The Culture

In this episode, we take a look at the vast, absurdly powerful galactic utopia that is Iain M. Banks' Culture, as well as the lengths its citizens go to in order to find meaning in a universe seemingly without want...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

There was a time, way back when, when Dune was on like everybody's list as one of the top books that are just simply unadaptable to the screen. I would see articles all over the place that swore up and down about how the omniscient internal monologues and the subtle political machinations and the exposition didn't translate well to a visual medium, or that all the location shoots and the crazy production design and all the special effects that were necessary to portray the world of Arrakis was just cost prohibitive to any kind of project that could be made. And even all those years ago, that kind of perplexed me, because when I first read Dune and I met all of these memorable and charming characters, and I experienced its wonderful story and themes, and I immersed myself into its world, I figured that it was a book that was sort of friendly to adaptation. Not that it wouldn't be a monumental undertaking, but I figured that audiences would love it just as much as I did. Plus, if done with extraordinary skill and with a very creative mindset, you could probably get across all of that internal monologue and those subtle political mechanations and those nuggets of exposition in a way that is suitable for the film format. And obviously there were people who felt the same way I did, because there were many attempts to adapt Dune. You had the 1980s David Lynch movie and the early 2000s sci-fi mini-series. But even after all that and more, a lot of people still felt that Dune had yet to have a faithful adaptation that truly did the source material justice. I mean, mind you, they were all wrong because Lion King was obviously the premier Dune adaptation of the time, but I don't think the world is really ready to hear that. And then, of course, Denis Villeneuve came in in 2021 and just knocked our socks off with Dune Part 1, and he proved that, at least in the eyes of the majority of people as far as I know, that you could in fact adapt Dune to screen, and that you could do the source material justice. And of course there is the added bonus of me being able to say, I told you so. Of course Dune can be made into a movie. But w but where am I going with this, right? The point I'm trying to make is that there seems to be this narrative of what can and cannot be adapted, the books that are and are not impossible to port over to the screen. And let's be honest, most of the time that narrative is pretty accurate, but every now and then you get something like Dune Part 1, which kind of defies that logic. And I know a lot of readers and book fans have been hurt many, many times before, and that the general consensus is that an adaptation of a book is not going to do so well. But I always find myself being a little bit optimistic about said adaptations, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. And that optimism, thankfully, paid off in a very big way last year as of the recording of this episode. But I want to go on record right now and say that I would be completely blown away. I'd be delighted, but I would be blown away if anybody ever managed to do The Culture by Ian M. Banks an even remote amount of justice in porting it over to the screen. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it's an experience that you can only get from the page. And it's pushing the genre to its absolute limits in terms of imaginative technology and sheer spectacle. Sure, somebody might try to make it into a movie series or a television series one day, and I wish them all the luck in the world. But the fact of the matter is, I don't think you can properly convey just what the culture is all about without the literary tools that Banks has used in his writing. So what is the culture? The culture is this mega advanced society that inhabits a version of the Milky Way galaxy that is positively teeming with life. It is a civilization that is so mind-bendingly advanced and so thoroughly spread throughout the galaxy that there's genuine concern within the culture that contacting less advanced races, even races that have themselves colonized hundreds or even thousands of solar systems, might self-destruct just from seeing the sheer breadth of the culture's power. For as long as the internet has existed, and even before, there's always been a ton of super fun debates within the science fiction community over who's the most powerful character or who's the most powerful faction or alien race or whatever in science fiction. And the mainstream answer to a lot of this is usually something from the Warhammer 40k universe, which, if you don't know, is a completely absurd place filled with stupidly overpowered characters and technology and abilities. And the joke amongst people who have read the culture is that a single culture ship is capable of taking on the entire Warhammer 40k universe and winning. That's the scope we're dealing with here. In every sense of the word, the culture is a utopia for the people who are fortunate enough to live underneath their banner. I mean, a person from the culture would probably take offense to me saying the quote underneath their banner, but I'm sure they'd forget all about it once they went back to the 300 years of hedonism that basically every member of the society gets to live in. Their every single need is provided