The Ones Who Wank Away From Omelas
Here's an ancient wank that's come back to haunt the board it was posted on.

Almost a year ago, a thread was posted on the Comic Book Rumbles forum asking a hypothetical question about Ursula LeGuin's short story, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. People weigh in their opinions, discuss what they'd do if they found themselves in the eponymous Omelas, and a thought-provoking discussion is had by all. Supposedly.


The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas describes an Utopian city in which disease, famine and strife of all sorts. They have festivals, orgies, and generally live in happy-happy land for century after century.

The price of all this, however, is that they must slowly kill a randomly chosen child over several years of hideous, stomach-turning abuse--after which they choose another one, and the process goes on. A rite of passage in the society is to go look at the child suffering in the closet in which they keep it. Occasionally, some citizens of the city become disgusted with the practice and walk away.

The general consensus among the posters, at least for the first two pages, is that the moral decision is not to walk away or to stay, but to cut a bloody swathe through the bodies of the Omelans to rescue the child. Yes, they're a violent lot.

Even with several dissenting opinions, the debate remains fairly civil and philosophical, even with the entry into the discussion of Chuckg, veteran poster renowned for his abrasiveness and lack of tact. This state of affairs lasts only until the entry into the thread of the poster known as Sam.

You know what? I think Omelas has made the morally correct decision.

The underlying suffering of an innocent child is horrible. It is terrible in a way that beggars comprehension.

Know what's worse? A thousand children living in exactly the same circumstances. Or a hundred thousand, or a million, depending on how big Omelas is.

Because make no mistake: That's what the real world is like. Right now, everywhere in the world, there are children, and for that matter adults, living in conditions every bit as horrible as that poor Omelasian child. Hell, there are people who'd trade places with that child in a flat second if they could. And there are millions of them.

If you free the child, it is absolutely certain that a thousand other children will live virtually identical lives of pointless suffering. That's what happens in the real world. That's what you're restoring.

There is a statistically significant portion of the population which lives in conditions every bit as abominable as what you quoted. There always has been. The portion is lower now than it has been in the past (in the US, anyway), but it has never even been remotely close to being eliminated.

Except in Omelas, where they've managed to whittle it down to just a single person. Which is still horrible, but better than the thousands upon thousands who live that way in the real world.

For reference, by the way, the conditions to which he is referring are here.

Some people think that there are flaws in Sam's arguments. They aren't shy about pointing them out.

A note: from observations of past threads in this forum, long since deleted when the board crashed, unfortunately, Sam appears to have a rather...jaundiced view of humanity. The posters aren't shy about bringing that up, either.

Then wank explodes when The Real Nemo announces, "Sorry, the sheer amount of self-righteousness in this thread is making me sick..." And civility--especially from Chuckg--goes out the window. A few pages on, the debate between Chuckg and Sam starts to grow even more heated, climaxing in this magnificent tirade by Chuckg against Sam.

It's fortunate that good sense wins out and both Chuckg and Sam leave the thread before anything really bad breaks out, isn't it?

Unfortunately, this is just the prelude.

On the 16th of this month, Metaphysician starts a thread asking which of the great philosophical debates to come up on Comic Book Rumbles should never be mentioned again. Omelas, obviously is one of them.

And wank explodes.