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submitted 2 days ago by inari@piefed.zip to c/news@lemmy.world
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[-] flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

He's correct about The Culture being an amazing vision of how humanity's future could look like. He's absolutely off his rocker about how to get there

The Culture IS “fully automated luxury queer space communism”, that's just a straight-up summary of it. In The Culture:

  • it's communism. There's not even money.
  • everyone can “gland” drugs for pleasure, performance or to change their sex. How the fuck does that match Musk’s anti-trans shit?
  • diversity permeates everything; obviously internally, but also externally, as they try to get along with everyone who isn't a galactic imperialist threat. How the hell does that match Musk’s xenophobia?

It's weird how Musk seems to basically be a tankie: he wants to achieve communism by any means necessary …

[-] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Honestly it's batshit that anyone can read The Culture and NOT understand the entire point is that The Culture persists and succeeds where others fail because of it's values and diversity. Very much including those constant sex changes and anarcho-communism/socialism.

Hell, the Idiran war (for those not familiar, a horrible war that takes place in the first book and the rest of the books in various ways deal with the fallout and trauma from it) is entirely about fighting a jingoistic, imperialist force before they gather enough strength to inevitably destroy the culture.

This tells me that either Elon has never actually read them, or that he's a moron.

Probably both.

[-] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I guess i got to read them more. I only read Player of Games and Consider Phlebas and my take away was that they have what's almost a paradise but it's still fucked up.

[-] flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A common mistake readers make is that they believe the Vavatch orbital is Culture. It's very definitely not, so all the unsavory stuff going on there isn't a reflection of the Culture. Not Damage, not the Eaters (they hate The Culture!), and so on.

Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas, and to a lesser degree Player of Games are mostly outsider perspectives of The Culture, so that warps judgement a little too.

IDK if Iain Banks could have made it clearer that Vavatch is non-Culture. I guess us only knowing drones and orbitals from The Culture made some readers conflate the two societies despite their extreme moral differences.

[-] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I also only 'read' as an audio book so i might missed a few details. I was not even referring to Vavtch. But the cia shit they pull in PoG.

[-] flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago

The Culture doesn't believe in non-interference. But it's not “CIA shit” if they're actually doing it to influence a society to become better rather than just pretending that that's the goal in order to take their oil.

this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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