“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire
There is a disturbing short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, about a seemingly utopian society. The narrator of the story describes this city in the context of a festival held on the first day of summer. Throughout the city, the excitement of the celebration is in the air. Everything about this place is wonderful. The people are happy, content, peaceful. The architecture and environment are beautiful. The surrounding mountains are described with poetic flourish: “The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky.”
Based on the narrator’s overview, Omelas is somewhere many of us might like to visit and perhaps ourselves live. The enchantment of this wonderful place is summarized in a beautifully written sentence: “Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time.”
But it is shortly revealed to the reader that the existence of Omelas, in its current desirable state, is contingent on the horrific suffering of a single child deliberately kept locked in a tiny, dark room underneath one of their magnificent buildings. Absent this trade-off, one dehumanized creature’s unimaginable suffering for the benefit of the many, their society would quickly devolve into non-utopian ordinariness, the unbearable reality of an imperfect place.
This deal with some unknown devil is not kept a secret from the populace. The people know of this child’s uninterrupted misery and that it is the cost which must be paid. There are those who go to see for themselves the suffering of the child. Afterwards, some of these visitors are tearful or enraged at what they witness, for the details of this child’s anguish is indeed sickening, especially when seen for oneself. But nevertheless, the child remains imprisoned. They won’t risk Omelas no longer being Omelas, a marvelous place for everyone except one of them:
“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.”
Not surprisingly, there are those who attempt to rationalize this hideous pact: The child would not be better off at this point if freed and treated kindly. It’s simply too late, the child is irretrievably degraded and only knows its suffering, and, therefore, its misery might as well continue for the benefit of everyone else. One way or another, through such pathetic rationalization or out-of-sight-out-of-mindedness or other means, almost all the citizens of Omelas accept this deal, even those rendered sobbing or angry; therefore, the torture of this child continues, their way of life continues.
It is horribly marred perfection in which the people of Omelas find themselves. They’ve entered into a Faustian bargain, a dotted line signed over and over…generation by generation. We should consider if perhaps it’s not the child’s pain that is desired by this contract’s counterparty, but the fact that the people of Omelas know of this child’s wretched treatment and are yet willing to continue it. This child is the embodiment of their sold souls and the delusion that they’ve somehow gained something of infinitely greater value in trade. Unfortunately, that’s not how deals with a devil work. There is no benefit, and everything is lost, when one sells his soul.
The narrator claims that “One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.” Yet, the collective guilt of its people is palpable. No matter how sweet the air, no matter how spectacularly the building facades or mountain tops gleam in the sun, no matter the honied trill of laughter or music. None are innocent. Not those who live their lives in the absence of war, crime, or other strife. Not those who celebrate the first day of summer with music, dance, and games. Not those who love their own children and are grateful it is not one of their own who is sacrificed for the greater good. Theirs is the human sacrifice of the Aztecs and Mayans and other misguided savages, but without the blood, and reduced to a single victim. We should not forgive the Mesoamericans or other human sacrificers their terrible crimes. We should not forgive the people of Omelas theirs. Unless we are weak and immoral, and the siren song of the bargain compels us to believe…it’s only one…only a single child…and for a greater common good.
Not everyone in Omelas is able to accept this trade-off. A few of its citizens are so horrified by what they see in that small, dirt-floored dungeon in which the child is imprisoned, that they leave Omelas, unable to accept a purported paradise at such a terrible price. No one knows where they go, only that they leave Omelas and never return. These are the eponymous ones who walk away from Omelas.
You may believe these emigrants are possessed of higher moral character than those who don’t walk away from Omelas. They are, after all, unwilling to reap the bountiful benefits if such benefits mean the torture of another person. Yet, there is this to consider: They leave rather than try to change the system; in this case, one so vile, that violent revolution would be justified so as to supplant it with one which rescues the child and ultimately leads to a far less perfect, but also less despicable world. The leavers didn’t want to reap the benefits, but they nonetheless left these benefits—and their appalling cost—in place. Thus, we must ask ourselves: Is it possible to walk far enough away from a horrible crime of which we’re aware, so as to sever our own complicity?
Good science fiction allows us the opportunity to explore reality from the comfort of distance. Distance of time, distance of space, the distance afforded by alien species not our own. Otherwise, the closeness might shut off important contemplation of the human condition. At a safe distance, but not too safe. Science fiction is a mirror whose reflection is seemingly not our own, but is, in fact, ours—disguised, but right in front of us.
Therefore, it is natural to ask, as we ponder this fictional place, if there is the risk of an Omelas in our own world, in our own time and place. A real Omelas, a gleaming utopia where an evil bargain is made for the supposed benefit of some, perhaps of benefit to many, but at the price of dreadful, deliberate harm to another.
