Iain Banks: "Most of us are indoctrinated"

Michal Pocházka: Nowadays is not it more difficult for an author of SF to come up with an utopia or distopia story when the world is crazier and more "out of the mind" than one could imagine? Do you have an impression that the reality goes beyond any possible sci-fi story? How do you see this vague of pessimism about the future of mankind (Very different from your society of Culture) ?

Iain Banks: You can always imagine something worse than we have, and very easily imagine something better (especially these days, as you imply).  The problem is not imagining crazy societies, it's making them credible to the reader.  Reality does not have this problem; stuff just happens and we have to cope with it no matter how absurd it may seem.  In a sense we are right to be pessimistic - in purely practical terms it prepares us for the disappointments that will inevitably confront us.  However; we have to hope, dream and aspire, because it is always in our power to make things better and we have a duty to future generations to attempt to do so.  In fact, things ought to get better; we accumulate more knowledge and our technology becomes more sophisticated.  If this does not lead to a better life then it's because out systems - belief, political and economic systems in particular - are inadequate and need to be changed.

MP: What is your relation to "machines" as a (sci-fi) writer? Can an individual being still change the course of history or are we on the way to live like intelligent machines in daily Matrix?

IB: I'm a technophile, so machines are interesting to me, as is the effect they have on us both as individuals and as a society and a civilization.  I suspect individuals still have and will continue to have a huge effect on history.  Sadly, the people who have the greatest effects tend to be the right-wing billionaires who control the media, and reactionary, greedist politicians like Thatcher, Reagan, Bush the younger and Berlusconi (who of course qualifies on both counts).

MP: There are two theories about the limits of democracy. The one says Democracy can function only in highly developed, rich and clever society otherwise it breaks down because of poverty, corruption, frustration etc... Other theoreticians claim au contraire that the richness, economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy or just gets the society monopolised by the people in power. You did a comment on that as well. Do you thing we are in the situation of a major clash between the free market and economy on one side and the democracy on the other side?

IB: Yes - see remarks about greedism above.  Apart from anything else, the free market is not free; a market only works within a legal, political and societal framework, and it ought to be human values - as widely and democratically agreed as possible - that determine that framework.  The obsession with monetarising everything is simply infantile.  Money is just a tool, a way of counting.  To make it the literal bottom line of the worth of an individual or a society is idiotic.  Happiness is what matters, and any moral system that does not have at its core the humane maximization of happiness (or at least its pursuit - as the US Constitution is right to make clear, the chance to engage in the pursuit is all a decent society can guarantee, not a successful conclusion) is simply not worth a damn.

MP: The book Complicity is supposed to be on what Tories have done to your country. Are the bitter resentiments on Thatcher´s 80´s and on Tories already over in Britain or is it someting still pretty much alive in minds of people there? Can you help Czech audience to understand a bit of that?

IB: It's not over; we live with her legacy still (in the glorification of greed, the denigration of the idea of public service and the privatisation of financial return along with the nationalisation of debt we have just seen in our financial systems, apart from anything else).  Margaret Thatcher did everything in her very considerable power to make greed fashionable and turn naked selfishness from a vice into a virtue, and I find that beyond unforgivable.  It is partly due to her that we live in a world divided into the super-rich and everybody else, with the poor, the starving and the exploited of the world scrabbling for the crumbs of a civilization that values money beyond everything else.  I fully intend to piss on her grave (no matter how long the queue) and believe me she's still getting off lightly.

MP: One could feel sort of "left wing consciousness" (or awareness) in some of your writings. There is a new English term called "left over" - what do you think it really left from "The Left" after all tragedies and social experiments of 20th century? Are we in a situation - as it could seem especially in a post-communist country - of emptied words and emptied ideological concepts?

IB: I think the triumph of the right over the left will prove temporary.  I'm not the party-joining type so I can only speak for myself; I believe in people before profits, cooperation before competition and that greed - selfishness - is the only real sin.  I'm not sure how the left deals with the ascendency of the monetarist, shareholder-driven right and the atomization of classes and peoples within a slickly globalized economic system primed to treat people only as disposable raw material and dumb consumers, but it needs to come up with something.  I think we need to identify what I call greedism as the problem, link that to our dire need to cut back on our energy use and carbon production and acknowledge that raw growth is not the automatic solution to anything.  Also, I increasingly feel that libertarianism is profoundly not the answer - just another naive piece of wishful-thinking; a quick fix promise too akin to a faith and which, even if it is somehow not right-wing itself, ends up playing into the hands of those who most certainly are.

