Maybe off topic, but I think the popular reading of Iain Banks' Culture novels as purely optimistic is a little simplistic. Banks largely avoided the question of how their society actually worked, but he's explicit at least a few times that it's ad hoc and not meaningfully democratic, even if it gives baseline humans fig leaf positions in governance. Capability-wise, humans are basically like sea-monkeys next to the Minds, even though with their society's technology talent and intellect should be fully fungible. It's like the Wall-E spaceship with a neocon foreign policy, and the fact that every book is written from the perspective of outsiders to the Culture looking in or dissatisfied Culture citizens trying to play a token role in that foreign policy to assuage their boredom is meaningful, I think. Banks is clearly impatient with the sort of romanticism that excuses human deprivation, but isn't entirely sold on his alternative; I think he said in an interview that the Culture was the best society he could envision in a universe in which artificial superintelligence was possible, which is not the same as the best society.
Your reference to Iain Banks made me smile, I would happily take The Culture over the sort of future that as you note, is already here. Your comments on Wiener and his championing of how people "are capable of constant engagement with the world and thus are capable of a great many things throughout their life" affirms my determination to remain true to my faith and vocation as a priest. I have no interest in the tradchurch construct that JD Vance et al have constructed as a cloak for their basic meanness, but rather my commitment is to the timeless church as I understand it which teaches us to value the humanness and potential of all people. I see that valuing of life in Fr Kolbe's decision to take the place of a condemned inmate at Auschwitz because that inmate was a fellow human being. If a secular person can affirm the value of each life while passing on the ontology of the holiness of life confirmed by its creator, then fine by me, that secular person is an ally in the dark times arriving. If the church as a community of equals can be a form of resistance to the hegemony and violence you so well describe, then as Luther said, here I stand.
Maybe off topic, but I think the popular reading of Iain Banks' Culture novels as purely optimistic is a little simplistic. Banks largely avoided the question of how their society actually worked, but he's explicit at least a few times that it's ad hoc and not meaningfully democratic, even if it gives baseline humans fig leaf positions in governance. Capability-wise, humans are basically like sea-monkeys next to the Minds, even though with their society's technology talent and intellect should be fully fungible. It's like the Wall-E spaceship with a neocon foreign policy, and the fact that every book is written from the perspective of outsiders to the Culture looking in or dissatisfied Culture citizens trying to play a token role in that foreign policy to assuage their boredom is meaningful, I think. Banks is clearly impatient with the sort of romanticism that excuses human deprivation, but isn't entirely sold on his alternative; I think he said in an interview that the Culture was the best society he could envision in a universe in which artificial superintelligence was possible, which is not the same as the best society.
Hello Sharon and thanks for this erudite piece.
Your reference to Iain Banks made me smile, I would happily take The Culture over the sort of future that as you note, is already here. Your comments on Wiener and his championing of how people "are capable of constant engagement with the world and thus are capable of a great many things throughout their life" affirms my determination to remain true to my faith and vocation as a priest. I have no interest in the tradchurch construct that JD Vance et al have constructed as a cloak for their basic meanness, but rather my commitment is to the timeless church as I understand it which teaches us to value the humanness and potential of all people. I see that valuing of life in Fr Kolbe's decision to take the place of a condemned inmate at Auschwitz because that inmate was a fellow human being. If a secular person can affirm the value of each life while passing on the ontology of the holiness of life confirmed by its creator, then fine by me, that secular person is an ally in the dark times arriving. If the church as a community of equals can be a form of resistance to the hegemony and violence you so well describe, then as Luther said, here I stand.
Cheers and blessings, Michael