#tolan garak

So in one scene in the book, Tolan reveals to Elim that what he's been taught about the First Hebitians, the "primitive" civilization that lived on Cardassia hundreds of years ago, is a lie.

The Cardassian state claims that the Hebitians died out because they were too weak to survive the harsh world after the planet's climate naturally changed from tropical rainforests to deserts. When in reality, it was the early Cardassian invaders who drove them to extinction.

The truth is that the world is not naturally cruel. It is made cruel by cruel people, the conquerors and colonizers. The Hebitians were never inherently too weak to survive. There was nothing wrong with them, with their softness and sentimentality. The Cardassians created the harsh world that killed them.

Elim was taught that his sentimentality was an inherent weakness, something he must overcome to survive in their harsh world. But it's people like Tain who made their world so harsh, so unlivable for people like Elim, with "the soul of a poet." Everyone thinks the Edosian orchid is too weak to survive in their harsh climate. But Tolan proves that with love and care, it can. And by giving Elim the orchid tuber cuttings, he's telling Elim to practice loving, to practice nurturing.

Do y'all see the connection to the social model of disability. There is nothing wrong with Elim or the Hebitians!! It is society that creates a world they cannot thrive in, that makes sentimentality into a "disability" of sorts. AND the book goes on to say that WE have the power to create a better world. Now that the old Cardassia is in ashes, they start to create a kinder world, where orchids can thrive, where poets don't have to bury their hearts in the sand.

I think there are also further parallels to disability theory here. The way that they give Elim the wire because he scored too low on the enhancer (cannot withstand psychological torture as well as they want him to), "fixing" his "inherent weakness," but the thing is. The wire doesn't actually help him or improve his quality of life. It just makes him a more useful tool for the system, a better cog in the machine. In fact, it actively hurts him later. After years of grooming him to be the perfect cog, they toss him out, and the "tools" they gave him that were meant to make him a better cog harm him. Because they were never designed to help him. Of course the wire is a literal physical example but when I say "tools" it can just as easily apply to, say, teaching him how to repress his emotions, how to lie, how to distrust everyone. Which reminds me of how in the real world, the field of psychiatry often seems less focused on helping people and more focused on making people better cogs in the machine of capitalism.

ALSO obviously the Hebitian stuff is also abt racism. The way they're described as "primitive" and how the early Cardassians colonized them and how their relics are auctioned off to museums and how their cultural/spiritual practices are outlawed. But I think that's well-trodden ground in terms of analysis. And I could not find a neat way to tie it into this.