Editing The Culture (section)

==Overview==
The Culture is a galactic civilization which serves as the main setting for many Iain M Banks novels and short stories, the first novel in the series being ''Consider Phlebas''. 

It is basically what would have happened if the humans from the [[Dark Age of Technology|Golden Age of Technology]] did not have a small problem with genocidal [[Men of Iron]]. More cynically, it is what would happen if the government of ''Brave New World'' was a galactic superpower: making sure everyone wants for nothing, but desperate for something to fill the emptiness. Well, they are a bit less extreme than that; eugenicism is ''definitely not'' something the Culture would agree with, but that's the general idea. 

The Culture is set in our own timeline, with the stories taking place between 1300 AD and 2100 AD, (though the second to last book takes place in 2947AD);Earth is contacted roughly around 2100 AD. It is the product of six or seven pan-human civilizations that decided to merge together 10,000 years ago and create what is basically a space utopia. The Culture is a post-scarcity society, where basically everything is available for free, time being the only resource to take into account. It does not have a centralized government, as it is more a society than a real state or nation. Very few written laws exist (and if you feel the need to ask what are these written laws, then ''there is clearly something wrong with you'') and people are basically allowed to do pretty much whatever they want. Now, in the novels, we do not have many details about how the Culture actually works, but, in Banks' words, it's "an ethical and cynical anarchy that tries to be a ''rather good society'', following socialist, libertarian and anarchist principles. 

(This may [[wat|sound weird]] if you're from that part of the English speaking world where the term "libertarian" was hijacked by a guy in a dumb-looking bowtie with a weird fixation on selling babies; in most other locales, "liberal" is basically synonymous with capitalist, and "libertarian" more or less means "left-anarchist"). 

Well, apparently that works. The Culture has been around since ten millennia, and is now considered to be one of the most powerful civilizations of the galaxy. And they aren't, contrary to many [[Tau|utopias]], hiding anything. The Culture is a ''genuine'' utopia and a very good place to live, which is actually quite rare in sci-fi in general, and modern sci-fi in particular. 

Now, where is the trick? 

[[Gets shit done|Well, you do not attain such a level of power in the galaxy while being space hippies all the time.]] There is a faction/intelligence service in the Culture called ''Contact'', which is dedicated to establishing contact with other civilizations. The books focuses on the interaction between the Culture and said civilizations, mainly through the eyes of people that belong to ''Special Circumstances'', which is basically the Culture's CIA. They try to influence other civilizations to make sure they will, one day or an other, end up joining the Culture willingly. Said interactions may imply technological transfers, or propaganda for the purpose of ''starting revolutions and civil wars''. Space hippies inside, sure, but imperialist outside. The Culture is like a sponge that slowly absorbs other civilizations over the course of millennia.

Oh, and did we mention they are ''quite advanced''? And when we say advanced, we really mean it. The Culture is ruled... ahem, benevolently overseen by extremely powerful AIs called ''Minds''; so powerful are these Minds that they dedicate only a fraction of their power to such trivial matters, and spend the rest building virtual worlds with 12 dimensions. From the biggest sentient ships (because yes, all of their ships are sentient, why did you even ask?) to the smallest drones, AIs in general are considered citizens of the Culture. Aside from being sentient, their ships have hulls made of force fields  (because metal is for pussies anyway), and can reach 230,000 times the speed of light; the biggest ones measure in hundreds of kilometers and can carry entire ecosystems with billions of people on board. 

Oh, and the Culture does not live on planets, because that's absolutely ''inelegant''. Instead they prefer to build "Orbitals", massive residential space stations in orbit around either planets or stars that can be more easily calibrated for the comfort of their residents. This is regarded as significantly superior to either building a biosphere from scratch on a lifeless planet or tinkering with a pre-existing ecosystem and hoping you don't cause mass extinctions in the process. Realistically, this is actually better than settling on a planet and hoping for the best, because it'd be very rare for a planet to be optimal for a species that never evolved on it and the environment would be much easier to control. But of course, nobody has ever actually lived on a space station with its own significant gravitational pull but (presumably, we're not sure about some people) everyone who has written a story published on Earth has been on Earth at least once, so most science fiction and space fantasy works go for planets. The Culture absolutely ''can'' make megastructures like Ringworlds that encircle the entire star or Dyson spheres, but consider them wasteful; they don't have enough members to populate a Ringworld even remotely densely, and they can vastly exceed the power output of a star with far smaller devices than a sun-encompassing swarm of satellites/metal shell, so a Dyson sphere would be absolutely pointless.

