 | The Culture: Encyclopedia II - The Culture - The culture of the Culture
The Culture - The culture of the Culture
The Culture is a symbiotic society of AI's (Minds, Drones) and humanoids, who all share equal status. As mentioned above, all essential work is performed (as far as possible) by non-sentient devices, freeing sentients to do only things that they enjoy.
It is also a post scarcity society, where technological advances mean no-one wants for any material goods. As a consequence, the Culture has no need of economic constructions such as money (as is apparent when it deals with civilisations in which money is still important).
An analysis of the Culture on the Kardashev scale places it approximately at a level 3 civilization, meaning it is able to harness all the energy of its galaxy. This is the most advanced level Kardashev originally considered for his ranking system, however its possible the Culture will eventually expand into other galaxies and reach level 4.
The Culture has a shared language in Marain. The Culture believes (or perhaps has proved, or else actively made true) the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that language affects society, and Marain was designed to exploit this effect. A related comment is made by the narrator in The Player of Games regarding gender-specific pronouns in English. Marain is also regarded as an aesthetically pleasing language.
There are no laws in the Culture. Social norms are enforced by convention ("good manners"), and the all-seeing eye of your nearest Mind. While in theory this could lead to a Big Brother style surveillance society, in practice social convention among the Minds prohibits them from watching, or interfering, in citizen's lives unless there is severe risk to them.
Most of the Culture's population lives in huge space ships such as GSV ("General Systems Vehicles") that can hold millions, or Culture Orbitals that can hold hundreds of billions or more.
It has been argued that the role of humans in the Culture is nothing more than that of pets, or parasites on Culture Minds, and that they can have nothing genuinely useful to contribute to a society where every scientific truth has been discovered, every ailment cured, and where every thought can be read.
On the other hand, the Culture can be seen as fundamentally hedonistic – one of the main objectives for any being is to have fun. Minds are constructed, by convention, to care for and value human beings. While a General Contact Unit (GCU) does not strictly need a crew (and could construct artificial avatars when it did), a real human crew adds richness to its existence, and offers some (very) light distraction during otherwise dull periods.
Of course, the massive freedoms enjoyed by humans in the Culture are only available because Minds choose to make them so. Nevertheless, social convention within the community of Minds makes it impossible, as well as abhorrent, that these freedoms should be curtailed. The freedoms are such that all are free to leave the Culture when desired, sometimes forming new societies with Culture ships and Minds, most notably the Elench.
Other related archives1300, Ben Aaronovitch, Consider Phlebas, Contact, Culture Orbitals, Diziet Sma, Doctor Who, Dyson Sphere, Dyson sphere, Elench, English, Excession, Iain M. Banks, Idiran-Culture War, Inversions, Kardashev scale, Look to Windward, Marain, Mind (The Culture), Minds, Orbital, Outside Context Problem, Ringworld, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Scottish, The Player of Games, The State of the Art, Time Lords, Use of Weapons, Virgin New Adventure, West, anarchic, artificial intelligences, caffeine, culture, eugenically, fictional, gender-specific pronouns, genetics, humanoid, intelligence, novels, post scarcity, posthuman, resurrected, short scale, slow motion, socialistic, special circumstances, suspended animation, transhumanists, trillion, utopian, virtual reality, writer
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The culture of the Culture", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
