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Shayuri Still a thing! For sure. Summer's been busy so far and will only get busier from here. Gotta crack the whip, and hopefully have some more free time come August.
Any questions? Do we all feel comfortable enough to start something? @
CanadienneBacon Anything I can do to help with your character?
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Celebrim In general? Agreed on all points. That first interest-check post was intended to be a pretty broad-strokes, low barrier-to-entry description-- hopefully coming across as slightly jokey and self-deprecating without spoiling too much for those who hadn't read the books. Between all the air quotes, qualified statements, and parentheticals and hint-hinting, I wanted to leave some room to question how perfect this utopia really was (or any utopia, really), while still making it sound appealing and a bit plausible. It is to some extent propaganda, but the seams are there to be pulled.
Celebrim said:
It's funny that you leave for nuance the one area that I think is absolutely uncontroversial - that the Minds govern The Culture and indeed govern The Culture absolutely. There is plenty of evidence that The Minds at most see the input of the human citizens about like we see the preferences of our dog - we'll help him take a walk or a winkle if he behaves himself, but we don't actually let him run the house in any fashion. And it's quite clear that push come to shove, they'll just make humans do what they think is best for them or ignore them.
This is probably my one bone of contention. I don't think this is quite as much of a foregone conclusion as you say. Definitely the Minds run the Culture-- how unbearably paternalist or dictatorial they are is probably a matter of personal taste. And certainly some Minds do feel exactly as you describe about humans, whether behind closed doors or inside encrypted communiques. Meanwhile others probably just don't care much one way or the other. Still, there's likewise plenty of evidence in the text that some Minds care quite keenly about humans' feelings and freedoms. The taboo against reading a person's thoughts, for instance, is Culture-wide, although obviously there are those who do it anyway (and probably more who do it in secret). A Mind has the power to make humans do whatever they want, thinking and acting on scales exponentially above and beyond anything a human or drone could even conceive, let alone attempt. That they don't simply make humans their puppets, or that they even bother to try and appear not to, that alone seems to be a mark in their favour.
Could Culture Minds treat its human citizens as what amount to glorified pets, or at least the developmental equivalent of children? Undoubtedly. Do they? To some extent, although you could say the same of humans with any amount of power over other humans. Is this ultimately a bad thing? Compared to the alternatives? Well, that's the question. It certainly calls into question how socialist, anarchist, pacifist, or democratic this supposed utopia can really be.
Which is what I like about it, and the books. Banks as author doesn't take these questions for granted, doesn't dismiss them or handwave them away.