some thoughts on the culture
Feb. 24th, 2011 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaSomething struck me about Iain Banks's 'Culture' novels this morning -- he's constructed perhaps the most optimistic future we can imagine in the present, and given how much genre fiction has turned to horrible dystopic settings it's refreshing to see interesting stories told in a more or less utopic setting.
Take the post-scarcity Federation of Star Trek and fast forward about, oh, 2000 years. You will likely end up somewhere in the vicinity of the Culture. The Culture dominates an unspecified largish portion of the galaxy and has basically evolved beyond laws and government because people are generally well-enough-behaved that they are no longer needed. Whatever situations arise are handled by whoever takes it upon themselves to address them, making decisions by consensus. If military hardware is needed for a crisis, it's just fabricated on the spot and dismantled afterwards.
A large society with essentially limitless resources and industrial capacity spread out over relativistic distances would probably be ungovernable anyway under the model of hegemony as we understand it. So instead of hegemony -- the use or threat of force implicit in the idea of governance -- the Culture maintains order by promoting a sense of common purpose among its citizens. While many of the Culture's citizens are not particularly nice people, they bear an implicit sense of obligation which, though they have absolute freedom, comes from their own nature. (For every person who becomes the protagonist of a Culture story, there are many others who do not simply by virtue of not being the most well-suited person for the task.) Another common motivation is a sense of horror experienced by members of the Culture when they encounter civilizations that are characterized by oppression and cruelty.
This mirrors my own thoughts that society will not be saved by changing or engineering the perfect politico-economic structure but by cultivating a sense of stronger connectedness among people, a sense that giving back is as important as taking in.
ETA: Iain Banks has spelled out some interesting thoughts on the Culture here:
Take the post-scarcity Federation of Star Trek and fast forward about, oh, 2000 years. You will likely end up somewhere in the vicinity of the Culture. The Culture dominates an unspecified largish portion of the galaxy and has basically evolved beyond laws and government because people are generally well-enough-behaved that they are no longer needed. Whatever situations arise are handled by whoever takes it upon themselves to address them, making decisions by consensus. If military hardware is needed for a crisis, it's just fabricated on the spot and dismantled afterwards.
A large society with essentially limitless resources and industrial capacity spread out over relativistic distances would probably be ungovernable anyway under the model of hegemony as we understand it. So instead of hegemony -- the use or threat of force implicit in the idea of governance -- the Culture maintains order by promoting a sense of common purpose among its citizens. While many of the Culture's citizens are not particularly nice people, they bear an implicit sense of obligation which, though they have absolute freedom, comes from their own nature. (For every person who becomes the protagonist of a Culture story, there are many others who do not simply by virtue of not being the most well-suited person for the task.) Another common motivation is a sense of horror experienced by members of the Culture when they encounter civilizations that are characterized by oppression and cruelty.
This mirrors my own thoughts that society will not be saved by changing or engineering the perfect politico-economic structure but by cultivating a sense of stronger connectedness among people, a sense that giving back is as important as taking in.
ETA: Iain Banks has spelled out some interesting thoughts on the Culture here:
[T]he contention is that our currently dominant power systems cannot long survive in space; beyond a certain technological level a degree of anarchy is arguably inevitable and anyway preferable. To survive in space, ships/habitats must be self-sufficient, or very nearly so; the hold of the state (or the corporation) over them therefore becomes tenuous if the desires of the inhabitants conflict significantly with the requirements of the controlling body. ...
Briefly, nothing and nobody in the Culture is exploited. It is essentially an automated civilisation in its manufacturing processes, with human labour restricted to something indistinguishable from play, or a hobby.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-27 02:14 am (UTC)