Comment by GeoAtreides
3 days ago
Sure, you can just ignore the source text and the author explicit statements that it's a true utopia[1].
They're an anarchistic society, no one has power to overrule any one else.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCulture/comments/kbtylt/ysk_the_...
This happens for lots of stuff. Some time back there's a thread where I mentioned San Junipero, the episode of Black Mirror with a happy ending - and I said some people will insist it doesn't have a happy ending and sure enough there are replies insisting that's not a happy ending. The author's opinion does not matter to them.
Just as shippers can successfully take two characters who clearly have no basis for a romantic or sexual relationship and pair them off in their head canon, likewise people can disregard the author's statements about their work and decide it's completely contrary to how they've decided to understand it.
Some people look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) and they do not see a sculpture.
Oh, i'm not saying always believe what the author say, far for from it. I personally read authors that said they write one thing when in fact they did not. That's not the case with Iain M Banks, his published Culture books support his declarations made elsewhere.
It might be Banks utopia but the Culture seems more like Calhoun's rat utopia experiment to me or Douglas Adams' "long dark teatime of the soul". There's nothing to strive for, there's nothing one could do that hasn't been done better by a quadrillion other beings and utterly eclipsed by the Minds. It's so spiritually sterile that a ships crew collectively gives themselves a cold (normally prevented by their medical tech) just for the sake of the experience and breaking the monotony of their existence.
ah, you now understand: we live in an meaningless universe. Your mistake is thinking struggle, or suffering, gives it meaning.
It doesn't.
Edgy but I would agree that struggle doesn't give existence meaning in any cosmic, philosophical, or mathematical sense. However, the need for it seems to be something hardwired into living beings, without which they wither away. Struggle and suffering might be considered a necessary, if unpleasant, nutrient of sorts.
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You’re getting down-voted when this premise is the core theme of The Hydrogen Sonata!
Both Vyr Cossont and Ngaroe QiRia are so bored with their meaningless existence that they have to go out of their way to invent “life tasks” and other challenges to immerse themselves in.
Not to mention the scene where a ship mind casually crushes the spirits of Vyr by perfectly playing a piece on its first attempt that she struggled with for years!
> Both Vyr Cossont and Ngaroe QiRia are so bored with their meaningless existence that they have to go out of their way to invent “life tasks” and other challenges to immerse themselves in.
While there are some types of people that would be bored and would struggle in Culture-style utopia, I think for overwhelming majority of people it would still be a massive improvement over today's world.