14 ms·

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and di

The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. I took a subway there once on a visit to NY. I was both inspired by the science center there, and dismayed to find it surrounded by antiquated residences and roads. It was like a vision of the future in a garden surrounded by the mundane suburban sprawl of reality. Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion, and so I admire that in Bel Geddes vision. My favorite bit of futurism is Robert McCall's "The Prologue and the Promise" mural found in the Disney Epcot center [1]. If we aren't striving for a better future, then what are we living for? For the idea that "Inside Every Utopia is a Dystopia," the 1973 story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin [2] has always most starkly impressed this concept into my mind. In it, Omelas is a perfect utopian city where life is perfect, except this perfection is dependent on the incredible suffering of a single child kept hidden away in a dark place. At a certain age, child's suffering is revealed to each citizen. Most residents learn to live with this fact or rationalize it away. It's a serious oversimplification of certain dimensions of our own modern societies, but it is a powerful metaphor for thinking about how much our cheap modern conveniences rely on the services of minorities and the impoverished who serve us and manufacture our many shiny things. I wish this essay had delved deeper into this concept. [1] http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/415544/5082948/1260951403247/HORIZONS-MURAL-Rober-McCall.jpg http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/415544/5082948/1260951... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...

kleer001 9y ago
I always wondered what happened to the kid as she aged. Killed? Shipped far away? Dies during child birth of the next pariah? Is it a guy? Kept in perpetual childhood?
- jessaustin 9y ago
  The perpetual childhood might be part of the torture?
  - kleer001 9y ago
    I'd buy that. Now I'm wondering how this solution was found and how long it took to get adopted.
ghaff 9y ago
>The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. Queens actually (Flushing Meadows) and what you see from the World's Fair today is almost certainly from the later 1964 fair.
dllthomas 9y ago
Yeah, Omelas immediately came to mind for me as well, on seeing the title. Rather more literal than what was intended in the article, I think.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
And insofar as Omelas is trying to make a point about life in general, history in general, potential societies or lives in general, it is simply reactionary. Who is even Ursula Le Guin to tell us that everything must have a seed of evil in its core?
- bertlequant 9y ago
  It's been a while since I read that short story, but the message I took from it wasn't that there was a seed of evil in the society, but that no matter what society or system exists, there will always be those that cannot fit into it. Perhaps someone considered a failure in one society, would be a "king" in another. If someone doesn't have something that society values, perhaps it will be hard to coexist in that environment, causing them to leave or become something deemed worse. Maybe Le Guin had other motives with her story. Maybe Utopia is just a step towards the next Utopia, which will itself be another step, due to an inherent lack of satisfaction. There are many ways to interpret the story, which is why I have always enjoyed it.
- danharaj 9y ago
  I don't think that's le Guin's thesis. The Dispossessed is her book that explores the nature of utopia, its subtitle is "an ambiguous utopia" even. I think the focus of omelas is the juxtaposition of outward peace and prosperity and internal brutality. The key to the book is how people react to seeing the rotten core of their society. It's not a thesis on what all societies look like-- le Guin has constructed many complex, lifelike societies that don't have such brutally evil defects, but a kind of society that sounds awfully familiar. The point of this story is how one reacts to the revelation of the society's nature, both within the narrative and externally in the reader. Who walks away from Omelas?
  - ftlio 9y ago
    A good answer to a good question!
  - aomurphy 9y ago
    Yes, absolutely. I think LeGuin is the last "great" Utopian writer we've had. The Dispossessed is a beautiful work, and one that doesn't have a dark heart. It has bad parts, it might not last, but it's not Omelas. You're exactly right, Omelas is about how we the reader would choose. Would you leave everything behind because of evil? Would you live with it?
ashark 9y ago
Our standard of living depends on a great deal of the suffering of others. Most of nature is essentially a constant living horror movie for all participants, which we just barely sit outside of (as long as food remains plentiful and the TV is on). So was the human experience for most people, most of the time we've been on this planet. Still is for many people. The truest understanding of conscious, mortal existence in this universe, and of the course of our species in it, may well be something akin to cosmic horror. Sanity and the ability to "function" in society mostly depend on temporarily forgetting these things.
- m1sta_ 9y ago
  I disagree. There is nothing fundamental about our existence which mandates suffering. That provides hope.
  - taneq 9y ago
    It's not a fundamental necessity, just the reality for the vast majority of all living creatures.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    Ever heard about the "first noble truth"? :)
Roritharr 9y ago
"Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion" Thank you, I just learned something about myself.
nyolfen 9y ago
i fell down a reading hole about the 1939 world's fair and found this film about it from the same year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF594h8KUXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF594h8KUXw fair warning: it seems to mostly be about how unlikable a character's communist art professor boyfriend is
pmoriarty 9y ago
It sounds like Le Guin expanded on a famous passage from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. "Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth." "No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly. http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/introbook2.1/x4603.html http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/introbook2.1/x4603.html
mrkgnao 9y ago
That picture did something to me.

