Omelas

[cjsmith]

I was recently reminded again (thank you, minoanmiss!) of the story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

I love that story.

It's not a comfortable story, not exactly a delight to read*, but it speaks powerfully. LeGuin was a clear thinker and very philosophical. (I own a book of her essays, written later in life, and I have that illusion that readers get, that I know her a little bit through her writings. She's on the short list of people I really wish I could have had dinner with in my lifetime.)

Anyway, the reminder made me think of how strongly that story has affected how I think about people.

Omelas poses a question that, to me, has become one of the things I sort of form guesses about as I get to know people. Would this person ever walk away from Omelas? I don't always have an answer, but if I get to know the person for a while, I form a guess.

I know, love, and trust some people who wouldn't. I treasure those who I think would, and I trust them in a much deeper way.

________________________________________
* see also the difference between enjoying a book and being glad you read it

Comments

[noelfigart]

I'd never read that story before.

I read it drinking a cup of coffee and eating a bite of Lindt chocolate.

I suppose... I suppose I haven't walked away yet, have I?

[cjsmith]

Not 100%, and neither have I. In the real world, it's not 100% or 0%; the difficulty of achieving 100% is immense. "There is no ethical" etc.

Still, I do find that I can run the thought-experiment on "what if" I were dropped in actual Omelas, or "what if" someone else were, and I have guesses. My job is to remember they are just guesses while also becoming aware of my mental model of things.

[noelfigart]

I would like to think I would.

I am not sure how much genuine courage I show in RL.

[cjsmith]

Same. I do know that I'd at least consider it.

[siliconshaman]

I'd walk... after burning it down.

I'm still in the planning stages of my walk. I'm not leaving blindly or ill-prepared.

[cjsmith]

I salute you. Leaving blindly or ill-prepared helps no one, and harms no one but you (and possibly your loved ones).

There are things it has cost me to walk away from. Obviously none hold a candle to actual Omelas. Sadly, I can't burn them down, much as I'd like to.

[lcohen]

i never had dinner with her but i did get to meet her at one wiscon, and attended several of her panels, because of course i did. she is fiercely smart.

i know i have read that story but i don't remember it so i need to revisit it, but not right this second.

[cjsmith]

Oh that is wonderful! I know her only through her writing, and what I know is absolutely superb. What a fine human being.

[hitchhiker]

oh nice, i wish i had gotten to attend a panel of hers! bet it was an amazing experience.

[amaebi]

I think it's a valuable story, but also sort of a trolley problem.

[cjsmith]

Oh interesting! I saw it as an illustration of people being willing to give up an unspecified amount of their own personal comfort in order to stop benefiting from harm caused to another.

[amaebi]

I think it is such a metaphor. I also think that, in its construction, it's kind of a Torquemada product.

Here are things in the parable that I think are pretty well usurious-by-construction:
(1) there is an away, though we don't know anything about it
(2) we are told of the gracious productivity, egalitarianism, and multifarious resourcings and opportunities of Omelas, aside from that basement, and aside from that basement they're universal
(3) while the cruelty of the basement is pervasive-- it mystically enables everything somehow-- its physical cost is numerically very much confined, though its moral cost is largely the point of the fable
(4) reform is apparently not on the table

I think that LeGuin is making some valuable moral poetry here, but I think that often readings of it are typically less valuable, and so very much in the subjunctive. I think that LeGuin probably meant us to say to ourselves-- but I live in such a less imperfect world where the people and environments crucified are so much wider, and do I really want to maintain the polite convention that we are fair and free? I don't know that it's usually read that way....

[cjsmith]

I don't understand the phrase "Torquemada product" or this usage of "usurious".

I agree with your statements 1 through 3, although I read 4 as more open ended -- does an individual who visits the child have the ability to burst through the magic, perhaps by saying one nice word to the child in order to destroy the whole setup?

I'm not sure that I parse the rest of your message. (I regard this as an issue on my end; I sometimes don't parse well.) Are you okay with trying again?

[zipperbear]

Ooh, I hadn't realized the possibility of saying a nice word, and I wonder if that can be lumped into the "burn it down" options.

In the real world, some people do suffer, but it's possible to live a happy and productive life without trying to add to anyone's suffering.

