Eh . Somewhat . I found most of contact to be unsympathetic assholes especially when it ' s pointed out in Excession that all founder races had their own global wars and mass slaughter lovingly recreated by the sleeper service . And the fact Banks himself in notes on the culture pointed out the founding of the culture was not nice or easy as many think and it ' s even mentioned in Excession that phage rock which dates back to pre culture times , it ' s inhabitants installed engines back then to avoid the nasty wars before the founding . Wars involving weapons even back then that would have dwarfed nukes humans used and killed millions . While that huge calvary battle on xelphier prime may have united the planet for one of the founding races it ' s obvious from the background of phage rock they or other races still fought amongst their colonies or each other . You have to remember Marain is the sapirworth hypothesis writ large and people always teach their own history to make themselves look better . And on top of that Culturnik have genofixed themselves to be more affable and happy and in general work better together . It really struck me as pot calling kettle black . And while post Culture founding records are likely to be more accurate how does your average Culturnik not know their precursor governments did not edit or sanitize things to make themselves look better ? Victors write history .