kleer001 9y ago

I always wondered what happened to the kid as she aged. Killed? Shipped far away? Dies during child birth of the next pariah? Is it a guy? Kept in perpetual childhood?

jessaustin 9y ago
The perpetual childhood might be part of the torture?
- kleer001 9y ago
  I'd buy that. Now I'm wondering how this solution was found and how long it took to get adopted.

ghaff 9y ago

>The remains of the 1939 Worlds Fair are found in the Bronx. Queens actually (Flushing Meadows) and what you see from the World's Fair today is almost certainly from the later 1964 fair.

dllthomas 9y ago

Yeah, Omelas immediately came to mind for me as well, on seeing the title. Rather more literal than what was intended in the article, I think.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

And insofar as Omelas is trying to make a point about life in general, history in general, potential societies or lives in general, it is simply reactionary. Who is even Ursula Le Guin to tell us that everything must have a seed of evil in its core?

bertlequant 9y ago
It's been a while since I read that short story, but the message I took from it wasn't that there was a seed of evil in the society, but that no matter what society or system exists, there will always be those that cannot fit into it. Perhaps someone considered a failure in one society, would be a "king" in another. If someone doesn't have something that society values, perhaps it will be hard to coexist in that environment, causing them to leave or become something deemed worse. Maybe Le Guin had other motives with her story. Maybe Utopia is just a step towards the next Utopia, which will itself be another step, due to an inherent lack of satisfaction. There are many ways to interpret the story, which is why I have always enjoyed it.
danharaj 9y ago
I don't think that's le Guin's thesis. The Dispossessed is her book that explores the nature of utopia, its subtitle is "an ambiguous utopia" even. I think the focus of omelas is the juxtaposition of outward peace and prosperity and internal brutality. The key to the book is how people react to seeing the rotten core of their society. It's not a thesis on what all societies look like-- le Guin has constructed many complex, lifelike societies that don't have such brutally evil defects, but a kind of society that sounds awfully familiar. The point of this story is how one reacts to the revelation of the society's nature, both within the narrative and externally in the reader. Who walks away from Omelas?
- ftlio 9y ago
  A good answer to a good question!
- aomurphy 9y ago
  Yes, absolutely. I think LeGuin is the last "great" Utopian writer we've had. The Dispossessed is a beautiful work, and one that doesn't have a dark heart. It has bad parts, it might not last, but it's not Omelas. You're exactly right, Omelas is about how we the reader would choose. Would you leave everything behind because of evil? Would you live with it?

ashark 9y ago

Our standard of living depends on a great deal of the suffering of others. Most of nature is essentially a constant living horror movie for all participants, which we just barely sit outside of (as long as food remains plentiful and the TV is on). So was the human experience for most people, most of the time we've been on this planet. Still is for many people. The truest understanding of conscious, mortal existence in this universe, and of the course of our species in it, may well be something akin to cosmic horror. Sanity and the ability to "function" in society mostly depend on temporarily forgetting these things.

m1sta_ 9y ago
I disagree. There is nothing fundamental about our existence which mandates suffering. That provides hope.
- taneq 9y ago
  It's not a fundamental necessity, just the reality for the vast majority of all living creatures.
- nine_k 9y ago
  Ever heard about the "first noble truth"? :)

Roritharr 9y ago

"Futurism is still the closest thing I have to a religion" Thank you, I just learned something about myself.

nyolfen 9y ago

i fell down a reading hole about the 1939 world's fair and found this film about it from the same year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF594h8KUXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF594h8KUXw fair warning: it seems to mostly be about how unlikable a character's communist art professor boyfriend is

pmoriarty 9y ago

It sounds like Le Guin expanded on a famous passage from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. "Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth." "No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly. http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/introbook2.1/x4603.html http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/introbook2.1/x4603.html

mrkgnao 9y ago

That picture did something to me.