(very Chapochat voice) "have yall read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas? Le Guin is sooo woke"
I have not seen a single person stop to think about these workers all year long! This is particularly hilarious considering nuclear power is literally the only argument that lets these worthless class traitor redditors say "we can fight global warming without stopping production!!! I need to play my Nintendo games!!!" There is no material difference between this website and the Elon Musk death cult, the only thing you are fighting is the working class.
Isn’t part of the moral that you would put a definite and very visible face to the suffering a system is causing? Yeah fewer would be suffering than modern capitalist society but the idea of showing someone that, in no uncertain terms, their existence is directly responsible for the suffering of this one child is interesting. It takes away the abstraction and scale that dulls the perception of injustice and cruelty, and I feel people are more likely to self-criticize if they are confronted with both a human face and the irrefutable accusation that they are causing its suffering.
Or something like that, I dunno
That's not the point. The point is that everyone in that society has had a face put on the suffering, that they are aware, and still choose to stay. Because the cost of leaving is so high, they find a way to justify it to themselves.
People focus on the ones that walk away because that's the title, but the actual point is most people don't walk away, and that only a few who for whatever reason cannot bring themselves to justify suffering leave.
That's why the story is so highly relevant. If you take the child as the Global South, whose suffering and exploitation enables the lifestyle of the first world (as many here are wont to do), you should consider what it would actually mean to completely disavow and not partake in that suffering. If you're posting on this website, you're not the ones who walk away, you're one of the ones that stays in Omelas.
Edit: I didn't mean to imply in my earlier comment that the allegory was the entirety of the story, only one aspect of it. It is "Part of" the message, where the conflict of abandoning the practical utopia, and the cost of such an action, are central. Resolving the "utility" in abandoning such a reprehensible cycle rather than acting to end it is what I'm trying to puzzle through, within the lens of the story/author anyway.
My takeaway was that the story serves to “simplify” the effects of an exploitative system down to the suffering of one child. From the meta-narrative standpoint, the story is putting a more recognizable human face, a more relatable scale on the exploitation. If I’m not way off base here, it serves as a direct analogy to the wide-scale suffering caused by the exploitative capital system for the purpose of this thought experiment, this allegory. Who walks away from the injustice? What do they have to face to reject that system?
I don’t think I’m articulating it very well but that’s kind of my point - the analogy is a distilled version of the conflicts we experience here. No doubt most of us are still living in Omelas, decrying the injustices heaped upon the unfortunate child but unwilling (not knowing what it means to?) to leave. That the situation is simplified from a global structure used to perpetuate exploitation (of the global south, or otherwise) to the suffering of a single child is to make an immediate and visceral analogy.
I have no idea if someone, unaware of this history of exploitation and imperialism, would come to such a conclusion without outside context, but I think my analysis is fair. As for “walking away from Omelas” in today’s society, I’m unsure what exactly that looks like in a way that will help to end the suffering of the metaphorical child. Is “walking away” as an individual more justifiable? Where does one go? Is there something to be done about the system of suffering?
I mean, seeing videos of sweatshop workers and animals being slaughtered and people's homes burnt to the ground due to the climate change that my car usage contributes to are all faces of suffering, no? Except I have no way of just walking away from it, besides opting myself out permanently
Yea I agree, the analogy only really works if you are ignorant of the current suffering (which to be fair is the majority of people). If you already know you benefit from a system that sucks in so many terrible ways but have no obviously alternative to remove yourself from it then it really doesn't have much of the intended impact.
Not at all. Everyone in Omelas is aware of the child. The point is that most people find a way to reconcile with that fact because they don't want to pay the price that it would cost to reckon with it. That's why only a few people ever walk away from Omelas. Sounds about right to me.
Yes in the story they are aware, I meant that in real life most are not very aware, the majority I would say are not very aware, even if on some level they understand that what they have is built on systems that exploit people few actually have detailed ideas of that. As very online leftist that doesn't apply though, we have likely all seen many examples of the systems brutality.
The story makes it's point well enough but offers no solution, for people that already understand their complicity well enough that makes it a little meaningless. Walking away is a terrible solution, just removing your personal input is classic lib personal responsibility bs. You could go off and live in a cave in real life but that wont solve anything, it wont stop the suffering. Only by completely remaking our various systems can that be achieved, and that can only be done by staying and fighting.
Nicely put
You're not wrong. I don't think most users of this site would have some revelation thanks to the story, it seems aimed more at the vast majority of people in the imperial core who are blissfully ignorant (intentionally or not) of their and their nation's impact on the world.
That's always been my takeaway.