Slacktivist has an interesting and from the comment thread controversial analogy. Somebody in the comment thread mentioned that one problem with Le Guin's story is that she never explains why the child's suffering is necessary. I'm not sure that's true, but when I use this story in my ethics class (as part of the discussion of utilitarianism) I pair it with part of Huxley's Brave New World. The savage insists that suffering and evil must be part of the world if there is to be nobility and greatness (students also often say this when discussion of God and the problem of evil comes up). If there is anything to this, then surely that's the reason the child must suffer; without the child, Omelas would have no suffering or evil, and would perhaps become like Mustafa Mond's world.
To speculate further, perhaps the reason Omelas is such a paradise is that people are much better at ignoring widespread suffering and evil than at ignoring it in individual cases, so the fact that in Omelas it is only this one child who suffers such an unfair fate increases the impact of the example on the people of the city, so that they are inspired to greatness far beyond that which the people of our world are capable of.
It does seem that the Omelas story is a direct response to the theologian's notion that suffering is necessary for this 'best of all possible worlds'. I think it is absurd to posit that the kind of undeserved suffering in the real world is made up by the noble things people do to end that suffering. There's just more suffering than nobility. In fact there's more suffering than we can do anything about, and much suffering which we never even *know* about. How does that make humanity any better?
What makes the story more pointed is that instead of world-wide suffering as in the real world (which people seem very able to ignore because it becomes a mere statistic) the suffering is down to one innocent person.
Any system which depends on undeserved suffering for its 'greatness' is one which truly moral people would abandon. Those that leave at least are sacrificing the goods of that world since the price is too high, and any existence is better than one based on such injustice. That theologians are forced to confess that their gods are responsible for such injustices (even if they argue it's for the 'greater good') makes them seem like battered spouses making apologies for their abusive partners.
Though it would make a good movie script to have some of the citizens of Omelas try to free the suffering child...
Posted by: www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnxJ4f7MH5TOcsHH4TXJwXvI_WUBM4iNr8 | October 31, 2010 at 08:01 AM