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Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole
- heckraiser 3y agoWhat a horrific nonsensical rant that clearly misses the point of the story. Save yourself the eyesores, don’t click. The Omelas narrative challenges the psychological maxim that someone must suffer for the common gain. It is a short story, and like all short stories accentuates a tiny detail into a worldview. In what way does Ursula roll in her grave? Gaza, or #metoo, or thriving race hate, or the pedopolitics (here come scathing karma killers.) To be silent in the face of a tyranny of evil is to be complicit. Rest easy Ursula, you have been heard.
- mcphage 3y ago> To be silent in the face of a tyranny of evil is to be complicit. Isn't that what this criticism is all about? In the original story, you either accept the suffering—be complicit—or you walk away. But that's still being silent in the face of a tyranny of evil. It's just saying "well okay, I won't benefit, but I'm not going to make those people who are benefitting feel bad".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smlavine 3y agoI've never heard of the story this one is apparently based on, and I thought it was kinda neat to read.
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 3y agoDare I even ask what "pedopolitics" is?
- heckraiser 3y ago[flagged]
- happytoexplain 3y agoI've never heard the term either. The phrase, "do you live in a cave" is virtually always pointlessly antagonistic/elitist. The combined body of things that a sample of most people would consider "common knowledge" is many times larger than than what is reasonable for the average person to absorb - i.e. they can't all be correct, by definition.
- rcoveson 3y agoI'm really confused. Did we read the same thing? This is just a "sequel" to the original Omelas that, if anything, suffers from the fact that it doesn't really add anything new. It's harsher on the city's arrangement. It seeks out and destroys whatever moral ambiguity might have been present in the original. To me it read like, "I read the Omelas short story and I just want to be clear that the correct interpretation is that Omelas is bad, see, look how bad." I don't see how it misses the point of the original. It just kind of shouts in agreement with the original in an unnecessary way. > In what way does Ursula roll in her grave? Who said she was rolling in her grave? I searched the linked page for any mention of "roll" or "grave" or "Ursula" and found nothing.
- heckraiser 3y agoHow many times does the author slit a kids throat? Yeah, we must have read different stories.
- rcoveson 3y agoIn the original the kid was subjected to brutal, unending torture. Is your complaint just that this one is unnecessarily graphic?
- robocat 3y agoThe child isn't tortured in the original story. You misremember. The child is neglected, ignored and maltreated but the abuse is acts of ommision not commision. The story doesn't say where the child is from, but it does say the child remembers its mother and how to speak. The story ends saying that the ones who leave are going somewhere, we know not where nor why (it lightly implies the ones leave because the child is abused, but it could just as easily be they left because they learnt something).
- rcoveson 3y agoSolitary confinement is commonly accepted to be a form of torture, and that usually involves rudimentary sanitation and nourishment. A confined, solitary, starving child living in its own excrement is being tortured, and I defy anybody to argue otherwise. Also, confinement is not an "act of omission" any more than punching somebody in the face and then leaving them alone forever after is an act of omission.
- happytoexplain 3y ago> horrific nonsensical rant > don't click > scathing karma killers I enjoyed it, but even if I didn't, you haven't given a clue about where such vitriol is coming from. I'm assuming you don't like it in relation to the work it's referencing? To the point that you find it offensive (VERY offensive, apparently)?
- heckraiser 3y agoAs a fan of Ursula K. Le Guin, the central theme is one sorely missed. This has been a controversial critique in terms of karma (up and down so many times it has leveled out.) It’s a bit crass, though my reply was regarding the relevance in today’s world (dirty secrets we don’t confront) more than the author’s shake up. Le Guin’s social commentary is still pressing in our day.
- dark-star 3y agoCan someone give me a quick intro to what the "kid in the Omelas Hole" means? I started reading the article and it made zero sense. I tried googling but all I got was that article again.
- krapp 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...
- jzebedee 3y agoIt's from an Ursula K. LeGuin short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". You can read it here: https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf It has a wiki article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...
- npinsker 3y agoFun read, but it felt like the same message as the original, told a bit less tightly. Not that stories have to have a message — the prose by itself was great — but for me this one feels like it was driving at something else but didn’t arrive anywhere. If others took something else away I’d love to hear.
- mojoe 3y agoI think in both this story and Le Guin's original the ambiguity is the point. The scenario is one that has no "solution", and pattern-seeking readers then imprint the story with their own worldview (a prime example is the "accelerationist" reply to your comment).
- MSFT_Edging 3y agoI said it in another comment but I think the point is to question where the third option is. What I mean is, take the trolley problem, do you pull the switch to kill the single man over the group? One might say "of course, the value of 3 lives is more than one", but another may ask "why are they on the track, who set this in motion?". And the latter framing is very important IMO. We'll often question the decisions of politicians of leaders but dutifully ignore the reasons why things ended up this way. For example, something that makes everyone mad is American intervention around the world and the subsequent blowback from those policies. When experiencing the blowback, often times the "what do we do?" conveniently ignores how our own actions set things in motion. We cannot stop, after all the trolley is already on its way, so we never think to stop the next trolley before this becomes a problem again. The terrorists simply hate our freedom, any other reason for their actions is unimportant. This story introduces the accelerationist who forces people to confront the "why" of the scenario and is so hated by everyone they are killed.
- jelkand 3y agoIt feels that point is undermined when the accelerationists don’t succeed and only make a new equilibrium of killing the kid and replacing him. It feels to me more like a critique that change is impossible.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- readthenotes1 3y agoThis was a Stargate Atlantis plot!