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Fumesucker

(45,851 posts)
Sun Jul 22, 2012, 08:11 AM Jul 2012

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas..

My OP title is also the title of a speculative fiction story by Ursula K LeGuin..

The story concerns a beautiful city whose inhabitants enjoy an enriched and extremely pleasant lifestyle, the fly in the ointment is that in order for the city to exist as it does requires that one child must be kept completely alone in absolute squalor and misery. Each citizen of Omelas learns on their age of majority what the requirement is for their continued existence in a city of unparalleled luxury for all but one.

Those who accept the bargain, a life of unrelenting misery for one unimportant small child in return for a life of luxury of their own, they stay in Omelas. On the other hand those who find this bargain utterly repugnant walk away from Omelas into the countryside about which they know nothing at all..

Veronica Moser was six years old but she doesn't get to live a life of luxury, or a life of squalor and misery either for that matter. Veronica was murdered in cold blood at a movie premier while her mother fights for life in an ICU due to the same attack. I suspect Veronica's mother Ashley will wish that she too didn't survive when someone finally tells her that her beloved daughter is dead.. I know I would rather die than learn that my own child had been brutally murdered.

It becomes more obvious by the day which Americans would choose to walk away from Omelas and which ones wouldn't.

http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt

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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.. (Original Post) Fumesucker Jul 2012 OP
wow, I read that story in the 80's and often think of it, very often and think it when I see Demonaut Jul 2012 #1

Demonaut

(8,918 posts)
1. wow, I read that story in the 80's and often think of it, very often and think it when I see
Sun Jul 22, 2012, 09:26 AM
Jul 2012

injustice from fear or apathy


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