Adagio
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2013
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The city of happiness
The city of happiness
The story (“The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas”) tells of a city called Omelas—a city of happiness and civic celebration, a place without kings or slaves, without advertisements or a stock exchange, a place without the atomic bomb. Lest we find this place too unrealistic to imagine, the author tells us one more thing about it: “In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window.” And in this room sits a child. The child is feeble-minded, malnourished, and neglected. It lives out its days in wretched misery.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas . . . They all know that it has to be there . . . They all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, . . . even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery. . . . If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of the vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.
Are those terms morally acceptable?
The city of happiness
The story (“The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas”) tells of a city called Omelas—a city of happiness and civic celebration, a place without kings or slaves, without advertisements or a stock exchange, a place without the atomic bomb. Lest we find this place too unrealistic to imagine, the author tells us one more thing about it: “In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window.” And in this room sits a child. The child is feeble-minded, malnourished, and neglected. It lives out its days in wretched misery.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas . . . They all know that it has to be there . . . They all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, . . . even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery. . . . If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of the vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.
Are those terms morally acceptable?