[subtlepseudonym]

I would argue that the Minds enable The Culture's utopia. Special Circumstances may theoretically have the capacity to direct events within The Culture, but their efforts are near-exclusively directed without and in the only example to the contrary, those efforts fail rather spectacularly (Excession).

[GeoAtreides]

Special Circumstances was not involved in the Excession mess, that was a sub-group of Minds who had _ideas_ and _principles_ (I somehow agree with them, the Affront are, well... an affront)

I was going to bring up the Chelgrians (as a fuck-up), but that was Contact fault, if I recall correctly.

[n4r9]

Been a while since I read Excession but SC was definitely involved to some degree.

> The Interesting Times Gang (ITG), an informal group of Minds loosely connected with Special Circumstances, try to manage the Culture's response to the Excession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession

> Whilst it appeared that the Sleeper Service had been Eccentric for 4 decades, it had in fact been a dedicated, if secret, military resource acting on behalf of a sub-set of Special Circumstances Minds known as the Interesting Times Gang

https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Sleeper_Service

[n4r9]

How I'd put it is: you can't get humans this close to utopia without Minds, and you can't get to perfect utopia because of the Minds.