for almost instantaneously. There is no currency, there is there is factions and whatnot, but never to the degree of nationalism and vitriol and venom that we experience in today's world. The culture is a post-scarcity society, which means that it can easily produce all of the goods it could ever want or need with minimal investment. In the culture's case specifically, the backbone upon which this society is allowed to function is based upon strict automation. There's absolutely no exploitation whatsoever in the culture, whether it be of sentient robots or more traditional life forms like humans. In an essay that the author wrote, he describes the culture as this civilization that's on autopilot. Because the labor of keeping the lights on and keeping life support flowing and keeping the technology working is carried out exclusively by unthinking machines, the general populace of the culture is free to live life in whatever way they see fit. Where in today's world a person typically has to dedicate a big chunk of their lives to doing some kind of job so that they can put food on the table, the people of the culture already have those basic needs provided for them, and all the extra time they have to themselves because they don't need a job is dedicated towards more personal pursuits such as introspection or relationships or the development of hobbies and skills or just play. It's a society that deeply values the comforts of its citizens, and it manages to accomplish all of this without any trade-offs as far as suffering goes. The culture doesn't even really need planets either. Most of its citizenry lives aboard starships or on these huge artificial habitats that are known as orbitals, and both of these examples of technology can be constructed using just the general littering of asteroids and comets that can be found in basically every solar system. And because the building blocks for much of the culture's technology is so easily attainable, that means that they're not given to the typical impulses by large-scale civilizations and empires to conquer or otherwise pilfer and steal from their neighbors. And because all of the culture's habitats and ships are free-floating and can relocate anywhere in the galaxy, there's also not really much of a need to take, hold, or even establish territory. And because of that background and context, the people of the culture generally view imperialistic practices as barbaric and unnecessary. Especially when the culture is perfectly willing to just give the secrets of their technology to anyone who asks. So, what had to go so right in the future development of humanity that we make such an unbelievable galactic civilization? Well, here's the thing. It's not us. Humanity is featured in the culture series. In fact, one of the books is partially framed as a kind of history packet or orientation package that is given from the culture to humanity in order to better ingratiate us into the greater galactic whole. And I haven't read it yet, but there's also another short story or novella in which the culture actually is having some kind of operation on Earth itself during the 1960s or the 1980s, I believe. Apparently one of the characters is a pretty big fan of Star Trek. In my future episodes on the culture, and you can bet there will be future episodes on the culture, I'll touch upon it more when I get around to reading it. But anyway, the culture is comprised of a veritable mishmash of different alien species. They are all called humans in the book because of their basic bipedal body structure, but none of them are Homo sapiens in the way that you and I are. Ian Banks has gone on record saying that he's not even certain humanity is capable of developing such a well-oiled machine as the culture. I would like to hope that we can, but let's be honest. There's pretty good reason for his doubts. But what sets the culture apart from the presumably many other coalitions of alien races that no doubt exist throughout the galaxy? What sets them apart and what makes them the culture, besides their utopiac structure and their beliefs? Well, first of all, each individual that is born within the culture is very heavily edited genetically from the initial template that they came from ancestrally. For example, if humans had been one of the founding races of the culture, you and I would have a very difficult time recognizing a, you know, quote, cultured, unquote, human. Maybe not necessarily in appearance, but more in ability. Because each member of the culture has direct control over almost every aspect of their bodies. In a process called glanding, they're capable of injecting certain chemicals into their bloodstream just by thinking it. Are you studying for a test and you want to better retain information and focus? You can gland a chemical for that. Do you want to do drugs and psychedelics without any of the negative effects that are usually associated with those things on Earth? There's a gland for that. The people of the culture are capable of going into this kind of trance-like state in which they hallucinate readouts and status reports on their bodies. And using this interface they can make changes such as adjusting their blood pressure and metabolism, or making it so that their body would be better suited for 1G of gravity as opposed to 1.5. They have an easier time in making sweeping changes to their body chemistry than you or I do in changing the settings on our phones or our computers. In fact, this interface is so powerful that they can even initiate the process to transition