Utopia, a poll (with other completely unconnected question)

[andrewducker]

"The Culture" in this case refers to the space-faring civilisation in Iain Banks' awesome series of novels.

[Poll #1792224]

Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Also if you don’t believe in the collective or in weak property rights it might seem pretty bad.

[andrewducker]

It is mostly libertarians that I've seen unhappy with it.

No idea who the weirdos are who think that Brave New World is a dystopia :->

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Aye - the Culture would hit a couple of Libertarian hot buttons. Ah, well, that's a shame for them.

No idea who the weirdos are who think that Brave New World is a dystopia

Step forward danieldwilliam.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

No idea who the weirdos are who think that Brave New World is a dystopia

I'm with you on that. I've been baffled by it for a long time.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Brave New World is only utopian if you think the conditions really do approach "perfect"

[andrewducker]

Pretty much everyone is happy, pretty much all of the time. Short of wiring everyone up to wires connected to their happy centres, it's as close to a utopia as I think you can get.

It is, however, only a utopia for the people that were brought up in it. Clearly people from outside of it would find it stifling and uncomfortable. I think that's true of any society though.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I think creating a genetically engineered caste system where people are simply born to be either idiots or genius rulers is anyone's idea of utopia. Being told from the time you are born that you are an alpha, a beta or a gama and that's it you have no chance at all to change that sounds pretty dystopian for me.

[andrewducker]

Well it would for you - being told your place would drive you crazy.

For the people living _in_ the utopia it makes them happy and content.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Approach? Yes. There's no such thing as perfection between people, but I think they have achieved the greatest good for the greatest number.

Regardless of whether it is utopian or not, though, it's definitely not dystopian. There's an excluded middle.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm ambivalent on "BNW"; the society itself is happy and reasonably stable, and it does well by its people for their material needs. However, I'd find it hellish to live in and the total lack of social mobility would feel like a straitjacket for most folks in developed countries these days.

-- Steve knows that a few, er, persons of deeply religious natures took great offense to the novel on other grounds.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

Hello!

[andrewducker]

I am collecting your names, for when the glorious revolution comes :->

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Put me down for two name takings, please.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

You have property rights in the Culture. Though admittedly if you're away from your home for several months, other people might come and stay in it while you're gone. But messing up your stuff or not letting you come back wouldn't happen: it would be rude.

Basically, I think the Culture is actually an awful lot like the upper middle classes in Jane Austen: you can pretty much do what you like, but if you do things that are rude or inconsiderate, you'd pretty soon find yourself excluded.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

So the property rights are weak property rights. Very weak.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The countervaling point, though, is that property in the Culture is cheap; exceptionally so from our point of view. The Culture is mind-bogglingly affluent; even real estate can be created almost at whim (though whole new Orbitals take a bit of effort, adding plates to an existing one seem no more noteworthy than constructing a new condo tower is here) and consumer goods are so abundant that they're there for the taking. Any property lost is almost trivially replaceable, so there's little drive to enforce strong property rights.

Modern economic theories break down when tackling the Culture because economics is a means of studying problems of scarcity, which just aren't there in the Culture. (Hence the line in one of the novels, can't remember which, that "money is a sign of poverty.")

-- Steve recalls that the only goods even vaguely scarce were artistic creations, and even those were only hard to get if the creators were indulging in deliberate games of one-upmanship.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

I think the thing about Culture property rights that I found hardest to work out (I think because they issue is never specifically addressed) is what property rights (legally enforcable or culturally enforceable) are there in objects that have sentimental or pyschological value.

In a society in which all goods including real estate and raw energy are so abundent that all possessions are trivially achievable what do I do about say, the kilt I was wearing when I got married or the picture that my daughter made for me when I was sad about something? Although the object is easily replicable if destroyed or stolen it’s not the same object and that might be important to me.

Property rights in private dwellings also fall into that category. I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable with a stranger wandering round my home.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

There's a bit where IMB talks about how the only real value in the Culture is sentimental value. Possibly in his essay on it rather than the books.

> I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable with a stranger wandering round my home.

People would simply know you to be a person who was quite particular about their privacy, and would respect it. You might be thought... eccentric, but in the Culture, who isn't one way or another?

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Property rights in private dwellings also fall into that category. I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable with a stranger wandering round my home.

In the context of the Culture, this is probably better addressed by privacy rights than property rights... and there are bucketloads of privacy rights. (Not that Minds don't violate them on occasion, but they are there; it's the reason telepathy is essentially banned as Not A Good Idea.)

As far as "same object" goes, I don't think that concept has the same currency in the Culture that it does here. After all, mind-states can be stored for later reconstruction and body forms can be reshaped almost at will... continuity of form is rather slippery in context.

-- Steve does wonder whether there there is such a thing as theft in the Culture, at the very least in the "taking a token to count coup on a rival" sense. Or counterfeiting, for that matter.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

In a society in which all goods including real estate and raw energy are so abundent that all possessions are trivially achievable what do I do about say, the kilt I was wearing when I got married or the picture that my daughter made for me when I was sad about something?

I don't think either of your examples would really exist in the Culture and, if they did, I doubt the Cultureniks would recognise the concept of sentimental attachment to property. Abundance chances everything.

I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable with a stranger wandering round my home.

I'd feel the same but that is a produce of living in a particular time and place; I don't think it is particularly useful to project our own current feelings into an entirely different culture.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

This too.

If you wanted a house just like someone has -- baboom, you can have it.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

So what?

If you can say to people to leave the place where you live because you'd really rather they did (and to not respect your wishes would be rude), versus because you'd call the cops, what does it matter? Same result.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

You can say that about any two legal systems with similar substantive laws but different jurisprudential basis or different procedural laws - most of the time it won't make any difference but when it does make a difference those differences are often very important.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I think objections to the Culture on property right terms shows that libertarians not actually care that much about property rights (since they are meaningless in a super-abundant society). Rather it is smoke screen for the fact that what they really want is property inequality.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it does. (And it’s always interesting to ask Libertarians how they view Rawls’ veil of uncertainty when thinking about their system – or my personal favourite, to ask them about transaction costs.)

But it might not show this – it might be that Libertarians have a sincere and genuine moral belief in self-autonomy as a good thing in itself.