MP: Whit is a book also on religion and culture. Do you think our secular civilization and our modern culture has always kept its reverse religious side that was calling for a return to the dark ages and blind spirituality back to the scholastic dogmas and fanaticism - even before 9/11?

IB: Yes, it's there in most of us.  I think that most of us are indoctrinated as infants and children into believing in the various ludicrous faiths previous generations have professed to hold and that it would be interesting to see what would happen if we had a single entire generation raised without religious instruction from parents, priests, teachers or state.  I suspect you would still find the religious impulse in a lot of people, but it would be less restricting and damaging than our current legacy of nonsensicality, foolishness and outright lying.  Only a thought experiment, of course; organized faiths are far too frightened (and in a sense pragmatic) to give up the power of being allowed to warp young minds before they can properly start to think for themselves.  Nevertheless, I remain convinced that with a decent secular education and an appreciation of the way that science works - and the way the various sciences link together - it is possible to instill in almost anybody a sense of wonder at the stunning scale and fabulous complexity of the universe far superior to anything to be found within the slightly grubby confines of religious thought.

MP: What does it mean - dedicated evangelical atheist? What is such a religion about in your eyes? Money, freedom, self-assessment, success, individualism? Or is it more happy, easy and full life that everybody would like to believe in?

IB: It means not keeping quiet about being an atheist and not letting people of faith get away with being allowed to claim that their religion has a right not be insulted or challenged.  It means not being religious at all, not having a faith.  It means being a humanist, which is a belief system but not a religion.  Religion is about blindness - selective blindness, but still blindness.  I think faith is the enemy humanity.  Faith is belief without reason and when we abandon reason we abandon what makes us human.  Simply to accept something because you've been told it by somebody in authority or you read it in a book people happen to revere is absurd, and pathetic, too:  weak, craven and conformist.  Truth is what matters; not just as an abstract concept but as part of a practical process.  We need to search for truth through reason, observation and experiment, and then to accept what we discover through that process and face up to the implications of those discoveries - that's what really matters.  The rest is just fairy stories.

MP: To my knowledge you signed Declaration of Calton Hill which calls for Scottish independence. What is your view - as of a Scottish writer – on the growing dominance of English language literature? As it was said even during the last Nobel price ceremony, GB or US publishing houses loose interests in translations of foreign non-English books. It came even to an argument that if you wanted to be read in English, you have to take a sit and to write in English. It is sad really.

IB: I'd rather see greater diversity, but I guess each age has its Latin, its lingua franca, its English.  In a century from now it could well be Mandarin.  I think it's up to people and governments to do what they can to preserve diversity in the face of hegemonisation and homogenization, but it will be a constant struggle.

MP: In late 2004 you (and others) campaigned to have Tony Blair impeached from the Prime minister office after the Iraq invasion. How can you understand Tony Blair´s role in the gulf war and his personality? Did he lead Britain to the war from pure naivety, for the cause of saving the world from terrorism? Or was he a Bush´s partner in a big Iraq bonanza quest? Does any of your characters look like him?

IB: I think Blair is a war criminal.  Partly he was over-compensating for being called 'Bambi' in earlier years, partly he just wanted to be part of whatever the US wanted to do (no matter that it was illegal, unnecessary and immoral and regardless that the US president was a usurper who had come to power in a right-wing coup) in the same way that a small, weak man will offer to hold the jacket of a bully picking a fight with somebody much less powerful than himself (and hope to get a few kicks in himself, once the guy is down), and partly he was convinced by his own self-righteousness that it was just the right thing to do - perhaps because he heard voices.  The terrorism argument doesn't even start to make sense.  None of my characters look like him.

MP: You were concerning moving into PC Games world and industry. What is this world like? Are you scared of it?

IB: It's not something I've ever considered seriously.  I'm too used to getting my own way when I write.  I'm just not a team player, and games these days take hundreds of people to put together.  I suppose I could be a consultant, or contribute a few ideas, but that would be all I could do and so far nobody's made a serious offer.  I think I'll stick with writing novels (and music - one ambition this year is to write a symphony - I'm probably being hopelessly over-ambitious, but what the hell).

Published in Právo on 28 May 2009.