physical gender. And you're considered a bit of a weirdo within the culture if you haven't done this at least once in your life. This also comes with a pretty neat societal development because, aside from the satisfying of everyone's curiosity of what it would be like to be another gender, there's also the very real results of if everybody can walk a mile in everybody else's shoes, you're very quickly going to find whatever inequalities and discrepancies there are amongst those different experiences and root them out. Meaning the culture has pretty much eliminated prejudice along those lines. Culture citizens are also capable of basically turning off pain, and they're notoriously hard to kill, at least permanently. They have techniques where they can essentially download your mind state and send it off to a computer that's across the galaxy, and then have that mind state with all of its memories and experiences be downloaded into another body. But even if that weren't the case, the culture is really good at miraculous resuscitations. Let's say for whatever reason you are decapitated on one of the culture's orbitals. Within nanoseconds, the culture would use this method called displacement, which is essentially teleporting but not actually teleporting, to grab your head and body and place them in a controlled environment where they can stitch you back up and nurse you back to health. Even if this happened elsewhere, there's this character who, in one of the books, he finds himself on the wrong end of this kind of sacrificial ritual on a sort of backwards planet, and he has his head cut off. Because of the modifications present in every culture citizen's body, he's able to stay alive long enough for a culture ship to swoop in, scoop his head up, and implant it onto a brand new body. And this is all done without any medical complications, by the way. But maybe the most important defining factor of the culture would be the relationship between its people and its machines. Like I mentioned earlier, the culture is definitely propped up by nonsentient and dumb production machines, but the more advanced models are every bit as capable of dreams and self-determination and thoughts and feelings as any of the humans in the culture, and they live life in much the same way. They're individuals just the same as their organic counterparts. But this relationship goes way beyond simple coexistence. Politically, the culture is in a state of anarchy. And when we hear anarchy we think, you know, looting in the streets and buildings on fire and violence. But what it means when applied to the culture is that there's no real heads of state, or any laws really to speak of. The people of the culture vote, but they vote on issues rather than on laws. I mean that's not to say that there are no consequences for committing crimes or killing people, but the closest equivalent the culture has to any sort of leadership would be in the minds. The robots and drones that live alongside the humans of the culture are sentient and would be considered magic by the standards of Earth. But the minds are to those self-deterministic, sentient drones and robots, what those self-deterministic sentient drones and robots are to today's computers and machinery. They're an atomic blast compared to a campfire. There's a great quote in one of the books that says that the minds are so intelligent that humans are incapable of understanding how smart they truly are. As far as we're concerned, and honestly, as far as the people of the culture are concerned, they're essentially gods. The universe of the culture is divided into many different planes of reality. We have the three-dimensional physical realm that you and I are used to, but there are also the higher dimensions to consider, as well as the spaces that rest between universes, which is referred to as the energy grid. And then there's infra and ultra space, which kind of sandwich the physical realm. And these two sort of comprise the umbrella term that is hyperspace. And it's from hyperspace that the minds are able to draw out their true power. The speed of light is the end-all be-all speed limit of the physical realm, but in hyperspace that speed limit is way higher. And the more advanced races of the galaxy have learned to tap into hyperspace in order to circumvent that light speed rule. And it's because of these techniques that these enormous galactic-level civilizations are allowed to exist rather than the self-contained pockets of space that only a light-speed civilization would allow. So where a ship traveling through hyperspace can get across the entire breadth of the Milky Way galaxy in like one or two years, as opposed to the 100,000 years it would take light to do the same thing, the minds have applied a similar logic to computing. Each one of them has components that exist in the physical realm and others that exist in the hyperspatial one, and these hyperspatial components give the mind the ability to perform these ridiculous feats of computation in a fraction of the time the very best light speed-based computers could do so. So, what does a mind do with all of this awe-inspiring computing power? Well, as far as the average culture citizen is concerned, the mind is usually a kind of representative for whatever ship or orbital or other habitat they find themselves on. And in this capacity, they can assist with stuff like providing transportation or providing information or using their force fields to help out a culture citizen with any given task, or even just being somebody to talk to. It's