Someone in Omelas just had the best idea in the history of the city - ThreadSky

atherton.bsky.social • 421 days ago

Someone in Omelas just had the best idea in the history of the city

chuck a fertilized egg and an actual child in a freezer for three years and then tell me more about how the egg is a child

Comments

koeselitz.bsky.social•421 days ago

you can’t make an Omelas without cracking some eggs

joolia.bsky.social•421 days ago

I don’t know what omelas is but please don’t actually chuck a child in a freezer

atherton.bsky.social•421 days ago

it's a fictional city in a short story/parable by Ursula K Le Guin about a utopia for everyone in it* except that utopic existence hinges on one kid locked cruely away in a small room forever.

joolia.bsky.social•421 days ago

Ooooooh. Also, fuck.

atherton.bsky.social•421 days ago

not to downplay the seriousness of what you posted but it also described the condition of the story basically perfectly

joolia.bsky.social•421 days ago

lol it’s ok I think I set the tone when I proposed chucking a baby in a freezer

lessbadproblems.bsky.social•421 days ago

Not sure Atherton actually gets Those Who Leave Omelas

atherton.bsky.social•421 days ago

The story is about how the cruelty of the utopia is so much that knowing about the suffering is a moral quandry that can only be resolved by leaving it and its sick compromise behind. Or, as this recent work demonstrates, changing Omelas such that it doesn't hold https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/

lfillingham.bsky.social•421 days ago

Isn't this the second time I've seen someone say you don't understand that story on here? Or am I stuck reliving this day forever?

atherton.bsky.social•421 days ago

it's probably happened before. Bluesky runs on Omelas jokes and one new person fully unaware that the riffs are made with fluency im the source materials

lesserabe.bsky.social•421 days ago

Thanks for posting this.

lessbadproblems.bsky.social•421 days ago

It's not a utopia. It's us.

atherton.bsky.social•421 days ago

yeah obviously. I mean it's us with summer festivals and orgies and its own special drug, but yes, when Le Guin wrote "Salem" backwards and made it a parable, she declared it a utopia and also made it about the society in which she lived and we live.

lessbadproblems.bsky.social•421 days ago

Those Who Walk Away From Omelas is about Those Who Leave, not about those who stay, yet in the same vein, what do they leave to? They don't say to change the society in question, but leave and don't go to the same place. You're supposed to ask who they are, because we decided to stay, didn't we?

atherton.bsky.social•421 days ago

Eat shit, Hemingway: "Omelas, Alabama" new shortest, saddest story.

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