I've been thinking about conflict vs mistake theory lately, especially since the events of October in Israel last year.
I've been particularly trying to understand where support for Palestine (and Hamas, implicitly or not) comes from. Much has already been written about this of course, whether it's the bigotry of small differences or the trap of the "oppressor/oppressed thinking," the hierarchy of oppression, and so on.
What I found striking and want to discuss here though is the strain of thought responding to "how can LGBT+ support Palestine" by declaring, e.g., from Reddit:
It's easier to focus on getting gay rights when you're not being genocided.
Or from a longer piece:
The interviewer asks him, “What’s your response to people who say that you’re not safe in Palestine as a queer person?” Dabbagh responded, “First and foremost, I would go to Palestine in a heartbeat. I have no fear. I love my people and my people love me. And I want to be there and be part of the movement that ends up leading to queer liberation for liberated Palestinian people. If you feel that such violence exists for queer people in the Middle East, what are you doing to change that for that community? The first step is the liberation of Palestine.
I don't claim it's the most common strain of thinking, but to me this largely cashes out as "they are homophobic because of oppression/imperialism/Jews." As an aside, contrast with the way "economic anxiety" plays out in the US.
The part I want to focus on is this kind of blend of mistake and conflict theory -- there's conflict, yes, but it has a cause which can be addressed and then we'll all be on the same side. I'm skeptical of this blend, which seems to essentially just be false consciousness: if not for an external force you would see our interests align.
I think this mode of thinking is becoming increasingly popular however and want to point to the two most recent video games I put serious time into (but didn't finish) as examples: Baldur's Gate 3 and Unicorn Overlord (minorish spoilers ahead)
[Again, minorish spoilers for Unicorn Overlord and Baldur's Gate 3 ahead]
Baldur's Gate 3 was part of a larger "vibe shift" in DnD which I won't get into here except to say I think a lot of it is misguided. Nevertheless, there are two major examples of the above:
The Gith'Yanki are a martial, fascist seeming society who are generally aggressive powerful assholes. A major character arc for one of your team Gith'Yanki team members however, is learning she had been brainwashed and fed lies not just about the leader of the society and her goals, but also the basic functioning of the society. For instance, a much-discussed cure for a serious medical condition turns out to be glorious euthanasia.
The Gith have been impressed with a false consciousness, you see, and your conflict with them is largely based on a misunderstanding of the facts.
More egregious is the character Omeluum, who you meet early in the adventure. Omeluum is a "mind flayer" or "illithid":
Mind flayers are psionic aberrations with a humanoid-like figure and a tentacled head that communicate using telepathy. They feast on the brains of intelligent beings and can enthrall other creatures to their will.
But you see, even these creatures turn out to be the victim of false consciousness--Omeluum is a mind flayer who has escaped the mind control of the "Elder Brain." After fleeing, he happily "joined the good guys." You might think it's an issue that his biology requires he consume conscious brains, but fortunately he only feeds
on the brains of creatures of the Underdark 'that oppose the Society's goals', and wishes to help others of his kind by discovering a brain-free diet.
In the world of DnD (which has consciously been made to increasingly mimic our own world with mixed results), it seems that but for a few bad actors we could all get along in harmony.
Anecdotally, the last time I ran a DnD campaign it eventually devolved into the party trying to "get to the root" of every conflict, whether it was insisting on finding a way to get goblins to stop killing travelers by negotiation a protection deal with the nearby village which served both, or trying to talk every single cultist out of being a cult member. I'm all for creative solutions, but I found it got pretty tedious after a while.
The other game, Unicorn Overlord, is even more striking, albeit a little simpler. Unicorn Overlord is a (very enjoyable) strategy game where you slowly build up an army to overthrow the evil overlord. What you quickly discover, however, is that almost without exception every follower of the evil overlord is literally mind-controlled. The main gameplay cycle involves fighting a lieutenant's army, then using your magical ring to undo the mind control. After, the lieutenant is invariably horrified and joins your righteous cause.
I should note this is far from unusual in this genre, which requires fights but also wants team-ups. It's a lot like Marvel movies which come up with reasons for heroes to fight each other then team up, like a misunderstanding or even mind control. Wargroove was especially bad at this, where you would encounter a new friendly and say something like "Hello, a fine field for cattle, no?" but the wind is strong or something so they hear "Hello, a fine field for battle, no?" and then you fight. Nevertheless, the mind control dynamic in Unicorn Overlord is almost exclusively the only explanation used.
Funnily enough, I think in these an other examples this is seen as "adding nuance," but I find it ultimately as childish as a cartoon-twirling villain. The villain is still needed in fact (Imperialists, the Evil Overlord, The Elder Brain, The Queen of the Gith), but it's easier to explain away one Evil person who controls everything than try to account for it at scale.
Taken altogether, I can't help but think these are all symptoms of the same thing: struggling to explain conflict. The "false consciousness" explanation is powerful, but seems able to explain anything about people's behavior.