like a super advanced smart home you can interface with anywhere on one of these installations. And that's cool and all, but doesn't sound too impressive until you consider the fact that on something like an orbital, which, for the record, looks like one of the Halo rings from the Halo games, essentially, can house upwards of billions of people, and the mind is capable of attending to every one of their needs at the same time and not even expending a fraction of a percent of their capacity. And all this is in addition to the general minutia of running one of these installations and making sure they maintain structural integrity, as well as directing things like air traffic control and communication with other mines across the galaxy. And all of this is if it's not in charge of a ship, in which case they need to worry about where the ship is going and how fast it's going and the general efficiency and happiness of their crews. So the mines have a lot on their plates, and they manage to get all of it done with utmost efficiency. And they manage to do all of it at what is essentially their version of a subconscious level. All of the tasks that I just listed before can easily be done by a subroutine of the mind, while the mind proper can focus on whatever it is the mind is interested in. And just like the drones and robots and human inhabitants of the culture, every mind has its own eccentricities or quirks. For example, there's a mind that is trying to perfect techniques to detect the electrical signals in humans' brains in order to read their minds. There's others that enjoy playing pranks on the crews or inhabitants of whatever installation or facility they're supervising. Many of them like to retreat to what is called the irreal or the land of infinite fun. What this is essentially is simulations of universes based upon parameters that the mind sets beforehand. Where people like us watch movies or play sports or hang out with friends or play video games or listen to podcasts, the minds are busy configuring the birth, life, and death of entire virtual universes for fun. As said in one of the books, a mind is the most complex grouping of matter in the known universe. There are beings capable of running such fabulously complex simulations of entire universes, of running ships and habitats and space stations, and of communicating with billions of people and hundreds of thousands of other minds, and doing all of it simultaneously. All of these astounding capabilities has instilled suspicion in a few other races in regards to the culture. A lot of people throughout the Milky Way galaxy do believe that the culture citizens have just given themselves over to unthinking, uncaring machines, and that it's these machines that make all their decisions for them. One of these races in particular, a super hyper-religious civilization called the Adirans, believes that the people of the culture have sacrificed their autonomy and their dignity as living beings at the altar of these blasphemous cold machines. There's a lot of questions as to what exactly the mines use their powers for, and those questions aren't exactly unwarranted. The people of the culture are among the freest in the entire galaxy, and the mines do genuinely want nothing more than to ensure the maximum prosperity and development for every individual in the galaxy. But that doesn't mean they're going to just roll over if the freedoms of the culture or their designs for what a well developed galaxy looks like are threatened. The mines have been known to work through branches of the culture, such as Contact, which deals with the culture's interactions with less advanced. Races and special circumstances, which is essentially the culture's espionage division, in order to further their goals. And granted, like I said, their goals do involve the general prosperity of the galaxy, and by the way, this doesn't even mean necessarily the wider proliferation of the culture. But the fact of the matter is, the minds, just in their capabilities and the way that they go about manipulating events, sort of flies in the face of the culture's general narrative of self-determination. They're architects of fate in a society that would normally despise such a notion. But even though the culture has sometimes had to go against their general ethos, the results of everything they've achieved really speak for themselves. The minds and people and drones of the culture have all worked together to create this society that is free from want, by and large. Everybody who lives on a culture orbital or on a culture ship will be safe from harm and will live a long and happy life that can stretch from 300 400 years. It's a standard of living that people like us and people like even the more advanced individuals of this fictional version of the Milky Way galaxy can only dream of. And the series goes in a super interesting philosophical direction at times. More than once we see characters who live in the culture who are trying their best to find meaning. Because how does one find meaning in a society where everything you could ever want is just a conversation with a mind away? It's a civilization of instant gratification and perpetual safety and security. There's no reason to accumulate wealth or possessions because neither of those things have any real meaning in the culture. Aside from some sentimental trinkets and whatnot. Through these books, Ian M. Banks asks the question: how does one be happy if they have nothing to struggle for or toward? It's in a way a pretty big deconstruction on