The Ones Who Walk Away

American Thinker.com ^ | September 26, 2020 | A. Wilderson

[Kaslin]

There is a 1973 science fiction or fantasy story, depending upon how you define those terms, by Ursula K. Le Guin titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” Le Guin got the name for the fictional city of Omelas from a fleeting glance in her rear-view mirror at a road sign as she drove away from Salem, Oregon. Omelas is a utopian place, whose citizens spend their days and nights seeking pleasure, recreating, or working, if they choose. Everyone has enough to eat and places to sleep without having to toil for it, a true paradise. However, beneath the city a child is imprisoned in horrible conditions. It isn’t explained why, but the existence of Omelas is dependent on the continuous torture of this child. Le Guin was obviously setting up the moral quandary which is the spine of the story.

Most citizens of Omelas have accepted the bargain, barely thinking about the shackled child below the streets. A few, though, are troubled enough by this situation that they cannot. Sooner or later the troubled ones simply walk away from Omelas, turning their backs on all they know. When the Walk Away movement began, Le Guin’s story resonated loudly in my head.

I am not a scholar of Le Guin’s work, but from reading her and about her one can glean that she was a feminist and an anarchist. Her honest, old-fashioned leftism viewed a practical anarchism as an end goal achievable and worth striving for. I don’t agree with, but do feel an empathy for, those bitter old anarchists. After using them as cannon fodder, the socialists pulled a cynical bait-and-switch. The people who call themselves anarchists today wink at each other,

[kosciusko51]

Thank you for the post. When I saw the headline, I immediately thought of the Le Guin story.

[skr]

Reminds me of ST:TOS, The Cloud Minders, first broadcast in 1969. The elite lived in a city in the clouds while the workers provided all the labor down on the planet.

[Ignatz]

Outstanding article, IMHO.

I read “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” years ago. It is very thought-provoking.

[Dr. Sivana]

Reminds me of ST:TOS, The Cloud Minders, first broadcast in 1969. The elite lived in a city in the clouds while the workers provided all the labor down on the planet.

Both references remind me of the German silent movie classic "Metropolis", though in this case the workers underground were many, and the elite were few.

[Covenantor]

Much of those utopian/dystopian themes were derived or based on H.G. Wells works, “The Time Machine”’s Eloi and Morlocks, etc, and Darwian Eugenics.

There’s an interesting radio interview of H.G. Wells on yt, long but a worthwhile listen.

[7thson]

Atlas Shrugged. Who is John Galt?