(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.
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.