a lot of the societal systems that exist here on Earth today. I mean it all certainly sounds like a great problem to have, but those kinds of questions are very real things that the fictional people of the culture need to deal with. The priority is no longer what is necessary, what has to happen to ensure survival and security, but rather is it fun? Do I get any enjoyment out of this? And a lot of the time the people of the culture find themselves wanting because fun and enjoyment is at their fingertips. There seems to be a lack of real achievement, and a person's self-actualization suffers as a result. As we see in the books, a fairly common reaction by people in the culture when they are faced with this question of meaning is to sort of spread the joy, so to speak. The culture's altruism doesn't end at its borders, or I guess what passes for borders at a civilization that doesn't have any kind of centralized government or reliance upon planets or any kind of territorial volume. Through their contact branch, the culture tries to guide other races to a similar state of happiness and prosperity to what the culture has achieved itself. And like I said before, this doesn't even necessarily mean the ingratiating of that race into the culture itself, even though they are perfectly welcome to join if they so desire. As an organization, contact simultaneously represents the most selfless aspects of the culture, in that it's all about trying to ensure that every race in the galaxy can live peacefully. And also the most selfish aspects of the culture, in that it's essentially just an outlet for the culture's citizens to do something that they believe matters, or to leave some kind of lasting impact on the universe. Contact does good work and the culture is a force for good, but you sometimes get the sense that the only reason this is the case is because these acts are all that will satisfy a culture denizen. There's also the very valid argument that some schools of thought have that these activities are ultimately destructive. Just in the culture asserting its existence to a less advanced civilization, even if it's in a way that doesn't really tip them off to the wider breadth of the culture itself as they've been known to do, they're still changing everything about that less advanced civilization just in that initial encounter. You know, imagine if the culture came to Earth and solved all of our problems that we're facing tomorrow. We can certainly use assistance like that, but it would also change everything about us. It would change what we believe in, it would change the way our culture works, it would change the way our governments function, it would change the human perception of itself against the wider universe, and it would permeate every layer of our civilization. And yeah, being a part of the culture, or at very least accepting the gifts and enlightenment they offer does sound awesome, but there's a pretty good argument to be made that in accepting those things, humanity's culture is destroyed as a result. Whether you believe more is gained from joining the culture than in holding on to our humanity, I leave up to you, but that is a pretty serious dilemma that the culture faces in its humanitarian antics. There will always be that fundamental thing that is lost just in knowing the culture exists. But no matter what concerns we may have about whether the culture is doing all this for the right reasons, or how it may affect the cultural identity of the people that it contacts, it can't be denied that the culture goes about this whole process in a very humane and benevolent way. At least for the most part. The culture's foreign policy is all about diplomacy and education and charitable acts in the place of military intervention and occupation and propaganda. Peace and harmony and development is always at the forefront of these kinds of initiatives. And the culture's approach can sometimes be flawed and things don't always go according to plan. But the point is, the well-being of all and the continued functioning of the galactic community is paramount as far as the culture is concerned. This kind of mindset is applied even to the most barbaric and savage races out there. Take the Affront, for example. The Affront's culture is entirely dedicated to inflicting as much pain and misery upon the lessers in their society and those they conquer as possible. They genetically engineer their livestock to feel as much terror as possible before they are butchered and eaten. They're adept in the cruelest possible forms of warfare, and they torture because they get genuine joy out of it. They're an active threat to the people around them, and the simple solution from the culture's standpoint might be to send ships in and blast them back to the Stone Age. It's certainly something that's well within the culture's capabilities. But instead the culture takes a more patient approach with creatures like the Affront. Some of the citizens describe it as rearing a particularly troublesome child. The culture is more interested in what the Affront can provide to the galaxy if they could just stop killing and torturing than in simply just killing them and being done with it. And to achieve this, they're trying to influence the Affront's behavior to be a little more sociable, so that they can join the galactic community at large and actually be a productive member of society, so to speak. Rather than blinking the affront out of existence with their super powerful weaponry, and thus establishing a pretty troubling precedent that