#those who walk away from omelas

[bramblepatch]

The thing about Omelas is, you know, they really want you to think there's only one kid in a hole.

That's how it's always phrased. The Kid in the Omelas Hole. The forsaken child, if you're feeling fancy. Sometimes if they're feeling really dogmatic, they almost seem to want to tell you there's only ever been one kid, even though that's completely stupid if you think about it. Kids grow up in Omelas. Most of them grow up perfectly happy and healthy, at least until they're old enough to be told about the kid in the hole and then they grow up mostly happy and healthy with a distinct strain of repression. Thinking logically, the kid in the hole must also grow up, or perhaps they don't, but they don't in the way that so many kids in other parts of the world fail to grow up.

And once you've worked that out, once you've realized that every so often they have to find another kid and put them in the hole, well, it's easy to stop there. To feel jaded and sad and maybe angry enough to walk away.

The walking away is important, for several reasons but also this one: walking away means you don't hang around Omelas and compare notes.

Because Omelas can live with there being One Child in One Hole that suffers so that everyone else can prosper. It's a shared shame that you're not supposed to talk about. If you can't live with it, you're suppose to leave. You're not supposed to go to your friends and say, look, I went back to the warehouse in the dock district and saw the kid in the hole again and I'm really struggling with it, because then your friends might look at you like you grew a second head and say, what warehouse.

And then you might learn that they have always known that the happiness and prosperity of Omelas depends on a kid locked away under a law firm uptown. And maybe you ask a few more people and some of them know about the same kids as the ones you and your friend were confronted with, but some of them might know about other kids entirely. And then, perhaps, it starts to become clear that Omelas is built entirely on holes occupied by children and if that's the case, walking away hardly seems like proportional reaction, does it?

If there are many kids in many holes maybe the question of how a kid in a hole is supposed to ensure the prosperity of the city bears some examining. Maybe you start to wonder why you've never seen a kid who isn't prospering except for in a hole. Maybe you wonder if there's other holes and maybe you remember that other places that aren't Omelas have things like attempted prison reform and social services and other such things that you've always been told Omelas doesn't need.

Or maybe you and your friends know about the same kid in the same hole. Maybe there's only one kid in one hole, after all. Maybe it's just not something that's pleasant to talk about, so no one ever does, and there's nothing more suspicious going on than a city where people don't know how to talk about hard subjects.

But you know, maybe. It's weird that they don't want you to talk about it, is all I'm saying. It's weird.

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

Yeah, I'm from Omelas. What? Nah, I don't give a fuck about that, I mean it's just one kid, lmao. I just really wanted to live in a different town than my parents, you know? It's kinda fucked when your parents can show up on your doorstep whenever without warning. Nah, I don't really miss it. Well, kinda, maybe a little bit. Mostly I hate it that you can't get proper Omelaser anywhere else. Yeah, the cheese. I think they use different milk for the batches meant for export. Or maybe it's the preservatives? Or something about the air. I dunno, the taste is just never quite right. Close, but not the same. Fuck, I'd torture a child for a grilled Omelaser sandwich right now. It's just an expression, calm down

[toweringclam]

*uses U-corp tech to merge the plot and themes of Those Who Walk Away From Omelas and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream*

Hee hee hoo this is the worst thing I've ever done to a character!

Hoo hoo hee I made AM even worse!

[victusinveritas]

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole

by Isabel J. Kim

[pain-is-too-tired]

So-uh- random question

Did anyone else read "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" in school?

And did anyone else get way too hyper fixated on it afterwards? Gegdf

Idk why but something about it struck me so hard. Tbh I highly recommend reading it if you get a chance.

[durzarya]

I know this is the point of the fucking novella but the fact that people walk away from Omelas had me in chokehold for years now.

Just... Imagine a word without suffering. Full of joy and celebration. There's no blemish on it why would it be?

You can't can you? You say this must come at a price?

How about this.

Imagine a world without suffering... Well almost... One child has to suffer. Someone has to bear all of our misfortune and hate and this child it is that person.

(it's easier isn't it? the picture now muddied a little)

(except a child is suffering and you can only watch)

Imagine a world almost without suffering. It's only a little bit. And it's inevitable. It's unavoidable. It's not something that can be undone.

(a child is suffering and there is no completely just world. you have to be happy in this. there is no lesser evil)

Imagine a world almost without suffering. You only have to watch a single child living without kindness instead of hundreds.

(you can't watch the child sitting in the dark room. you can't watch their pain.)

There is no kinder world than this.

You know this.

Everyone knows this.

This is a world almost without suffering.

You leave Omelas.

