Sunday, 18 September 2011
Omelas
If I was a citizen of Omelas, I would have left. A utopia for all or a utopia for none. A society based on the DIRECT misery of others is not a society that I can be part of. Our current society that takes advantage of cheap labour, sometimes involving children, is INDIRECT. It is indirect due to it taking place in another country half a world away. Although there is no difference in the misery, the child in Omelas is easily accessible. If you wanted to see it, you could. This is not as easy as in our current society. Due to the fact that we are not exposed to this practice, we don't think about it. Out of sight, out of mind. If there was a factory down the road that used child labour and you had to pass it every day, the issue would be more prevalent in your daily life. To sum it up, even though the kind of misery existing in Omelas exists in the world today, I couldn't belong to a society that accepts it.
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Hi Cole,
ReplyDeleteGood response - thank you for your answer. You make a good point that walking away may be the only way to remove yourself from a corrupt system.
I would like to challenge your position that the abuse in Omelas is direct (while the abuse that we rely on is indirect). In most cases, the individuals in Omelas do not themselves abuse the child. However, as you show, their lives are DIRECTLY improved by the exclusion of the child from the utopia. Can't we say the same for our world: even though we don't directly abuse sweat-shop employees, for example, aren't our lives improved directly because of this abuse?
I urge you to keep think about this issue. Specifically, is walking away the ethically 'correct' thing to do - especially when this course of action (according to Le Guin) will not help the child at all? Isn't this course of action quite selfish in itself?
- Patrick
Also, in future blog posts, be sure to combine real-world examples with reference to the text we are studying at the time. Using this combination (as well as a bit of critical thinking), we can keep our eye on how these pieces of literature enlighten for us some of the ways we experience our society.
ReplyDelete- Patrick