I was just reading up on Kevin Paffrath (the only Democrat with any traction in the recall election), and his success with real estate get-rich-quick methods, with the moral implications of that. It's possible to take damaged or dilapidated houses, fix them up, and sell them for a profit, because most people don't have the time or skill to do that, so the work is valuable. On the other hand, people owning or living in houses that are becoming dilapidated seem particularly vulnerable to exploitation -- these schemes seem to take advantage of recovering the sunk costs that others have invested and lost. What would it take for me to be comfortable flipping houses? Houses sold for back taxes or defaulted mortgages seem to be exploiting anonymous poor people (so I don't know who they are, but I know they existed). Houses sold by family heirs seem OK, as do homes sold by people upgrading or downsizing as their needs change, but those houses are probably in better condition, and closer to market price, without so much exploitable depressed equity, since those sales are more voluntary. I guess fire or flood damage (hopefully after an insurance payout) could also put buildings on the market, but it all seems like exploiting people in distress.

[cjsmith]

I've often wondered what (my mental model of) The Orange Guy would do when he visited the child. Other than enjoy it. Would he say one nice word just to make sure the rest of Omelas gets bumped off the pinnacle, and then sit there and cackle at the child's still-pretty-miserable state? (Probably. My mental model of that person is rather ugly.)

I agree that those people are vulnerable to exploitation. This question touches on what should be possible or ethical for people who have few good options. If they believe selling their home is their best choice and someone buys it, is that worse for those people than saying that no one should buy and thereby taking away their best option? I wish I had better answers.

[amaebi]

I want to start out by saying that I'm not critiquing your reading or any readings of the story. I'm just maundering on about how I've come to view it.

By a Torquemada product, I mean "something constructed to create pain." The options given by the story are complaisance about the mystically effective torture, and the purity of walking away from widespread glory resting on limited torment. (You can of course construct other options by fanficcing the story, in which case you're a deus ex machina dueling deus in machina LeGuin, I suppose.) I don't see a satisfying solution there, in the story.

Our societies can reasonably be characterized as limited glory resting very non-mystically indeed on widespread torment.

As a metaphor for our society, it points out important things that we have no ritual for exposing, but which are conceptually set aside all the time when they aren't brushed off as some sort of necessity. In this light, I think the question is not so much "what would you do?" as "What are you doing?"

Reading in a "What would you do?" way reminds me of the typical use of the story set called the trolley problem as an apparatus for defining ethics. I am considerably influence by "The Good Place," in which it is concluded after a series of visceral examinations of the problem that the ethical fault is in setting the situation. I don't think that LeGuin intended any such thing, mind you. But I myself want to read the story as an indictment of a society like ours (but better) and of the inevitable inadequacy of my efforts to spread the glory and reduce the pain.

So that's what I was saying badly. :D Including, I think, a bad use of the term "usurious."

[cjsmith]

If you mean that the story was constructed to cause the reader some cognitive discomfort, I wouldn't be entirely shocked if LeGuin would have agreed with you and said she intended it. (Pain, I'm not sure she quite would have intended.) I find myself okay with having undergone that level of discomfort as the reader.

...I think the question is not so much "what would you do?" as "What are you doing?"

Agreed. To me, one thing making the story valuable is the extremes it depicts. I see the situation, I recognize that the ones who walk away are giving something up (perhaps with a very real sense of loss? or perhaps with disgust? the author doesn't say), and I am led to ask myself what I am willing to give up, and when, and why. Also important is what I am not willing to give up and why.

Reading in a "What would you do?" way reminds me of the typical use of the story set called the trolley problem as an apparatus for defining ethics. I am considerably influence by "The Good Place," in which it is concluded after a series of visceral examinations of the problem that the ethical fault is in setting the situation.

I haven't seen (? read?) "The Good Place", but I enjoy reading that conclusion. I'm reminded of a cartoon I cannot now find, which had some nonhuman (the trolley? an alien?) saying "We thought you people enjoyed doing this sort of thing, you talk about it so much."

But I myself want to read the story as an indictment of a society like ours (but better) and of the inevitable inadequacy of my efforts to spread the glory and reduce the pain.

Same. And, because I'm just not a very advanced soul, I guess, I also kind of want to read it as an indictment of people who don't care to lift a finger to change anything or help anyone.

[amaebi]

You and I, it turns out, are largely at one.

I definitely don't mind experiencing pain in taking savage information seriously. And what's worse, I tend to want to share the opportunity. :D

I think that part of what LeGuin is doing is saying, "So how much benefit-to-cost makes this acceptable?" I can see your use of the story as a tool for self-examination, which I hadn't thought of in that way, so thank you!

