#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.

[ironmyrmidon]

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

[rotationalsymmetry]

I haven’t read Omelas in a couple decades and this is going off of pure memory, which could be incorrect. But the thing about Those Who Walk Away From Omelas, is (like the trolley problem) you’re presumed to not be the one who’s suffering.

Tell the same story from the perspective of the kid who’s been locked in a closet your entire life so that other people can be happy. Tell me you don’t want to burn the entire world down.

Or imagine this. You live somewhere far away from Omelas. You’ve heard of it, but you’ve never been there. You meet someone. You gradually get to know them. They’re kinda weird, but they’re your kind of person. You find yourself falling for them. They never, ever talk about their past. You’re concerned, but you want to respect their privacy.

Time passes, your special person is getting some of their rougher edges smoothed off, they trust a little more easily, they freak out at small things a little bit less often. And one night, in the hushed darkness where nothing is entirely real, they tell you.

Does it still look like a moral dilemma now? (And do you have any sympathy whatsoever for someone who merely walked away?)

I’ve read some other of Le Guin’s work more recently. And you know what? I don’t think it’s supposed to be a moral dilemma. (Again, I haven’t read the story in ages, could be very wrong.) I think it’s supposed to be, “even in the best case scenario, even if the world created by deliberately knowingly causing someone intense suffering (torture, incarceration, immigrant “detention centers”) was the best possible world for everyone else, surely even then knowingly causing a person that much suffering is morally unacceptable. So in our world, which is not Omelas and we make people suffer like that for much less benefit, it definitely can’t be morally acceptable. Right?”

Anyways, open borders/abolish ICE, abolish the police, abolish prisons (no prisons no death penalty no retributive justice of any sort no holding people against their will on grounds of them being a danger to themselves or others), no torture, no causing people suffering on purpose for any reason ever.

[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

[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)

[amethyst-wind-uk]

"...SON OF A BITCH!"

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

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

A worthy successor to Those Who Walk Away from Omelas.

A girl stands alone in a field. The weight of the world is placed on her shoulders.

A farmer walks past. “please. help.” The girl says.

The farmer responds. “can’t you see I’m hauling this load of hay? How selfish must you be, asking me to set aside my own burden to help you”.

The farmer leaves.

A girl stands alone in a field. The weight of the world is placed on her shoulders.

A noblewoman walks past. “please. help.” The girl says.

The noblewoman responds. “Help you? You seem to be managing well on your own. How lazy must you be, asking for me to help a burden you can very well carry”.

The noblewoman leaves.

A girl stands alone in a field. The weight of the world is placed on her shoulders.

A knight walks past. “please. help.” The girl says.

The knight responds. “Whoever would I help you? Every man is given a burden to carry. How weak must you be, asking your burden be relieved”.

The knight leaves.

A girl stands alone in a field. Tears flow down her face. Her back is breaking. Her arms are so weak. She hasn’t felt her legs in days. The weight of the world is still on her shoulders. She lets it go. She is crushed.

News of the girl’s death reaches the capital.

“What a shame” said the farmer. “if only I could have helped”.

“What a shame” said the noblewoman. “if only I could have helped”.

“What a shame” said the knight. “if only I could have helped”.

A great memorial is erected in the capital, honoring the girl who gave so much.

“So selfless” said the farmer.

“So driven” said the noblewoman.

“So strong” said the knight.

“If I had met the girl” says the farmer, “I would’ve taken the weight from her. It would be easy for me to stow it in my cart”.

“If I had met the girl” says the noblewoman, “I would’ve taken the weight from her. I carry so little, it’s the least I could do”.

“If I had met the girl” says the knight, “I would’ve taken the weight from her. I am strong and noble, I could surely carry such a burden more readily than she”.

The girl is still dead.

[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?

[a-queer-little-wombat]

ICON.

She is one of the authors who has been with me my whole life, from the spider whose webs were art, to the wizard who lived by his true name, to the trees that grow then shrink, sometimes both at once, to "... what can we do but reach our hand out in the dark?", to the whisper networks of trees, to her own story of abortion, to the dispossessed, to the lathe of heaven ... to so many words and worlds she shared with us all.

She was one of the best, and I have never yet heard of any thing she said or wrote or did that has diminished her in my eyes, and we are the lesser for losing her.

I’ve seen the Ursula K LeGuin quote about capitalism going around, but to really appreciate it you have to know the context.

The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. All is well.

Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead in the eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”

She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable”. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K LeGuin got up in front of an audience of some of the most powerful people in publishing, was expected to give a trite and politically safe argument about literature, and instead told them directly “Your empire will fall. And I will help it along.”

[illuminatedferret]

y'ever think about hong-er as a human sacrifice? forced to absorb god knows how much misfortune on the day of his birth, shunned and scorned for his bad luck and yet by virtue of him having it, countless people across the mortal realm are spared from suffering it themselves.

yet, do they need to be? whose lives are made better by the absence of a little misfortune? is the suffering of one little boy worth the comfort of a thousand?

[justoceanmyth]

Okay but I think the Evil Eye yokai actually deserves the biggest redemption arc in the world. I don't care if that's not how it works. Yeah he's a feral spirit who drives people to kill themselves and others but he's so fixable. He's like the Omelas child and he deserves the world.

[god-mouths]

About The Kid In The Omelas Hole

You can also get this one with overly pretentious added commentary in the form of a three page essay here

[a-thing-for-pixels]

I am thankful for publishing actions like this because the non- ebook would cost me like €600 or so.

I came here because I started to read on Critic AI, namely this and a 3rd level link or so mentioned the Omelas story as a cautionary tale in terms of AI.

Ursla K. Le Guinn: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas + The Day Before the Revolution

I made this zine in honor of Le Guinn’s passing back in January and finally got around to updating it. It contains two related short stories. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” has inspired so many to pursue other worlds that aren’t founded upon and structured around suffering. It leaves us to meditate upon the gesture of desertion as a response to an intolerable world. “The Day Before the Revolution,” a Prologue to Le Guinn’s famous The Dispossessed, sketches a brief image of a revolutionary life at its end.

For e-reading

For printing

[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.

[kettricken]

I love the outsider and I think he’s misunderstood by a lot of fans

[diamondnokouzai]

pixar adaptation of those who walk away from omelas