#reform

[eelhound]

"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?

This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).

But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."

- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.

[toenzy]

That didn't take long.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

Excuse me, but what in the gluten-free christ is this horseshit? [x]

[muffinlevelchicanery]

Reform is not the answer

[generalelectionmusings]

[faerie-hideaway]

It's interesting how little we actually own anymore. Propaganda used to scare us about the possibility of having to share our cows with our neighbors or having to borrow the government's cows, now we're paying subscriptions to use the proverbial cow.

How is this any different from the government owning everything? It's just the businesses and banks instead.

[hausuma]

2階トイレ前から♪

リビングと廊下の間のガラス戸は新調しましたが、ガラス窓は既存のものを移設して再利用しています

◾️re.haus-sy◾️

兵庫県神戸市須磨区

[lulublack90]

Prompt 10 - Reform

@jegulus-microfic May 10, Word count 458

Previous part First part

Regulus raised himself onto his tiptoes and lifted his chin. His lips were so close to James’s, he could almost feel them. And then James collapsed on the floor. 

“Fuck, James! Are you alright?!” Regulus dropped to the ground to check on him. James shook his head and blinked rapidly. 

“Yeah, sorry. Forgot to breathe.” He gasped as his lungs refilled with the air they’d been missing. Regulus looked at him disbelievingly. 

“You forgot to breathe? How do you forget to breathe?” James felt the colour flooding his face. He avoided Regulus’s eyes as he mumbled. 

“You were really close.” He looked up at Regulus from under his eyelashes to gauge his reaction. James was surprised to find Regulus shaking. Shaking with laughter. 

James pulled a face at him and tried to get back on his feet, but somehow his towel got caught under his knee and while James rose from the floor, his towel did not. Regulus squeaked, stared at him for a second and then spun around. James quickly bent and grabbed up his towel. But the moment, whatever it had been, was over. 

“I’ll see you later. Do you maybe want to meet here next week? I mean not in this room here, but in the other room here.” Regulus was babbling and didn’t seem able to stop, so James cut in. 

“Yeah, sounds good. Shall we say Wednesday after dinner? We can go over the next part of the process after you’ve had that mandrake leaf in your mouth.” He said kindly. 

“Great, yeah, perfect. Erm, I’m gonna go. Thanks for the quidditch earlier.” Regulus sped out of the room. James had never heard him ramble on in that ineloquent way before. He put it out of his mind and changed into his clean clothes. His quidditch things he noticed had disappeared. He hoped they’d been sent for washing.

James was feeling better than he had been, but now his mind was full of what had been about to happen before he passed out like a total idiot. How could he forget to breathe? But Regulus had been so different in those few minutes. Even earlier on the quidditch pitch he’d been almost pleasant. All James had ever known about him was he was Sirius’s little brother, and he was destined to be a death eater. But why would he knowingly choose to hang out with someone whose family was very vocal about their support for Dumbledore? Did he stand a chance to help Regulus reform? Did Regulus want to be on Voldemort's side or was it his parents's influence? James was determined to figure him out. Especially as they would be spending quite a bit of time together going through the animagus procedure.  

Next part

[nombitenary]

Another doodle based on the rp with @squirdbog ! Chris decided to change around his guts and Mar's getting a little lost in there beneath orange soda and the sludge of his previous little snacks.

[badpoliticaltakes]

[whatevergreen]

If only more did.

[wowwforever]

new bois

[gingerly-writing]

Prompt #3461

"Oh, something goes missing and you immediately blame the ex-thief? Real classy. Definitely makes me want to keep busting my ass to reform.”

[queerism1969]

[generalelectionmusings]