The average Culturnik may live for 400 years and technically reach immortality, even if it is not considered as fun (and thus not really popular). ''In one novel, a ship saved the life of a beheaded man by simply teleporting the severed head back and creating a new body from scratch''. This isn't as far fetched as you'd think, as studies have shown that it's possible to sustain the life of complex mammals like dogs with severed heads with mid twentieth century medical technology, and humans can survive a few seconds after decapitation based on studies done at executions via beheading. Growing a new body entirely for the head is rather out of the reach of our current medical technology, but there's nothing that would make it actually impossible in the laws of physics, you'd just have to make sure the body you grow is compatible with the tissue of the head. The body is also quite adept at reconnecting nerves for severed limbs if they're sewn back on; when somebody loses a limb usually, doctors will try seeing if they can't stitch the limb back on, with prosthetic limbs only being considered if it's beyond recovery (though obviously the Culture uses something much more sophisticated).

Last but not least, the Culture are ''peaceful'' and not ''pacifist''. Which means that, contrary to [[Ork|certain]] [[Imperium of Man|people]], they won't invade you without a reason, but if you fuck with the Culture, they ''can'' and most certainly ''will'' obliterate you. The base weapon of their military ships is "gridfire", which  basically amounts to ''[[Awesome|using the fabric of space and time as a weapon.]]'' That actually says a lot about Banks' universe, considering that the Culture is NOT the most advanced race in the setting, although certainly in the top ten. To wit, the first novel ''Consider Phlebas'' features a galactic war between the Culture and another race called the Idirans; after a few years of being crushed, the Culture finally started mobilizing and simply steamrolls and utterly annihilate its foe. After this, the Culture started designing actual dedicated warships, going so far as to give them obviously threatening class designations like Torturer, Thug, and Murderer (remember now, their ships are all sentient). Their most powerful warship, the Abominator, is so overpowered in the current setting that it was capable of wiping out millions (not an exaggeration) of enemy vessels unaided, and actually did so far slower than it needed to because it was enjoying itself too much to finish the engagement quickly. Lets not even get into what happens when a GSV decides to weaponise itself..

Other races find it odd that a race like the Culture turned out to be so martially capable; the wiser Involved civilizations note that whilst most races start off more aggressive and learn to tone down, the peaceful Culture had to do the opposite. So while hippies they may be, there is one axiom that you should not forget: "Don't Fuck With the Culture".

In essence, the peace of the culture is maintained by having enough firepower to make anyone who wants to declare war on them regret that decision. It's the same theory that kept the Soviets and Americans from going for broke with tens of millions of dudes crammed next to each other in a small part of Europe. If either decided to go balls to wall, the other would destroy them in the process. So instead of outright war to jockey for power and position, most societies engage in proxy conflicts with smaller powers or factions of smaller powers, espionage, and manipulating the societies and economies of less powerful civilisations. Given that warships are capable of unleashing over a thousand times more energy than god damn supernovas, and can devastate ''solar systems'' by braking too hard in hyperspace while fighting at several hundred thousand times the speed of light... it's probably for the best that all out war between the major powers is rare. 

For those of you who study history, it's important to note that the Culture is able to enjoy its lifestyle because the conditions of its home setting allow for it, something significantly more important than its guiding beliefs in deciding the kind of society it is. ([[Skub|On the other hand]], lots of civilisations in the books have or had at least some of the same tech as the early Culture and actively use it to commit atrocities or were destroyed by it, so it could also be argued that the Culture would not be remotely like itself if it didn't start with a clear philosophical grounding.) It's doubtful whether humanity in Warhammer 40k was ever at the general level of technology that the Culture was, let alone to the point of being able to ensure MAD in short order with any conceivable foe. The Culture also doesn't have to contend with creatures of Chaos OR a Void Dragon eager to hijack most A.Is. Also of importance is that in the Culture's galaxy, international relationships actually have reached a level of normalcy where most issues are resolved with diplomacy or indirect conflict. rather than with total warfare; the Imperium's four most serious enemies are essentially impossible to [[Necrons|buy]], [[Chaos|bargain]], [[Tyranids|negotiate]], or [[Orks|reason]] with.