My suspicion is that mistakes and genuine conflict can both occur, but this blended approach leaves something to be desired I think. I had an idea a while ago about a potential plot twist for Unicorn Overlord where it's revealed you aren't freeing anyone -- you're simply bringing them under your own control but you don't notice. That feels a bit like the fantasy all of this is getting at I think: I have my views because of Reasons or Ethics or Whatever, and you would agree with me if not for Factor I'm Immune To.
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Notes -
I'd argue that while this - or something close enough - is what the Culture believes, the books themselves and their narrative voices are more skeptical. The Culture tells a lot of stories about itself, but in most of the Culture novels I've read, those stories are questioned or deconstructed by the end, usually in a way that leaves us wondering to what extent the Culture is self-deluding. I don't think the goodness of the Culture is as obvious as some readers seem to think. The Culture is so materially prosperous as to be effectively utopian, and its libertarian-except-for-anything-that-harms-others ethic may seem hard to argue with, but Banks does not stop trying.
Well, as we've seen in real life, this naturally devolves into endless fighting about what should count as harm, and who should count as others.
Anything else is at least as utopian as an end to scarcity, or faster-than-light travel.
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Yes, I haven't read all the books through to hear all of Banks' own self-aware critiques of the culture's self-aggrandized superiority.
But the books I've read tend to make the societies opposed to the Culture out as complete nightmares where any reasonable person, given the choice between the Culture and, say, the Idirans or Azad (or the affront,) would easily choose the Culture unless they were guaranteed to be in the upper echelons of the other societies.
I've wondered if there was a story that has the Culture encounter a rival power that matches their social mores in almost all but ONE critical way, and they abjectly refuse to compromise on that one difference for reasons that they cannot explain (and may not even know) but that is such a central, load-bearing aspect of their civilization that they simply cannot join the Culture if doing so would endanger that factor at all.
Banks certainly adds tidbits that make it pretty clear that the Culture is not literally perfect in every way. Sometimes there's even some hypocrisy and unnecessary suffering that results from it.
But it does still strike me as the final boss of "everyone would be able to just get along if we could talk things out" mindset.
This is the case with the Gzilt in Hydrogen Sonata, who actually almost joined the Culture as founding members but stayed out because they see themselves as a chosen people because their holy text being surprisingly scientifically accurate. In the Culture universe this could mean all sorts of things, including sponsorship by Sublimed (functionally godlike) entities.
They haven't really suffered for it. They're about equivtech, despite not having a war for a while they maintain a Starship Troopers-style draft system that is functionally optional because they're also post-scarcity and they insist on their ships running their own emulated minds sped up. It's basically an answer to many of the things people don't like about the Culture like the hereditary caste of Minds running the whole thing.
Look to Windward's Chelgrians aren't Culture-level and their caste system seems to have very strong downsides. But it also allows them to maintain communication with their ancestors who Sublimed, which is basically unheard of. They truly are special, in a way many don't want to lose. The Culture's attempt to weaken their caste system releases awful tendencies kept in check and leads to absolute disaster.
Haven't read that one yet, but you just bumped by interested in reading it by like 30%.
And I already like them a bit more than the Culture! The "chosen people" thing would rub me the wrong way but if your religious text actually seems to be bestowed upon you by a higher being, and holds up to scrutiny for eons, I'd have strong feelings about it too.
Guess I'll have to get to that one ASAP too.
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I take it you've read The Player of Games, and I like that one as a case study, actually. The Player of Games is probably the most straightforwardly pro-Culture Culture novel, and yet even then, I think it portrays the Culture as kind of being bastards? They lie and blackmail Gurgeh into doing this mission for them, even though it is clearly doing Gurgeh considerable psychic harm. Moreover, the Culture's action against Azad is indisputably a case of unprovoked aggression. Azad have done absolutely nothing to the Culture. Azad aren't even able to do anything to the Culture. The Culture move in to destroy Azad purely because they find Azad's existence to be offensive to their enlightened liberal sensibilities. Azad is a repressive, autocratic caste system, and the Culture don't like that, so they intervene. It is pure aggression.
Now, we see enough of Azad to make that society look truly loathsome, but here is where I have to note that the novel is narrated to us by Flere-Imsaho, and Flere-Imsaho is pretty firmly established to be a manipulative liar. Flere-Imsaho is himself a rather repulsive and arrogant character. (I remember a part discussing alien genders where he writes "the precise translation depends on whether your own civilisation (for let us err on the side of terminological generosity) is male or female dominated" - he smugly implies that civilisations he doesn't approve of aren't really civilisations at all.) Gurgeh's expedition into the seedy depths of Azadian society is in fact orchestrated by Flere-Imsaho in order to convince him that Azad needs to be destroyed, so even if we take the narration is reliable, the situations it describes are curated to try to make the moral case against Azad. But why would we take the narration as reliable? After all, the novel ends with the words:
This is the most pro-Culture Culture novel. The most! And it's one with an unreliable, manipulative narrator who lies to and blackmails the hero and is clearly trying to prosecute the case against Azad as fiercely as possible, and even then, there's no disguising the fact that the Culture arranged a coup and violent revolution in a neighbouring nation simply because they found that nation's culture repulsive. Moreover, this was engineered by Special Circumstances, who are not democratically ratified or accountable in any way - most of the Culture had no idea this was going on. So actually a small group of super-empowered elites just... went around and wrecked a nation because they didn't like it.