There are antecedents. In their own twisted fashions, Hitler, Stalin. Mao, and Pol Pot envisioned they were creating perfect societies, and they each accepted the horrifying cost of his attempt. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, and perhaps there is a compelling necessity for such convincing, since the magnitude of their evil was so great, even a sociopath would go mad if fully comprehending it in the context of insufficient self-delusion. We must also understand—and perhaps this is the key thing—that there need be no shiny towers or laughing children or full bellies in Omelas. Only a person or people willing to trade everything for their vision of perfection, no matter how un-Eden-like that perfection may be. Perfect places are always dystopias and reveal our vision of perfection as a malevolent fallacy.
But, dear readers, do not foolishly convince yourself that these past monsters are archaic examples from a history we are somehow destined not to repeat. We have in our world an ample supply of convenient scapegoats, fascist busybodies, manufactured threats and drama, and a tendency toward the complicity of groupthink—all of it horribly amplified and enabled by modern technology. When these are combined with a madman’s blueprint for paradise, and that person believes he knows far better than you do how you should live your life, speak your mind, think your thoughts, these are then the weapons of evildoers in search of evil perfection, wielded in furtherance of their wicked ambitions. Their own Omelas.
Though this story was written decades ago, and perhaps today’s world was unimaginable, even to science fiction writers at the time, there is indeed an Omelas today. It is a real place, and there are many among us who are walking toward it. Knowingly…gleefully…and, oh so smugly. Their vision of Omelas, with its clear blue skies and joyous music and colorful pennants snapping in the breeze. A place of terrible, terrible perfection at dreadful expense.
Neo-Omelas (as I shall henceforth call it) is a nirvana sought by madmen among our fellows. An Eden whose music and dance and colorful streamers are performative “virtue” done, not at harm to oneself (at least in the short term), but at great harm to others, and this includes children. Many children.
These madmen, their disciples, and the cowards and connivers who empower them, are easy to spot—not that they make any effort to hide themselves. They are the ones who take snittish umbrage at the word “fellows” I used a few sentences back—and intend there be dire consequences for such temerity.
Their vehemency directed against such a triviality may initially fool you into believing they aren’t actually angry, or they mean no harm; no sane person could possibly be rendered rabid by such language—so, you tell yourself that they must be pulling your leg, and we’ll have a good laugh afterwards. But I warn you, with every ounce of sincerity I can muster: pulling your leg they most certainly are not. A person who gins up a federal case—sometimes literally—about the use of the word “fellows” is a maniac who cannot be reasoned with and who intends to harm and oppress his, well, fellows. And he will do so imbued with insufferable certitude and beaming sanctimony.
At least in Le Guin’s Omelas, the people admit there is intentional harm to an unfortunate child. Neo-Omelas cottons no such honesty. Neo-Omelas is built upon unshakable lies driven to bedrock. Not only do they deny they harm children, they argue that the grievous harm done to children is not harm at all, but is instead preventing harm to them. They go a terrifying step further, for in Neo-Omelas dissent is not tolerated, in word, thought, or deed: To protest harming children or interfering in this harm is itself harming these children.
Confused? I should say so, if you have a modicum of sense. The linguistics of Neo-Omelas is tortuous, and is ruthlessly (and shrilly) enforced, but it is, in fact, their demented language. Silly word games are both the currency of the realm and the primary symptom of their derangement. In Neo-Omelas words they don’t like, or which threaten their collective delusion, are “violence”—and they’re willing to use actual physical violence against you in order to show how passionately they believe this. They’ve concocted the concept of “hate speech”—as if they’ve the ability to divine what is in another person’s heart, let alone their own—and have dumbed down the definition of hate into childish absurdity. Speaking of definitions…in Neo-Omelas, the definition of “woman” is an unfathomable mystery, even to their learned biologists, jurists, physicians, and physicists. Here, biological truth is violent and hateful.
An honest narrator telling the tale of Neo-Omelas would surely share that it is a place of dangerous platitudes espoused with religious fervor. “We’ll show you, bigots, just how enlightened and compassionate we are!” and “We follow the science!” are two of these tenets, held as secure in their minds as is the wretched child imprisoned beneath Le Guin’s city.
