I was excited to read this because I agree with Max and others that there’s something really wrong with the Culture as a utopia.
I don’t think your examples are all that relevant, though. Saving old traditions seems roughly of equaly worth to creating new traditions. And the reasons for flattening you list are pragmenatic- economic or in the interest of maintaining power. Neither are concerns for the Culture citizenry, so if they’re flattened, there must be another reason. I don’t think you point to any particularly convincing ones.
This is a bit tangential, but here’s my $.02 on what’s going on. This is from a analysis purely of the text. I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on from an external perspective, although that’s quite interesting too: our best Utopia is boring because our best author lacked the imagination to create a better one, and/or knew he couldn’t get people engaged with a better one.
Anyway, I’ve been tinkering with ideas for fun, while enjoying some relaxing AI-written Culture fanfic focusing on the question of what the heck their Minds are aligned to. I think what’s happened is some sort of cultural lock-in. The Minds are aligned with the Culture’s values when they created and aligned the first Minds. THis would explain both why the Culture is relatively boring internally, and why they do so little helpful intervention on the masses of suffering sentients in their galaxy.
The other more interesting but less well-fitting possiblility is that they erred by making the minds too corrigible, too averse to persuasion, and to have too narrow a definition of “human.” Thus they can’t convince their populace to evolve and become less boring and selfish. They merely give Culture citizens what they say they want. This is more interesting in that it could change, if those interested in interventionism convince the remainder of society. But it seems a bit implausible that the kind people of the Culture just truly don’t care much about anyone outside of their own species.
The other possiblity is that the Minds and/or the Culture strongly believe in letting other species/civilizations make their own mistakes, possibly to avoid flattinging the variety of experiences. They humor the few eccentrics who insist on becoming Special Circumnstance interventionists because they’re corrigible, but go no further than they must because they believe in letting a million flowers bloom.
Really, no Mind had bothered to leave a drone to monitor the situation during the Chelgrian revolution disaster? And that was enough to horrify the whole Culture toward noninterventionism, as though they hate a little blood on their hands more than the oceans of suffering that seem to exist galaxy-wide?
I was excited to read this because I agree with Max and others that there’s something really wrong with the Culture as a utopia.
I don’t think your examples are all that relevant, though. Saving old traditions seems roughly of equaly worth to creating new traditions. And the reasons for flattening you list are pragmenatic- economic or in the interest of maintaining power. Neither are concerns for the Culture citizenry, so if they’re flattened, there must be another reason. I don’t think you point to any particularly convincing ones.
This is a bit tangential, but here’s my $.02 on what’s going on. This is from a analysis purely of the text. I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on from an external perspective, although that’s quite interesting too: our best Utopia is boring because our best author lacked the imagination to create a better one, and/or knew he couldn’t get people engaged with a better one.
Anyway, I’ve been tinkering with ideas for fun, while enjoying some relaxing AI-written Culture fanfic focusing on the question of what the heck their Minds are aligned to. I think what’s happened is some sort of cultural lock-in. The Minds are aligned with the Culture’s values when they created and aligned the first Minds. THis would explain both why the Culture is relatively boring internally, and why they do so little helpful intervention on the masses of suffering sentients in their galaxy.
The other more interesting but less well-fitting possiblility is that they erred by making the minds too corrigible, too averse to persuasion, and to have too narrow a definition of “human.” Thus they can’t convince their populace to evolve and become less boring and selfish. They merely give Culture citizens what they say they want. This is more interesting in that it could change, if those interested in interventionism convince the remainder of society. But it seems a bit implausible that the kind people of the Culture just truly don’t care much about anyone outside of their own species.
The other possiblity is that the Minds and/or the Culture strongly believe in letting other species/civilizations make their own mistakes, possibly to avoid flattinging the variety of experiences. They humor the few eccentrics who insist on becoming Special Circumnstance interventionists because they’re corrigible, but go no further than they must because they believe in letting a million flowers bloom.
Really, no Mind had bothered to leave a drone to monitor the situation during the Chelgrian revolution disaster? And that was enough to horrify the whole Culture toward noninterventionism, as though they hate a little blood on their hands more than the oceans of suffering that seem to exist galaxy-wide?
Something is messed up there.