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In a controversial move the IOC has chosen Omelas as the host for the 2029 Olympic Games

#ro #olympics #omelas

Would you walk away from Omelas?

Yes

I don't know

I don't know what this refers to

Voting ended onFeb 24, 2025

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. You can read it (PDF) here.

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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

#polls #incognito polls #anonymous #tumblr polls #tumblr users #questions #polls about ethics #submitted jan 15 #omelas #the ones who walk away from omelas #ethics #morals

#the ones who walk away from omelas #omelasposting #omelas #ursula k. le guin #le guin #savage #feel guilty reposting content but #this is so good it deserves a bigger nerd audience #and where better to find omelas shitposting on al gore's internet #than on tumblr dot com #facebook

Whenever shitty parents, or decent parents in a shittier moment, tell their children that they’re lucky, that they should be grateful, that there are starving children in Africa who would love to eat the cauliflower or whatever that kid just refused: the Omelas child is brought into being. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what the Omelas child is, at heart. Not a real starving African child but the conceptual starving African child. Someone whose whole purpose is to suffer so that we can look at them, or even just imagine them, and feel ever so grateful for our own moderately shit lives.

#the ones who walk away from omelas #omelas #ursula k leguin

ursula k le guin's the ones who walk away from omelas, which dares you to imagine the story of a young witch looking for her neighbor's cat in the alps

#low-hanging fruit sorry #omelas #mine

I sure do find the endlessly-repeated omelas response stories irritating. People have been writing (and publishing!) them for decades, and nobody ever says anything new, and all of them dramatically misunderstand the story they purport to respond to. What are we doing here!

the ones who walk away from omelas: If confronted with the idea of a society without any suffering, are you able to believe in it, to dream of a world that's better than ours currently is, or has your imagination been so stifled and constrained that you require the presence of suffering for a world to feel possible? Are you willing to walk away from these artificial constraints you've built in your mind?

everyone who has ever written a response to omelas: yeah the version with the suffering is the only one I'm interested in thanks

how much more explicit did le guin need to be! she was already shouting this at the reader!!

#omelas #the ones who walk away from omelas

one of the wild things about people’s stubborn insistence on misunderstanding The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is that the narrator anticipates an audience that won’t engage with the text, just in the opposite direction. Throughout the story are little asides asking what the reader is willing to believe in. Can you believe in a utopia? What if I told you this? What about this? Can you believe in the festivals? The towers by the sea? Can we believe that they have no king? Can we believe that they are joyful? Does your utopia have technology, luxury, sex, temples, drugs? The story is consulting you as it’s being told, framed as a dialogue. It literally asks you directly: do you only believe joy is possible with suffering? And, implicitly, why?

the question isn’t just “what would you personally do about the kid.” It isn’t just an intricate trolley problem. It’s an interrogation of the limits of imagination. How do we make suffering compulsory? Why? What futures (or pasts) are we capable of imagining? How do we rationalize suffering as necessary? And so on. In all of the conversations I’ve seen or had about this story, no one has mentioned the fact that it’s actively breaking the fourth wall. The narrator is building a world in front of your eyes and challenging you to participate. “I would free the kid” and then what? What does the Omelas you’ve constructed look like, and why? And what does that say about the worlds you’re building in real life?

#ursula k le guin #omelas #There are so many ideas in this story that simply do not get engaged with!#I’ve heard it argued that a central element of anarchism #as a political philosophy #is the expansion of the imagination: what is truly possible if we forget the structures we are raised in?#if we forget what we have been told is or is not possible?#le guin wasn’t an anarchist but her work is heavily inspired by anarchist thought #Also the idea that the compassion of citizens of omelas is possible only because they are able to see themselves in relation and contrast t #the kid #very interesting stuff there #arguably a searing critique of moderate liberals #who feel compassion from on high but rationalize the ways in which those who suffer cosmically deserve it #in order to maintain structures of suffering #This short story is breaking the fourth wall Constantly to grab you by the collar and ask #what do you think is possible in the world and what do you think is good and what do you think is necessary #If you want to free the kid then what! What does that mean!#ALSO if omelas is a place being constructed as an idea #are the ones who walk away meant to be literally deserting a place #or are they rejecting an idea #hmmm much to think about

narrator of "Those who Walk Away from Omelas": people in Omelas are happy

narrator: not simple. still a complex society. not claiming they're perfect. don't know exactly what they're like, just that they're happier than us.

narrator: we have a bad habit of considering happiness as something rather stupid

narrator: (continues into one of the longest paragraphs I have ever seen, all about postulating possible ways the happy society of Omelas could be structured. Periodically breaks the fourth wall, to check in with the reader about whether they consider it plausible now)

narrator: (seems to realize that the reader still isn't buying it, because we're still hampered by our view of happiness as "something rather stupid." Realizes our minds are still going, "can't be real, it's too good")

narrator: (introduces the whole child-torture plot element)

narrator: (devotes rest of story to insisting that the child torture is absolutely necessary to the happiness of the people)

narrator: (never explains a single detail of how or why. Makes absolutely sure that this element of the story, practically speaking, is much more implausible than anything else suggested so far.)

readers: (come out of this story, inevitably, with our minds focused on the idea that a good, happy society necessarily requires some people's suffering… and perhaps on the question, "is this really true?")

Author of "Those who Walk Away from Omelas": (also said, "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.")

readers: yeah… good life impossible; suffering inevitable. that's what the story's about. :-(

#notron anyvirus #userworldproblems #ursula k. le guin #omelas #fiction #reading comprehension #you walk away from omelas by walking away from 90% of people's interpretation of this story

#omelas

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