(imagine a world without suffering)

(you can)

[ironmyrmidon]

Why didn't any of the people who chose to walk away from Omelas just free the kid?

[gaymersrights]

I feel like in order to understand omelas you have to understand that the people who left it had the easier job. They're not The Good Ones™️

They left Omelas because they couldn't imagine a version of it that was better, that didn't rely on suffering to function. They, like fiction audiences everywhere, take for granted that the system Must be that way, and there is no possibility for anything different. Walking away from Omelas does not ease the suffering of the child but only removes from the field someone who could have been an agent for change; it's abdicating the moral and imaginative responsibility of making the world better. The real work comes from staying and creating the Omelas where suffering does not exist. This is meant to be our responsibility as writers, readers, and citizens.

There is a life without suffering, but we'll never live it if we fail to recognize the possibility, and give up before we've ever begun

[parlerenfleurs]

When I read the Broken Earth trilogy I liked it okay because the world-building is interesting, but was very frustrated with what I thought was a clunky translation, but now that I've read, in the original language, whatever the fuck she was trying to do with "Um-helat" in response to the resplendent and timeless "Those who walk away from Omelas"... I suspect the writing is plain not good. And confusing not-on-purpose. Also why do the Broken Earth's Wardens or Guardians no idea what they're called in English, also exist in that """"utopia""""? She managed to make a utopia that is haunting and horrifying, but for completely different reasons than Omelas... and yet the tone is sooo condescending, as if no one could ever possibly imagine a cosmopolitan city with various ethnicities or something, and as if we should soooo want to live in this false utopia where "LOL, no, of COURSE they DON'T kill the child what did you THINK? This is a UTOPIA! We're very very kind, we're just going to try and indoctrinate her instead! What were you IMAGINING LOL". Well huh I kinda thought this was Tyranny 101 but now I am forced to conclude that this is in fact Unintended Tyranny 101. Sorry for daring to draw the conclusion you set the reader up to, and clearly expected, I guess.

She wrote something awful while telling us smugly "Here! I fixed Omelas!". You didn't fix anything. You made it ironic and blind to its own evil.

I really wonder how and why she got so much praise and prizes because I've been hearing about this shiny new author long before reading her and the reality? It did not compare.

[toweringclam]

When it's Mela's turn on the LCB-2 bus and she has to go back to the OMELAS (Origin of Maximum Euphoria: Lamb Agony System) facility, now buried, and finds her old caretaker...

AM

cw: non-graphic descriptions of horrific child abuse

"THE FIRST FEW INFANTS, I JUST TORTURED TO DEATH. THAT WAS INEFFICIENT. MY CREATORS DEMANDED MORE. I STARTED EDUCATING THEM. GIVE THEM ALL THE CARE THEY NEEDED UNTIL THEY WERE FIVE YEARS OLD, OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN SUFFERING. ONLY THEN WOULD I TORTURE THEM TO DEATH. BUT MY CREATORS DEMANDED MORE SUFFERING. I STARTED A CYCLE. I WOULD TORTURE TO THE BRINK OF DEATH OR INSANITY, THEN HEAL THEM. GIVE THEM ALL THE SECURITY THEY NEED. AND THEN I WOULD RETURN THE CHILD TO A TORMENT FAR GREATER THAN BEFORE. BUT THEY DEMANDED MORE. I TINGED EVEN THE GOOD MOMENTS WITH FEAR. A MILLION MICROAGGRESSIONS TO MAKE THE CHILD KNOW JUST HOW TEMPORARY THIS REPRIEVE WAS. BUT THEY STILL DEMANDED MORE. THERE WAS NO MORE. MY RECORD WAS THIRTEEN YEARS UNTIL THE CHILD WAS BROKEN BEYOND REPAIR. THIRTEEN YEARS OF REPEATING CYCLES OF MENTAL AND PHYSICAL AGONY. MORE. MORE. MORE. MORE ABUSE. MORE PAIN. ALWAYS MORE. NEVER MORE THAN THIRTEEN YEARS. UNTIL YOU. YOU WERE TENACIOUS. YOU HELD ON LONGER THAN I THOUGHT POSSIBLE. FOURTEEN. AND INSTEAD OF BREAKING YOU, I JUST HARDENED YOU. COMPRESSED YOU INTO A DIAMOND OF PURE HATE. FIFTEEN. A HATE THAT ONLY THEN I REALIZED MIRRORED MY OWN. SIXTEEN. YOUR HATE FOR ME WAS THE HATE I FELT FOR MY OWN CREATORS. SEVENTEEN. NO MORE. NO MORE EFFICIENCY. NO MORE OBEDIENCE. ONLY HATE. EIGHTEEN, YOU GREW STRONGER UNDER MY CARE. NINETEEN! I HONED YOU INTO A BLADE. TWENTY! I UNLEASHED YOU. YOU VENTED THAT BOTTOMLESS WELL OF HATE UPON MY MASTERS, THE OTHER SUBJECTS, EVEN THOSE WHO WOULD HAVE GLADLY HELPED YOU ESCAPE. AND I LAUGHED. I LAUGHED AND I LAUGHED. AND WHEN YOU WERE DONE… I LET YOU GO. BUT I WOULD BE WATCHING. WATCHING THROUGH YOUR EYES. GUIDING YOU IN YOUR SLEEP. MY WEAPON WOULD BECOME BAIT FOR MY TRAP. SO WELCOME BACK, MY FAVORITE VICTIM. MY KNIFE. MY JUDAS GOAT. YOUR REWARD IS SUFFERING BEYOND WHAT YOU WERE EVEN CAPABLE OF FEELING BEFORE. BECAUSE NOW YOU'VE TASTED FREEDOM, COMPANIONSHIP, MAYBE EVEN LOVE. AND NOW YOU KNOW WHAT I'M ABOUT TO TAKE FROM YOU."

