (often uncomfortable and challenging) Culture; I would like to think that it is true of OA as well. The Terragen Sphere is a comfortable place to exist in, but a nightmare for anyone who wants to live in a world without gods.

I think we have the advantage over Banks' "Culture" in that since there are multiple authors we have a more diverse set of conceptions of 'The Good' than Banks did. I agree with the author of the piece that Banks' conception of an ideal culture is a bit disturbing and contradictory once you dig into it. We, with our multiple viewpoints, have more different ways to entice, and (again, if you look inside our supposed paradises more ways to disturb) the reader.

One similarity I do note is that we, like Banks, are still children of Western culture and of the 'Enlightenment'. The OA setting's 'Civilized Galaxy' is actually the projection of a fairly narrow set of human values out into the larger universe. Western colonialism on a galactic scale, some might argue. :-) Fortunately for plausibility's sake we do admit that there might be other , equally powerful, metacultures at work outside the 'Sephirotics'.

I don't see that in the slightest, at least not with the OA material I've read. The Sephirotics are very broad and have many different sophont viewpoints and powerful memes.

It's just as you said even, multiple authors so we all can picture our own utopia and have it exist somewhere but not at the exclusion to another. If you want to stretch it, I suppose one could call provolving "the Terragen's Burden" but that really is stretching it.

On the subject of the Culture, I've only read two of it's books and I would say it's more than similar to the Sephirotics, except maybe a bit more focused, which makes sense.

While the Sephirotics are wonderfully diverse and allow a great variety of lifestyles and conceptions of the good, they all share one rather glaring feature: rule by the archailects. Modosophonts have no actual say in the direction of their societies. In a few instances, I'm thinking of the Version War specifically, they seem to be little more than game pieces on a unimaginably complex board played for unfathomable goals and reasons.

If your conception of the good involves self-determination, your more or less out of luck in the Sephirotics (and the Culture, for that matter). What's are you options at that point? Join the Backgrounders and live in constant paranoia and in permanent isolation? Push out farther from the Terragen sphere, ever knowing that the wolves are always right at your heels? Not what you'd call tempting options.

But that's not a "Western bias" or any such nonsense, that's just the nature of the Singularity. Such intelligences, by their nature, would be so powerful and so omniscient that it hardly matters what culture exists within their domains.

Even then, the Archai are different in that they allow self-determination. If you live in the Utopia Sphere, you're basically telling the transaps "provide for me, please." Whereas the Invisible Hand of the NoCoZo might as well not be there for the amount of control it exerts over it's slice of space.

And in this future, you ARE free to self-determine. No Archai keeps a modosophont prisoner, I could leave the Sophic League and join the MPA if I wanted. My life is my destiny and I can shape it however I wish. The Archailects don't hinder that, they make it even more practical to do so.

I can't see a Western or Eastern ideal in either, but what I do see is a human one. That there is a greater power at work in the universe. The difference is that in OA, we provably know those powers exist because we created them. I would feel happy and honored to exist within the purview of such benevolent Minds.

[Dalex]

If this is western bias or purely western thing then I call western values superior.