If The Player of Games hadn't been published in 1988, I'd snark something about the Iraq War, or democracy promotion more generally.
You might still say this is all fine. Even if Azad is only 50% as bad as Flere says it is, that's still bad enough to be worth overthrowing, and the planned revolution had to be carried out by native Azadians anyway - it's not as if the existing Azadian regime had massive popular support. And what does democracy really count for in a society run by god-like superintelligences anyway? Am I really going to support the existence of a government as awful as Azad on woolly procedural grounds?
I don't know. Maybe I am.
Because, well, I've also read Consider Phlebas, and Look to Windward, and Excession, and I know that the Culture only gets dodgier from here. Consider Phlebas ended with its primary Culture character putting herself into cold storage until the Culture can mathematically 'prove' the war was justified, at which point she commits suicide as a kind of protest. I think part of what Banks is doing is contriving a situation that satisfies most people's utilitarian calculus - the Culture is king of QALYs - and yet something about it, something difficult to define but nonetheless there, feels wrong. That itching sense of wrongness is the point, it seems to me. Even if we struggle to define it, something here isn't right.
Yes, ALTHOUGH I recall that Gurgeh was basically falling into a listless depression because playing games with no stakes was no longer satisfying, so in a certain sense, the mission was simply giving him what he wanted, and the Minds could be all but certain that he wouldn't be harmed.
As to whether they tricked him about how bad the society was or the narrator was reliable, I grant that's a clear self-aware critique of the Culture. Still, I imagine Banks' own ethics would conclude something like "you can judge a society by how it treats its worst-off members," where the Culture has nothing resembling poverty, whereas if we assume that the portrayal of Azad was accurate as to the existence of castes who were tortured at the elites' whim, then that alone justifies some sort of intervention.
Whether a full on coup and revolution was ethically defensible, I guess I'll leave that aside.
You know I think I've also gathered as subtext (or maybe it was specifically stated at one point) that some of the minds get 'bored' with merely managing the Culture society and economy and will try challenging themselves to nudge other societies into joining the culture simply to alleviate that boredom, and perhaps on extremely rare occasions they miscalculate and trigger real war, which they KNOW they can win, but then the challenge is making it a 'just' war. Which leads into:
I was actually uncertain whether that particular portion of the book was Banks critiquing the Culture/minds for prosecuting a war despite being well aware of the costs it would incur, OR he was actually making a small jab at bleeding-heart liberals who want to enact change in the world but can't stand getting their hands even a bit bloody.
"You guys won the war and saved the day, but then couldn't stomach the actions it took to win unless your conscience could be mollified? Grow up."
Agreed. And the answer for myself that I settled on is that humans in the Culture have no volition. They can't make anything meaningful happen that the minds aren't already planning. As we see, the minds will nudge or outright deceive humans towards a larger end goal. Humans aren't able or allowed to truly decide on the end goal. Yes, the Minds will put things to a democratic vote and 'abide' by the outcome, but the outcome itself is never in doubt.
So that feels like a subtle horror story to me. Humans are locked in a nature preserve and will never know if this was something they wanted or it was decided for them. That the walls are basically invisible and the guards are entirely benevolent doesn't change that.
From a storytelling perspective, you HAVE to make the Culture get a bit Dodgy or else you can't really derive conflict from a world of such abundance that is ideologically committed to nonviolence.
why not both at once?
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For what it’s worth, as someone who loves “muscular liberalism”, many of my favourite parts of the Culture books are when you get to see its bared teeth (perhaps most spectacularly at the end of Look To Windward with the Terror Weapon). There’s a reason why all Involved species know the saying “Don’t Fuck With The Culture.” I fantasise about being part of a similarly open, liberal, and pluralistic society that is nonetheless utterly capable of extreme violence when its citizens’ lives and interests are threatened.
I mean, being honest, thats my ideal for a libertarian society. Maximum openness (which also means allowing people to form consensual 'closed' sub-societies) but also maximal 'deterrence' against outside interference.
Live and let live, until they don't let you live, then you end their life (if needed).
I think the issues that come up on the one hand is that a society of maximal openness usually viewing outsiders as having the same value as insiders because that's how you've organized the entirety of your society.
Like, how do you have a coherent definition of 'us' and 'them' when the whole ideology that you've built your society on is intended to remove that distinction entirely? You don't use such distinctions within your society, but how do you strictly define the boundary beyond which you do NOT extend the same courtesy?
And likewise, the problem of pre-emptive violence. When you can see with near-certainty that an outside force is going to attack (Russians massing troops on your border for a 'training exercise,' for example) and yet if you take action before the danger manifests you're sort of breaking your own rules. And if you can justify a pre-emptive strike, you can probably justify any other intervention, like targeted assassination and 'regime change.'
And now you're back to basically being Neocons.
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