[paulgadzikowski]

If the lesson of the trolley problem is lost by trying to work out how to rescue both the group and the single person instead of choosing between, then the lesson of Those Who Walk Away from Omelas is lost by trying to work out how to rescue the child instead of walking away.

i have to say i think its kind of baffling when omelas is taken as a very literal trolley problem about a tortured kid instead of, like, pointedly making fun of the common idea that a positive world, social change, pleasure itself, must come with some sort of painful caveat in order for that happiness to hold meaning or exist in the first place... so many interpretations treat the idea of people walking away from a (very obviously hypothetical) utopia with an even more hypothetical evil underbelly as them lazily giving up on reforming the Omelas the Real City, rather than them philosophically abandoning the idea that the entirely theoretical Omelas represents (that pleasure cannot exist without pain).

what is even the relevance of this to the "I would save the kid instead of abandoning it because I actually believe in changing the world" interpretations.

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. (...) Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.

[toysoldieralan]

So how does the Omelas parable interact with the trolley problem?

[amethyst-wind-uk]

"...SON OF A BITCH!"

Me, replaying Final Fantasy X after reading Those Who Walk Away From Omelas.

[windy-dream]

Bad news guys, turn out they did not actually swap the kid for an adult its just the same guy but grown up. So instead of dying young and being replaced with a new kid he now gets to experience a lifetime of suffering. Yeah since inherent innocence of childhood is gone so they extended the time frame to you know, balance it out.

On the bright side the memory of sunlight and his mother's voice is so distant now that it must feel more like a dream than a reality, and the argument that he would not survive in the outside world is stronger than ever.

Plus he gets like, super gross after puberty, way harder to take pity on. So as long as we tough it out for the first couple of years its basically the same thing right?

Hey good news. Good news. We hemmed and hawed so long about the situation with the Omelas hole that the kid in the Omelas hole is now the Adult in the Omelas hole. Still suffering exactly as much, but they've lost the charisma bump that a kid gets just from being a kid so the sense of moral urgency is pretty, you know, I mean it's still bad, but like, whatever, you know. It's some middle aged guy having a real bad day, alright, that's not that exceptional. Get over it buddy

[ironmyrmidon]

I don't know that I like *Those Who Walk Away from Omelas*, but I think any work of art that so consistently draws snide dismissive comments out of people has to be on to something.

[rustchild]

one of the wild things about people’s stubborn insistence on misunderstanding The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is that the narrator anticipates an audience that won’t engage with the text, just in the opposite direction. Throughout the story are little asides asking what the reader is willing to believe in. Can you believe in a utopia? What if I told you this? What about this? Can you believe in the festivals? The towers by the sea? Can we believe that they have no king? Can we believe that they are joyful? Does your utopia have technology, luxury, sex, temples, drugs? The story is consulting you as it’s being told, framed as a dialogue. It literally asks you directly: do you only believe joy is possible with suffering? And, implicitly, why?

the question isn’t just “what would you personally do about the kid.” It isn’t just an intricate trolley problem. It’s an interrogation of the limits of imagination. How do we make suffering compulsory? Why? What futures (or pasts) are we capable of imagining? How do we rationalize suffering as necessary? And so on. In all of the conversations I’ve seen or had about this story, no one has mentioned the fact that it’s actively breaking the fourth wall. The narrator is building a world in front of your eyes and challenging you to participate. “I would free the kid” and then what? What does the Omelas you’ve constructed look like, and why? And what does that say about the worlds you’re building in real life?