Yeah I vaguely remember that part from the novella.
This is yet another story where a Culture citizen weirdly decides that living in a shithole (1970s Earth) is preferable to literal utopia, so maybe the LW crowd have a point it's not a very good utopia. Or maybe there are weirdos in every time and space. Again, see LW.
There's local democracy - in one book some activist reserved a big part of an orbital just to run cable cars back and forth. And I believe the decision to go war with the Idirans was subjected to a vote - part of the Culture split off when it didn't go their way.
But yeah, the Minds decide everything and Contact/SC is all about doing the "needful stuff" that every right-thinking Culture citizen would deplore.
The Culture is imperialist in the previous US sense of "everyone wants to live our lifestyle" but not in the "invade planets and strip them" sense.
I'm less interested in discussing the minutiae of the fictional Culture than exploring nerd's reactions to it, honestly .
I figure part of the "scan" that a Contact ship does when it encounters a "lesser" planet is to basically slurp down all media, read all the books, and send drones down to do full-3d immersive recordings of basically everything going on.
I guess some stuff you really need to train as a monk for 30 years to really grok, but if there's an interest for that some Culture weirdo will volunteer and get sent down with a drone in the form of a crucifix or whatever, and incidentally become the next pope.
incidentally I feel I'm seeing in this post and in the shit like Karp's 22 points a growing sense of ennui and purposelessness that was also reported in Europe before WW1 . Everything is safe and soft and real manly virtues like killing are downplayed so what we need are big strong men throwing missiles.
Banks wrote during the 70s/80s and just imagining a future that wasn't a nuclear wasteland or the Empirium of Man was an act of opposition.
It's a day ending in "y", so here's another bad rat take on Banks' Culture:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZdJM6ZAdnjisDu249/the-great-smoothing-out
Once again, for the ones at the back, the Culture is not the main subject of the novels. We almost never see the perspective of "normies" in the Culture, it's always from the view of misfits (Culture recruits into Contact/Special Circumstances) or outsiders (mercenaries like Zakalwe, enemies like Bora Horza Gobuchul, or allies like Ambassador Kabe).
Banks wanted to write novels about characters in dangerous situations facing their personal demons - like almost every other novelist wants - and the Culture was just the backdrop he invented as contrast.
The color choice was either super lazy or super inspired.
presented without further comment, this remarkable piece of political advice
God knows I love me a good dose of genre fiction, but I believe that if you're gonna base your entire worldview on fiction you should use something that's not second or third hand.
What a rogue's gallery. Truly a chilling portrait of the sworn enemies of trillions of unborn human beings.
Anyway...
SCENE: a wind-blasted desert landscape. In the foreground, a weathered truck rests on the side of a ruined highway. The windscreen is dusty and cracked, and the tyres have long since rotted away.
A PAIR OF SCAVENGERS, clad in bulky rags, approach the truck with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
Using a CROWBAR, they force open the back doors of the truck, and exclaim
"Fuck it, Ted, it's one of those dumb AI trucks!"
Astroturfing is as American as apple pie.
Yeah I think I linked to another similar take where another Wrong'un was mighty pissed that the Culture was infested with "deathism".
(edit found it https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uGZBBzuxf7CX33QeC/the-culture-novels-as-a-dystopia?commentId=eibhY5xmnTKcjwhnk
BONUS from the comments - if you don't like Scottish Socialist Humanists, how about novels by a tradcath yank who was nominated by the Rabid Puppies???? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uGZBBzuxf7CX33QeC/the-culture-novels-as-a-dystopia?commentId=Qmo8u85zCERNpXDBb)
Technically there's no reason you can't live forever in the Culture, through a combination of cryosleep and life extension, but it seems that the natural thing is to get pretty bored after 3 centuries or so. And I think that's perfectly reasonably from what imagine it would be like.
Remember that there's no private property in the Culture, so things that people here obsess over (keeping the family business going, making sure no non-deserving relative gets an inheritance) simply goes away. After a while you've played the Game of Life on all challenge modes and it's time to pack it in.
I think that if someone were to be as obssessed with living forever as LW are, it would be seen as a form of mental illness and the Minds would gently try to correct it.