The whole idea of a cure is one that's much more complex than most people readily identify. I was horrified when Weber and Flint's 'Torch of Freedom' talked about the Honorverse's leading medical ethicists, the Beowulfans, 'eliminating' autism. You could lessen the disruptive elements of autism like sensory overload without it being too controversial, but there's a considerable number of people out there who are perfectly happy to be neuro-diverse and have absolutely no wish to be cured, thank you!
You have a very valid point about the significance of whether society expects people to work, but there's the parallel point of whether it enables people to work, and by enables I mean something much more positive than Heinlein's repugnant line in Starship Troopers "if you came in here in a wheelchair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find you something silly to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe." That line becomes doubly disablist when we remember that enlisting is the only route to the franchise in that civilization. In contemporary society we see considerable pressure on disabled people to work, but no matching pressure on employers to employ us and the virtual fetishisation of the 'protestant work ethic', leading to a widespread view, often fostered by the tabloid press, that disabled people are spongers on the welfare state. The problem for SF is in challenging views where society is in denial, 'everyone knows' that ADA and the DDA and the like mean that every building is accessible and no one will ever be turned down for work because of a disability; everyone, that is, but those of us who actually are disabled. I can write something to highlight the double standards, but if people are in active denial that the double standards exist then does it do any good?
The Culture is very much a special case in SF; it's operating at the indistinguishable-from-magic level of technology, which is unusual enough, and it is explicity communist, which is virtually unheard of in a literature often dominated by right-wing American viewpoints. That and the excessive degree of genetic manipulation within the Culture populace makes the physical aspect of disability largely unknown, OTOH it's clear quite a few of Bank's protagonists have definite mental problems, so disability still exists in some form. It's noticeable that Banks tends to write about the fringes of the Culture, areas where Special Circumstances needs to intervene and the ability of the Minds to accomplish anything that is wanted are circumscribed, suggesting that the sheer flexibility of the Culture makes a conventional narrative difficult. In the end the Culture is probably too different for a story set within it to shine a light on contemporary disability issues. Where a Culture-like society is potentially useful is when it's used to compare and contrast with how things really are on Earth, as Banks did with Communism in The State of the Art, but mostly I think we need a less advanced level of technology for the 'this isn't good enough, we can do better' message to work.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 03:42 pm (UTC)You have a very valid point about the significance of whether society expects people to work, but there's the parallel point of whether it enables people to work, and by enables I mean something much more positive than Heinlein's repugnant line in Starship Troopers "if you came in here in a wheelchair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find you something silly to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe." That line becomes doubly disablist when we remember that enlisting is the only route to the franchise in that civilization. In contemporary society we see considerable pressure on disabled people to work, but no matching pressure on employers to employ us and the virtual fetishisation of the 'protestant work ethic', leading to a widespread view, often fostered by the tabloid press, that disabled people are spongers on the welfare state. The problem for SF is in challenging views where society is in denial, 'everyone knows' that ADA and the DDA and the like mean that every building is accessible and no one will ever be turned down for work because of a disability; everyone, that is, but those of us who actually are disabled. I can write something to highlight the double standards, but if people are in active denial that the double standards exist then does it do any good?
The Culture is very much a special case in SF; it's operating at the indistinguishable-from-magic level of technology, which is unusual enough, and it is explicity communist, which is virtually unheard of in a literature often dominated by right-wing American viewpoints. That and the excessive degree of genetic manipulation within the Culture populace makes the physical aspect of disability largely unknown, OTOH it's clear quite a few of Bank's protagonists have definite mental problems, so disability still exists in some form. It's noticeable that Banks tends to write about the fringes of the Culture, areas where Special Circumstances needs to intervene and the ability of the Minds to accomplish anything that is wanted are circumscribed, suggesting that the sheer flexibility of the Culture makes a conventional narrative difficult. In the end the Culture is probably too different for a story set within it to shine a light on contemporary disability issues. Where a Culture-like society is potentially useful is when it's used to compare and contrast with how things really are on Earth, as Banks did with Communism in The State of the Art, but mostly I think we need a less advanced level of technology for the 'this isn't good enough, we can do better' message to work.