On Hearing of the Death of Iain Banks.
Jun. 11th, 2013 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danieldwilliamSo, Iain Banks has died. It is not often that two of the best novelists of our times die on the same day. Banks is the first of the great novelists of my time that I'll miss.
As my dad put it in a text message to me. “Very sad to hear of Iain Banks’ death. He’s given us a lot of pleasure and would have writen a lot more.”
By us, I think dad means him and me. Reading Banks was something we shared. I introduced him to Banks or he introduced me. I forget which way round it went. Often as a birthday or Christmas present I would get the most recent Banks in hard cover, often signed.
I enjoyed Banks’ work very much. There are people with a better ability to explain his skills or significance. I found reading about the country I lived in, both physically and metally, gave me a confidence in my community that I think I lacked before reading the Crow Road and Complicity. Being a good person would not necessarily make bad things work out well in the end but being a good person would make them turn out better than they would have done. Speaking for myself Banks gave (or sold me) hours of reading pleasure and a different view on science fiction and politics.
Banks’ more than any other author changed my politics. More than Orwell even. What I took from the Culture novels was this.
Abundance makes socialism easier. Removing threats and material stress makes it easier for ordinary people to be good people. If most people have plenty then it is easier for them to share. If there is plenty of stuff then there are plenty of opportunities, including the opportunity to not do very much. Plenty can reduce conflict.
There is a left-wing alternative to a large state. The communism that my great-grandfather supported seemed very unforgiving of people being people. Even at it’s best it seemed to rely on the cleverness of people very much like myself, technically adept and well intentioned and a bit paranoid that no one else would understand what we were trying to do. It seemed to happen to people rather than with them. Consequently it did not always happen for them. Only the user can define quality and they can only define quality if they are involved in the design process. For a left-wing society to be better than a right-wing society it must be better able to flexibly deliver what people want. The failure of the left in the 20th Century was an attempt to change what people wanted. The failure of the right as we enter the 21st Century is an attempt to create wants for people. What I saw in Banks’ work was a socialism that worked upwards from smaller groups and which offered each individual the opportunity to be fully them with the gentle reminder that it was rude to take more than you needed.
People are shaped by the political structures they find themselves in. If you create a society with threat and stress and conflict over status then you will get people who respond as if they are under threat all the time and you will get social structures that are designed to avoid risk rather than promote opportunity.
Technology is what makes us able to lead richer, easier lives. By removing labour from production technology gives us more stuff to help live our lives, more time in which to live them and reduces conflicts over allocation of material wealth. Technology is the answer. So much wealth we no longer recognise the concept of an unfulfilled want is the answer. A simple, poor life will not make us happy, it will kill our children early from a preventable illness. If we want to be happy a rich life is what we should all be aiming for everybody.
So, when I describe myself as a Banksist what I mean is this; that by promoting a highly technologically advanced society with abundant wealth for all we are more likely to end up with an economy where the cost of living is practically free and a society that is willing and able to share and which treats human beings as people not things.
The Culture was a place I wanted to live. A place where I and everyone I knew would be much better off and much better.
What I hoped for in future Culture novels, what I’ll miss, is an exploration of what it was like to be an ordinary Culture citizen going about your life in ordinary times. I wanted to hear the story of the Cultureniks who built the cable car system on Masaq. If the Jane Austen were Banks what would she write?
As my dad put it in a text message to me. “Very sad to hear of Iain Banks’ death. He’s given us a lot of pleasure and would have writen a lot more.”
By us, I think dad means him and me. Reading Banks was something we shared. I introduced him to Banks or he introduced me. I forget which way round it went. Often as a birthday or Christmas present I would get the most recent Banks in hard cover, often signed.
I enjoyed Banks’ work very much. There are people with a better ability to explain his skills or significance. I found reading about the country I lived in, both physically and metally, gave me a confidence in my community that I think I lacked before reading the Crow Road and Complicity. Being a good person would not necessarily make bad things work out well in the end but being a good person would make them turn out better than they would have done. Speaking for myself Banks gave (or sold me) hours of reading pleasure and a different view on science fiction and politics.
Banks’ more than any other author changed my politics. More than Orwell even. What I took from the Culture novels was this.
Abundance makes socialism easier. Removing threats and material stress makes it easier for ordinary people to be good people. If most people have plenty then it is easier for them to share. If there is plenty of stuff then there are plenty of opportunities, including the opportunity to not do very much. Plenty can reduce conflict.
There is a left-wing alternative to a large state. The communism that my great-grandfather supported seemed very unforgiving of people being people. Even at it’s best it seemed to rely on the cleverness of people very much like myself, technically adept and well intentioned and a bit paranoid that no one else would understand what we were trying to do. It seemed to happen to people rather than with them. Consequently it did not always happen for them. Only the user can define quality and they can only define quality if they are involved in the design process. For a left-wing society to be better than a right-wing society it must be better able to flexibly deliver what people want. The failure of the left in the 20th Century was an attempt to change what people wanted. The failure of the right as we enter the 21st Century is an attempt to create wants for people. What I saw in Banks’ work was a socialism that worked upwards from smaller groups and which offered each individual the opportunity to be fully them with the gentle reminder that it was rude to take more than you needed.
People are shaped by the political structures they find themselves in. If you create a society with threat and stress and conflict over status then you will get people who respond as if they are under threat all the time and you will get social structures that are designed to avoid risk rather than promote opportunity.
Technology is what makes us able to lead richer, easier lives. By removing labour from production technology gives us more stuff to help live our lives, more time in which to live them and reduces conflicts over allocation of material wealth. Technology is the answer. So much wealth we no longer recognise the concept of an unfulfilled want is the answer. A simple, poor life will not make us happy, it will kill our children early from a preventable illness. If we want to be happy a rich life is what we should all be aiming for everybody.
So, when I describe myself as a Banksist what I mean is this; that by promoting a highly technologically advanced society with abundant wealth for all we are more likely to end up with an economy where the cost of living is practically free and a society that is willing and able to share and which treats human beings as people not things.
The Culture was a place I wanted to live. A place where I and everyone I knew would be much better off and much better.
What I hoped for in future Culture novels, what I’ll miss, is an exploration of what it was like to be an ordinary Culture citizen going about your life in ordinary times. I wanted to hear the story of the Cultureniks who built the cable car system on Masaq. If the Jane Austen were Banks what would she write?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 02:49 pm (UTC)I re-read it recently, and chunks of it felt like a scream of rage and frustration at being stuck in a society that was so clearly broken, and could be so easily fixed if people would just think and care to do so.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 02:50 pm (UTC)I can only recommend the Culture books (obviously). They’ve clearly been a great influence on me. I don’t hold myself out an arbiter of quality on these matters but I think they were pretty well written books beyond the political and genre messages.
Have you read the Banks rather then the M Banks books?
no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 04:50 pm (UTC)The most successful Big Lie of the Twentieth Century is that Bolshevism == socialism. Marxism is the authoritarian right wing of socialism, and Leninism(-Trotskyism) is the authoritarian right wing of Marxism.
"social control of the means of production" is not ipso facto a kind of government.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-17 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-18 09:25 am (UTC)I would have liked to see more of the inner workings of the Culture. Space Soap Opera, if you will.