if you don't behave in a way that the culture wants you to behave, they will kill you. The culture's more interested in, say, giving the affront the techniques to build orbitals so that they can better provide for themselves and not be as tempted to conquer their neighbors. And this is only the most overt out of thousands of simultaneous strategies the culture employs to sort of whip a troublesome people into shape. There's more subtle classics in there like bribery and intimidation. And there's also what the culture calls technological donation. Only it's technological donation that was engineered to make the affront intelligence think they mounted this awesome, audacious, high-tech heist to steal the culture's secrets. If we're being honest, the affront are pretty lucky it was the culture and not basically anybody else who found them first. I mean, there is definitely an argument to be made that the races and peoples that have to deal with the affront's antics are very unlucky that a people as merciful as the culture were the ones who found the affront first. I mean, the culture is doing everything it possibly can for the creatures under the affront's thumb. It's just the thing is the rehabilitation of a species as savage and demented as the affront is naturally a very long and drawn-out process. And the overnight solution of wiping out the affront is something that's considered to be unconscionable by the culture. Their altruism and humanitarian urges, as well-intentioned and often effective as they are, sometimes places them in these pretty uncomfortable situations. I mean, there's some even within the culture that believe nuking the affront and guiding the remains of their civilization to enlightenment is the right move. It's just the rest of the culture would never in a million years accept such a course of action, so here we are. If things progress along the same lines as things have in the past eleven thousand years of the culture's existence, the affront ultimately will one day be rehabilitated, and the other races that they terrorize will one day be able to live without fear. But until then it's going to be a bit of an ugly and sloppy process simply because the culture wants everybody to be happy, no matter what. They're very much a the ends justify the means type of people, for better and worse. And while their practices and way of approaching situations like this are sometimes flawed, I don't know about you, but I would much rather the culture be in charge of the galaxy than a bunch of psychos like the Affront. Think of the Fermi paradox, which is the question of why haven't we heard anything from any alien races despite the sheer prevalence of planets and stars out there? There are plenty of theories behind this, uh one of those, notably being the Great Filter, and one of the possible solutions to the Fermi paradox the Great Filter proposes is the fact that there are predatory alien races out there that destroy lesser ones as they become known, and that's why the galaxy is so quiet. When we see a worst case scenario like that, it's pretty easy to see how the culture could very well be, if not the best, then most definitely one of the best case scenarios for the galaxy. If the worst thing you have to worry about is the question of whether you'll have some kind of lasting impact on the universe or if you'll ever find some sort of self-actualization. And all this because you can get literally everything else you want within a nanosecond of asking, then I gotta say, there are probably a lot of worse ways things can go. And all that, and a lot of stuff that I haven't even mentioned, is why I'm hesitant to say that a TV or film adaptation of the culture would work. Because I just spent a quarter of a film's runtime just explaining what the culture even is without going into any details about story or plot or characters. There's also the matter of every book being standalone and that, as far as I've read, none of the characters transfer from one story to the other. You have the big budget concerns of what all these people are going to wear costume-wise, and how all of these aliens are going to look, because like I said, there are no humans. As well as the renderings of the orbitals or the culture's ships. You have the various scenes that feature mines which physically look like reflective chrome eggs and obviously don't have any way to express human emotion or body language, and we would need to find a way to depict how they would communicate with other minds across the galaxy over the course of like a nanosecond. All of the space battles in this series are ferocious and violent and calculated, but just like the conversations between the minds, they unfold over the course of a nanosecond. And then you have all the philosophical questions that our characters are often plagued with. I could go on and on, but I think you're seeing my point. Any filmmaker who wishes to adapt the culture has a whole laundry list of obstacles they need to overcome in order to do it proper justice. But hey, just in the same way that a lot of people said that Dune was unadaptable and were eventually proven wrong, perhaps I can be one of the naysayers when it comes to the adaptability of the culture, who is eventually proven wrong by some genius out there who makes a fantastic visual representation of what this series is all about. And if that ever comes to pass, you can bet that I'm gonna be there on day one with fond memories of adaptations like The Expanse and Dune and The Martian, and ready to be wowed all over again.