Mod. 2.4 - On Moral Distancing

Read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin from the collection, The Wind's Twelve Quarters.

Share your reflections on this tale. You may (but do not have to) use the following questions as prompts for your reflections:

• How is societal happiness portrayed in our introduction to Omelas? How is it similar or different from your own sense of a general wellbeing?

• Can we have a happy/good/just/advanced society at the expense of someone else?

• Is ignorance bliss? What would the people of Omelas stand to gain or lose if they were to remain ignorant of the child's existence?

• Who is the 'child in the room' in our society?

• Why do some walk away from Omelas? Who are they? Where do you think they are headed?

It would be helpful to connect the themes coming up in this reflection to the issues and dynamics surfaced by other activities and reflections this week.

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The world created in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas strikes me as a naive utopian society. The idea of everyone living joyously and getting ready for the Festival in a town with few laws, no wars, and an apparent lack of pain tries to paint a picture of “real life” as overly critical, unable to appreciate happiness, joy, and general enjoyment. The lack of balance outlined at the beginning of the story is resolved by the emergence of The Child, horribly referred to as “It” rather than “They” for some bizarre reason, and whose fear, pain, suffering we learn is the reason why the townspeople are able to be so happy. There was some kind of arrangement or deal made, created or imposed by who or what we are not told, that requires the townspeople to keep the small child in a closet barely surviving in order to retain their state of joy and happiness.

The townspeople are not ignorant of the child’s existence, as demonstrated by the fact that at various times they educate the town’s children and others of the child’s existence and some even go to see the child. Those who do not see the child are certainly aware of their existence through the other townspeople. They all understand that perpetuating the child’s pain is the only way to guarantee their joyous way of life. If the majority of folks actively choose to ignore the child’s existence on a daily basis is somewhat unclear, but I suppose it is presumed given their state of utopian joy resulting from the mysterious Faustian bargain. Why some walk away from Omelas I imagine is a result of some of the townspeople’s inability to practice lasting moral distancing that eventually leads them to leave the town, rather than compromise the joy of the entire town. Those who walk away strike me as people who may have experienced some degree of pain or suffering in their lives that perhaps they covered up so as to not draw attention to themselves or remind others about the child’s suffering. Their isolated exits from Omelas makes it unclear as to where they might be headed.

Trying to apply an example of “the child in the room” to a group in our society could yield any number of answers. The most obvious parallels would be anyone who is currently incarcerated or anyone who is disabled. I could also see an argument made for Black women representing the child. However, the lack of clarity around how the child got to the town and was placed in the closet in the first place as well as no clear answer as to who or what kind of figure presented the townspeople with the proposal of lasting joy in return for the child’s eternal suffering makes any parallel to an authority in our society impossible.

Looking at the question of moral distancing, it’s clear that most people in America consciously ignore a number of “children in the closet.” The prison industrial complex is perhaps the most clear example of this conscious ignorance. Whether or not a case could be made that the majority of Americans consciously traded victims of incarceration for a life of perpetual joy I think is a stretch, given that we inherited the system and the majority of Americans have little to no interaction with the prison system. I also think the joy of the townspeople vs. the suffering of the child is a false binary contained in a confusing fairytale metaphor that lacks the nuance of real life to be able to successfully draw out parallels to our current society.