The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

But he grabbed my hand, and he surreptitiously passed me this scrap of paper.

What's it say? Omelas.

Let me see that.

Well,

what does it mean? It's from a story.

One of mine.

Omelas is a Utopian city, but the happiness of thousands depends on the suffering of one.

It's what inspires them to build a better world.

Thank you for that.

I was going to make reference to one more piece of literature, a short story by Ursula Le Guin, 1973, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

And she tries to satirize modern Western society.

It's a very fictional, fanciful society, but it all relied on the suffering of one child.

Magic.

then council will normally say whoa i don't want the tax rate to be that high and then council removes things from the shopping cart and then the tax rate goes down magic property taxes are a magic money button we could have bought a hundred million buses last year and paid for them with property taxes i mean we wouldn't have because that would have crushed downtown renters because the real magic in the magic money button is that downtown renters are the child locked in the basement of the city of Omelas that is the HRM.

And if you don't get that reference, please do yourself a favor and read some Ursula K.

Le Guin.

Is that what it's called? Something like that.

But I'd really recommend that as the ones who walk away from Omelas by Ursula K.

Le Guin.

And I don't want to I don't want to give it away completely.

I was really interested in what happens if, um, what happens if you get your sort of gay space communism or, or whatever the term is, like, where, you know, everybody just kind of has whatever they want.

Is that really, is that really a possibility, or are there always going to be people who are, who are left out of that? And why might people be left out of that? Why, why, um, might people choose to not be part of that? Um, it, it's almost like the kind of Omelas question, like the Ursula, Ursula Le Guin question.

Like, are, are there people who would walk away from a utopian system and choose not to be, choose not to be part of it because they don't want to give something up? So there was that.

In terms of other scientific, you know, science-y things, some of them happen sort of later in the book, or we find out about them later, and they're sort of spoiler-esque, unfortunately, so-

Of course, Ursula K.

Le Guin's Omelas is also a thought experiment and is also kind of scientific, but it's not hard sci-fi.

It's not meant to be.

It's meant to be an anthropological kind of observation about suffering, about society, and about social cohesion.

It was not about Gaza, but a short story by Ursula K.

Le Guin called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

I found the story and read it.

Omelas is a beautiful city full of beautiful, happy people.

Omelas society is one of harmony and beauty and joy.

"All is perfect," writes Le Guin, "except for one detail.

In a tiny windowless cellar room, there is locked up a naked, starving child that sits in its own excrement in the darkness.

It is feeble-minded, perhaps from starvation, perhaps for other reasons.

Um, that's, I don't know if you read science fiction outside of Star Trek, like novels and stuff, but there's-

It's based on Those Who Walk Away, right? It's based on, uh-

Okay, yeah

... or is it Ursula Le Guin? It's like-