I haven't (I think) seen the cartoon you cite, but I love it. :D Thank you!

I think you'd probably love watching the series "The Good Place," which is one of my favorite series and works of art. Fantasy exploration of ethics in a serious and (weirdly) scholarly way.

Feeling you about relishing it as an indictment. Sort of, anyway. You know, I had long felt certain that Socrates* was incorrect in thinking that Of Course if people knew better we'd do better. I thought, "Oh, if people would just consider, they'd be happier!" And I don't think that's wrong, but I think that people are staggeringly unwilling to work through the necessary investment in honesty and considering the complexities of network efforts..

This has been an increasing horror during the Trump years. Which unfortunately are still in progress.

My TL;DR: No. There are no simple answers. How I wish people could and would accept complex and somewhat unsatisfying answers.

* Theatrically simple, conversation-rigging Socrates

[cjsmith]

I will admit to a desire to share the opportunity, as well, especially (and quite strongly!) when I think it might make a difference in how someone thinks or acts in the future. Some savageries do not prosper when brought to visibility.

I so adored that cartoon! Now I really wish I could find it again! I shall keep an eye out for it.

Thank you for the recommendation for "The Good Place". I will check it out! ...This is a very unusual thing for me to say. I don't watch much watchable stuff; I got tired of the misogyny and other asshattery* in what passes for entertainment in like 1979 and will only venture back by special recommendation since. A recommendation from a person who thinks about ethics is worth checking out.

I suspect I agree with you about (simplified) Socrates. The people who do better, in my experience, are indeed people who consider; but the people who are happy are overwhelmingly the people who do not consider, who go out of their way to not consider, and who do better if and only if they are faced with peer pressure. Knowledge isn't enough for doing better, because doing better comes at a personal cost and most don't feel like it. Honesty is an enormous investment, overwhelming for some (most), and... yes. Horror. Ongoing.

* unexamined, tacitly accepted and condoned, and thereby promulgated

[amaebi]

About The Good Place:
When I heard Kristin Bell explaining the premise in an interview near the show's beginning, it sounded hateful to me. I didn't watch until just before the last season, and I would suggest not giving up in disgust (if you were inclined that way) until you've reached the turnaround clarification near the end of the first season.

About ignorance and bliss:
I've often heard people say that people who don't/won't know are happier than those who know about the violences and weaknesses of the world, its people, and themselves. Maybe that's true-- I don't think it's simple to know the state of another's happiness. But for what it's worth, people who choose to remain unknowing or uncaring seem to put a good deal of work into maintaining that state, and it doesn't seem to agree with their tempers. Many-- not all-- of them tend to strike me as touchy and anxious. And they all seem to limit what they make contact with very sharply. Now, some seem to do the limitation on a pretext of purity or quality, and they don't seem so directly distressed. But they don't strike me as happy, either. More as smug or disdainful, not states I associate with joy....

[cjsmith]

Re The Good Place: good to know, thanks!

I see multiple patterns of unknowing. One does seem to match what you're describing. Another simply refutes any reports of a problem by discrediting the reporter: that person is just trying to find something to whine about, this person over here really ought to go to therapy, if it were that bad someone would have done something, it's all in your head dear, and my personal favorite, "you're making yourself sad by thinking about that". Those folks don't seem touchy or anxious.

Ah well. Humans. I shall never understand humans. I can only try to understand myself a tiny bit better.

[amaebi]

I definitely hear lots of bland turnings-away. I'm probably more persistent in reply, though, because conversation almost immediately gets irritable and defensive on their side, from there.... And in general they're pretty cranky when not ceded conversational control.

Yeah. Humans.

I should say, though, maybe we know very different sets of people.

[cjsmith]

Ah, yes, when I'm persistent I sometimes get a cranky response. It must be terrible, the cognitive dissonance when someone who looks like me doesn't immediately admit I must be mistaken.

[amaebi]

People get irritated with me really frequently and fast, I suppose because it's so self-evidently important that I be subjugated.

[dantesspirit]

I'd like to think I'd walk away, I'd also like to think I'd stay and try to change things from the inside, but truthfully, I don't think any of us really know exactly what we'd do until we were actually faced with that situation.

I mean, there are real life situations I *have* walked away from. So, maybe I would walk away.

[cjsmith]

Agree, I don't know what I myself would do either until actually faced with it. (I too have real-life situations I've walked away from, at personal cost, to stop benefiting from harms done to others.)