In many ways Look to Windward is about new concepts and in other ways it is about nothing new at all. The technologies and advancements are incredible, nay revolutionary. Humans have invented artificial intelligences, notably the Hub, so sophisticated that they can rule worlds and study galaxies thousands of light years away, as the Hub of Masaq’Hub explains to Mahra Ziller (293). Humans can almost escape death, copying their personalities into artificial devices, though whether or not this is the same person is debatable, as Phil mentions in his post. Lastly, humans are perhaps preparing to ascend to a higher level of existence, “the Sublime,” as in Stargate SG-1, although such an evolution would be rather boring since the humans would no longer be involved in material affairs (198-201). Which leads me to my point: for all of our changes and technological advances, humans have not really changed much in the millennia plus from the present. We are at our old games.
The Culture intervention with the Chelgrians with the intent to end their caste system seems to me like a direct parallel to America’s intervention in the Middle East. The US threw billions of dollars into the area to prop up puppet governments to control it, much as the Culture attempted. The Culture is most comparable to America, an incredibly rich and advanced entity with a lot of power where “things have been going very well…but our power may have peaked; we may be becoming complacent, even decadent” (461). The description Hub gives to Quilan at the end of the book fits very well with the U.S. That is why the attack Quilan plans reminds me of 9/11 on a “billions of people” scale.
I was actually talking to Professor Jackson briefly after class yesterday about what the Culture represents, particularly in its intervention with the Chelgrians. And the thing that I thought of, immediately--as a result of having lived in Scotland for half a year--was the fact that Banks is Scottish, and that every time in the past millennium that the English have tried to interfere in Scottish politics, religion, or society in general it has ended badly. For instance: the attempted introduction of an Anglican prayerbook in the early 1600s sparked a riot in St. Giles' Cathedral, where a parishioner actually threw the book at a minister's head. England to Scotland represents a culture so remote that it is incapable of understanding them, but continues to try and enforce potentially dangerous cultural ideas, which (at least before the Acts of Union) almost inevitably lead to some kind of conflict.
ReplyDeleteI like your point about 9/11 though. That sense of unequivocal revenge that the Chelgrians seem to have fits in very well with Islamic fundamentalism, particularly in terms of terrorism. I'm not sure, however, that the Chelgrians meant some kind of statement beyond restitution in the same way that many terrorist groups do.