They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.
This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that 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. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.
Omelas has an unusual coming of age ritual: the would be adults are initiated into a horrible truth that is simultaneously the foundation of civic happiness. And they may not alter this state of affairs on pain of losing their prosperity (and other good things). In addition, their subsequent free speech is limited in a crucial way, they may not comfort or express compassion to the child that is sacrificed for their flourishing. This would violate "the terms" of a kind of (social) contract (recall here; and here) that is either the actual root of this commercial republic, or a kind of civic religion that structures its social reality.
A skeptical reader may well deny that such "terms" could ever express a truth since it is so manifestly unjust. But as I have noted before, if the terms actually constitute (political) justice in the city, then this move is external to the civic consciousness of Omelas. (Of course, a defender of natural right might take that as evidence that forms of legal positivism are pathways to evil.) And moreover sometimes the truth indicates the abominable misery of the status quo.
But my present interest is to note that the ritual expresses the significance of social and political knowledge in Omelas. Because this ritual is initiated in order to convey a key knowledge about social life of Omelas when the would-be-adults are capable of "understanding" the "explanations" of it. The reactions of those exposed to it, suggests that those not yet ready for understanding are carefully guarded from the truth. So, the miserable child is a social taboo from which the young are guarded carefully. That is to say, the not young maintain a culture of silence among those who are not yet initiated. This suggests that in so far as it is a civic religion it is carefully expressed. It is by no means obvious that the many visitors to Omelas that the proud city receives would know about it since these might well tell the children of Omelas or be tempted to protest the state of affairs. (This suggests that freedom of speech is curtailed even more widely in Omelas.)
I have noted before that despite the fact that the actual religion of Omelas lacks clergy, the miserable and innocent child is a kind of piacular scapegoat. To me this suggests that the state and its civic religion has claimed for itself that which properly belongs to revealed or clerical religion.
One of my students, Robin Kan, pointed out to me that the sacrifice of the innocent child functions like a cosmic balance principle in their civic religion. For, at any given time of the polity's existence, the child's immense suffering balances out the flourishing of the polity ("that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.") Structurally, such a cosmic balance principle is very similar to Christ's redemptive suffering for the sins of humanity (which is sometimes discussed in terms of such a cosmic balance), except that Christ voluntarily takes on this task and the child is forced into it without ever being allowed any understanding of its role. It is not even offered an ideological explanation for its suffering, and thanks to Omelas' social taboo on it, it has literally no chance of anticipating it. Of course, Omelas' balance principle is not cosmic, but local, bounded by the the territory of Omelas; the child does not redeem all of humanity.
It is natural to teach Omelas as a means to discuss the limitations of utilitarianism in an introductory context. This year my own students saw in it a parable of colonial/imperial conquest or capitalist exploitation, and the way the media makes that available to viewers at the center and simultaneously makes us it feel impossible to change. In a future post I want to discuss one such interpretation because it centers on the purported absence of war in Omelas.
But it is worth noting that if one reads the story on its own terms, it depicts the horrors of state power devoted to the "happiness" of its people. And in the story this is a power that rests on the well informed understanding and tacit consent of its adult citizens, and it is presented as the best kind of polity that accepts the legitimacy of state power. That is to say, the implied point of view of the narration is the question whether it is worth paying the price of the benefits of state power.
Of course, my present interpretation is informed by my recent (recall) reading of Le Guin's "The Day Before the Revolution." This story invites us to see in one of those who walk away from Omelas the revolutionary founders of a form of anarchism (which rejects state power).* That is, if we take Omelas as a best case scenario for statism, then it invites us both to reflect on the price we're willing to pay to accept our complicity in its horrors, and to what degree we're willing to contemplate (and to pursue) serious alternatives.
One final thought: the line of interpretation that I have offered here is not an alternative to, or a refutation of, treating Omelas as a means toward discussing the limitations of utilitarianism. For, as Foucault emphasizes, utilitarianism is not merely an ethical system, it is also a technology of governance. And so it does ask us what price we're willing to pay in pursuing such technologies and if we're willing to contemplate doing without them.
*It is worth noting that in that story Odo did not grow up in Omelas, and was cultivated into her revolutionary life by being born in a revolutionary movement. So Le Guin's own subsequent invitation is to read "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" as a parable. It strikes me that readers might reasonably reject that suggestion.
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