These mindless incantations lead inevitably to corresponding physical manifestations, and these result in harm to others. Devastating harm. For theirs is a mean, nasty, and profoundly petty anti-hatefulness. Theirs is an anti-bigotry of wanton prejudice. Theirs is a supposed love of science, and yet their science is no longer recognizable as science, but something corrupted into a religion fervently anti-skeptical and which brooks no opposition or inquiry. Real science welcomes, in fact requires, skeptics. It is never settled, pending a new discovery or better explanation. But ruthless religions that are become cults seek to destroy heretics, apostates, blasphemers. Such religions often employ the horror of human sacrifice in homage to their gods. Thus, we humans have been cursed with witch trials and inquisitions and killing fields and deathcamps and poisoned Kool-Aid, among other examples which show how much the people love the gods who’ve blessed them with their Omelases.
The state religion of Neo-Omelas is no different—and Neo-Omelas is indeed a theocracy. Only the irrational love for a wrathful god can explain it. Children are wantonly sacrificed. Their penises and noncancerous breasts and uteri are removed. They are pumped full of chemical sterilizing agents and powerful wrong-sex hormones. They are subjected to age-inappropriate materials in schools. There are indeed parents who celebrate these rituals, which affirm their piety and demonstrate blind obeisance to the deities of Neo-Omelas. Then there are infidel parents. The state deems them hateful and bigoted heretics, and these parents shall watch helplessly as their child is made a particularly desirable sacrifice, one that screams to the faithful, “We’ll show you, bigots!” This ritualistic devastation also serves the purpose of terrifying into silence the compliant nonbelievers, and rooting out troublemakers who dare resist this madness, and who then can be dealt with via the wrath of man on behalf of a wrathful god.
Yes, the people of Neo-Omelas transmogrify intentional harm into it being both good and healthful. The “first do no harm” of medicine is become mutilation and poisoning—and declared suicide prevention. They impoverish billions and destroy economies to prevent apocalypse; thus, children in poor countries are denied affordable and reliable energy that could lift them out of poverty. They hamstring police and coddle criminals, which leaves vulnerable communities even more at the mercy of the evildoers among them. All this evil—and more—is done with smug sanctimony and earsplitting shrillness.
Neo-Omelas is far worse than the one Ms. Le Guin describes. In Le Guin’s Omelas the people are not forced to dwell there. The only person subjected to force is the poor imprisoned waif upon whom their existence depends. The rulers of Neo-Omelas intend to forcibly make everyone live within its borders, whether they want to or not. They’ll take malevolent delight in dealing with those of us “or nots.” And do so magnificently enabled by cowards in positions of leadership, an uninquisitive and compliant media, and modern technology which affords undreamed of powers to a surveillance state. And surveil us they shall, good and hard (to use a term from H.L. Mencken).
As bad as Neo-Omelas sounds to this point, there is greater evil afoot, one formerly hinted at but now risen to the surface and certain to have its own pennant flapping in the breeze. This is a city infected with pathological contrarianism, which is to say an unquenchable desire to embrace and extol anything a decent, normal person finds abhorrent. In Neo-Omelas, pedophilia is a sexual orientation; children can consent to sexual relations with adults; some children benefit from it; the harm that results is not because of the act, but because of the overreaction of others to it. Eventually these disgusting platitudes shall be widely accepted gospel, codified in statute, and those who insist otherwise are bigots who shall be crushed.
Yes, Neo-Omelas is a hellscape sold as paradise. One whose victims are already among us. Its future victims in grave peril.
If you do not yet recognize the Neo-Omelas advocates among us, allow me to offer another ready tool of detection. Evildoers always must silence and censor. They must control every facet of our lives, no matter how trivial. The elevation of the trivial to a matter of state is a hallmark of Neo-Omelas. Control over others—and the orgiastic pleasure it provides them—is what they wanted all along. They are not content with a single child locked away from sunlight and joy. They want us all there, broken and degraded, though we suspect that above our heads, far above the dank and dark place of our imprisonment and suffering, our betters live in well-lit comfort. Their deal with the devil results in no discomfit among them, subconscious or otherwise, which is another point distinguishing them from Le Guin’s Omelas. These are true sociopaths.
Wherever an Omelas exists, it is founded on evil and maintained by evil means. Evil allowed to exist. Evil justified for the greater good. At least the people of Omelas do not celebrate the suffering they cause the child. Their Festival of Summer is not meant to openly glorify their crime. But in Neo-Omelas, evil is publicly lauded. Evil is trumpeted as good and enlightened and salubrious. The past evildoers would surely smile in agreement. A deathcamp commandant’s smile.
Many walk toward Neo-Omelas. Fools or complicit cowards. The obvious advice for me to offer is don’t go there. But this suggestion is too easy and does not address the malignancy that is this place. I advise you to never allow Neo-Omelas be built in the first place, or if you find it already built, to do everything in your power to raze it to the ground and free the ones who couldn’t walk away.
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