Here.
Please don’t read comments until you’ve read this. It is very short and fast to read. It is radicalizing. It is a good short story to send to your friend who needs to understand what capitalism is. LeGuin wrote this in 1973, cementing her status as Chad Supreme of Fuck Mountain. Bow before her might.
Let’s discuss in the comments below.
Contrary to what the left-wing media would have you believe, the child in the basement is no angel.
We just need to go back to a simpler time, when everybody was polite to each other and nobody discussed the child in the basement.
If you ever needed a quick allegory to completely blow someone’s head off in a short, powerful way, this is such a good fucking way to do it.
it is not as short, but if you want to read some more really brutal and radicalizing sci-fi go find Bloodchild by Octavia Butler. (is also available as audiobook)
Ok, dissenting opinion: I don’t think this has anything to do with capitalism.
For one thing, everyone but the kid in Omelas has a perfect life; under capitalism the masses are miserable and oppressed.
Second, the story implies that the right thing to do is for the people of Omelas to build a more just society on ethical grounds, as opposed to oppressed people liberating themselves from their oppressors. There’s no class struggle whatsoever.
Third, nobody actually does anything about the kid; the ones who walk away are just symbolically wiping their hands of it without actually challenging the power structure of Omelas.
It’s a moral fable. I don’t understand how it’s supposed to radicalize anyone or help them understand capitalism.
I dont like how the child is just there as a superstition. If you want to look at this in a third world oppression kind of way, the luxuries and commodities of the first world are a direct artifact of the oppression of the third world. Reading this i just thought why dont they just liberate the kid, he’s just there for no reason, while liberating the masses would mean that the first world/the western bourgeoisie would be less luxurious and happy.
Plus as a utilitarian i dont see this system as bad, if a million people can live as happily as ever at the cost of one sacrifice. Which is absolutely not rappresentative of any status quo where that happiness is fabbricated and the suffering are more numerous by far than those profitting. Maybe we all have different tollerances of how much misery there can be for some happiness in the rest of us, and this falls in my range of tollerance. For a society with no violence, rape, sadness or worry i’d absolutely sacrifice a child.
I know im probably reading this way wrong (im not a good reader) and i dont want to shit on LeGuin but this reads like a conservative/fascist thing against liberals, who dont accept a necessary evil and therefore perform some sort of self harm or hermitism, like protesting or boycotting some product.
So, LeGuin is certainly not a utilitarian. She claims to be a Taoist, which I know little about, but the story’s morality is almost Kantian. No suffering is morally permissible, there is no great balance. But I believe the story is trying to state that “This idealized world with only one suffering and all else reaping the benefits is still unethical, how much less is our world.”
By the by, I am a utilitarian and can see the story as both a allegory in which I appreciate its message, and as a fiction where I’d choose this world over any realistic possibility.
