A single tormented child seems to me like an incredibly good tradeoff for the number of very high quality lives that Omelas supports, much better than we get with real cities.
I cannot fathom why a comment like that would be upvoted by anyone but an unfeeling robot. This is not even the dust-specks-vs-torture case, given that the Omelas is not a very large city.
if I were ever in a situation where I’m offered a chance to improve total wellfare for everyone at the cost of personal torment, I should take it immediately
Imagine that it is not you, but your child you must sacrifice. Would you shrug and say “sorry, my precious girl, you must suffer until you die so that your mommy/daddy can live a happy life”? I know what I would do.
Imagine that it is not you, but your child you must sacrifice. Would you shrug and say “sorry, my precious girl, you must suffer until you die so that your mommy/daddy can live a happy life”?
I hope I would have the strength to say “sorry, my precious girl, you must suffer until you die so that everyone in the city can live a happy life.” Doing it just for myself and my own social circle wouldn’t be a good tradeoff, but those aren’t the terms of the scenario.
Considering how many of our basic commodities rely on sweatshop or otherwise extremely miserable labor, we’re already living off the backs of quite a lot of tormented children.
The Babyeaters’ babies outnumber the adults; their situation is analogous, not to the city of Omelas, but to a utopian city built on top of another, even larger, dystopian city, on which it relies for its existence.
I would rather live in a society where people loved and cherished their children, but also valued their society, and were willing to shut up and multiply and take the hit themselves, or to their own loved ones, for the sake of a common good that really is that much greater, and I want to be the sort of person I’d want others in that society to be.
I’ve never had children, but I have been in love, in a reciprocated relationship of the sort where it feels like it’s actually as big a deal as all the love songs have ever made it out to be, and I think that sacrificing someone I loved for the sake of a city like Omelas is something I’d be willing to do in practice, not just in theory (and she never would have expected me to do differently, nor would I of her.) It’s definitely not the case that really loving someone, with true depth of feeling, precludes acknowledgment that there are some things worth sacrificing even that bond for.
I’m guessing that neither have most of those who upvoted you and downvoted me. I literally cannot imagine a worse betrayal than the scenario we’ve been discussing. I can imagine one kind-of-happy society where something like this would be OK, though.
I cannot fathom why a comment like that would be upvoted by anyone but an unfeeling robot.
Sounds like you need to update your model of people who don’t have children. Also, how aggressively do you campaign against things like sweatshop labor in third-world countries, which as Desrtopa correctly points out are a substantially worse real-world analogue? Do children only matter if they’re your children?
the real problem with omelas: It totally ignores the fact that there are children suffering literally as we speak in every city on the planet. Omelas somehow managed to get it down to one child. How many other children would you sacrifice for your own?
the real problem with omelas: It totally ignores the fact that there are children suffering literally as we speak in every city on the planet.
Unlike in the fictional Omelas, there is no direct dependence or direct sacrifice. Certainly it is possible to at least temporarily alleviate suffering of others in this non-hypothetical world by sacrificing some of your fortune, but that’s the difference between active and passive approach, there is a large gap there.
Related. Nornagest put their finger on this being a conflict between the consequentially compelling (optimizing for general welfare) and the psychologically compelling (not being confronted with knowledge of an individual child suffering torture because of you). I think Nornagest’s also right that a fully specified Omelas scenario would almost certainly feel less compelling, which is one reason I’m not much impressed by Le Guin’s story.
Imagine that it is not you, but your child you must sacrifice.
The situation is not analogous, since sacrificing one’s child would presumably make most parents miserable for the rest of their days. In Omelas, however, the sacrifice makes people happy, instead.
I cannot fathom why a comment like that would be upvoted by anyone but an unfeeling robot. This is not even the dust-specks-vs-torture case, given that the Omelas is not a very large city.
Imagine that it is not you, but your child you must sacrifice. Would you shrug and say “sorry, my precious girl, you must suffer until you die so that your mommy/daddy can live a happy life”? I know what I would do.
I hope I would have the strength to say “sorry, my precious girl, you must suffer until you die so that everyone in the city can live a happy life.” Doing it just for myself and my own social circle wouldn’t be a good tradeoff, but those aren’t the terms of the scenario.
Considering how many of our basic commodities rely on sweatshop or otherwise extremely miserable labor, we’re already living off the backs of quite a lot of tormented children.
And there I thought that Babyeaters lived only in the Eliezer’s sci-fi story...
The Babyeaters’ babies outnumber the adults; their situation is analogous, not to the city of Omelas, but to a utopian city built on top of another, even larger, dystopian city, on which it relies for its existence.
I would rather live in a society where people loved and cherished their children, but also valued their society, and were willing to shut up and multiply and take the hit themselves, or to their own loved ones, for the sake of a common good that really is that much greater, and I want to be the sort of person I’d want others in that society to be.
I’ve never had children, but I have been in love, in a reciprocated relationship of the sort where it feels like it’s actually as big a deal as all the love songs have ever made it out to be, and I think that sacrificing someone I loved for the sake of a city like Omelas is something I’d be willing to do in practice, not just in theory (and she never would have expected me to do differently, nor would I of her.) It’s definitely not the case that really loving someone, with true depth of feeling, precludes acknowledgment that there are some things worth sacrificing even that bond for.
I’m guessing that neither have most of those who upvoted you and downvoted me. I literally cannot imagine a worse betrayal than the scenario we’ve been discussing. I can imagine one kind-of-happy society where something like this would be OK, though.
Sounds like you need to update your model of people who don’t have children. Also, how aggressively do you campaign against things like sweatshop labor in third-world countries, which as Desrtopa correctly points out are a substantially worse real-world analogue? Do children only matter if they’re your children?
the real problem with omelas: It totally ignores the fact that there are children suffering literally as we speak in every city on the planet. Omelas somehow managed to get it down to one child. How many other children would you sacrifice for your own?
Unlike in the fictional Omelas, there is no direct dependence or direct sacrifice. Certainly it is possible to at least temporarily alleviate suffering of others in this non-hypothetical world by sacrificing some of your fortune, but that’s the difference between active and passive approach, there is a large gap there.
Related. Nornagest put their finger on this being a conflict between the consequentially compelling (optimizing for general welfare) and the psychologically compelling (not being confronted with knowledge of an individual child suffering torture because of you). I think Nornagest’s also right that a fully specified Omelas scenario would almost certainly feel less compelling, which is one reason I’m not much impressed by Le Guin’s story.
The situation is not analogous, since sacrificing one’s child would presumably make most parents miserable for the rest of their days. In Omelas, however, the sacrifice makes people happy, instead.
And I thought that the Babyeaters only existed in Eliezer’s fiction...