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William James)
Father of American psychology
The central idea of this psychomyth, the scapegoat,
I sat down and started a story, just because I felt like it, with nothing but the word “Omelas” in mind. It came from a road sign: Salem (Oregon) backwards. Don’t you read road signs backwards?
“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?” From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?
But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic.
who is "we"?
As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb.
Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.
I think it is often hard to determine what is "destructive" either to a person or society in the long term
If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate.
😂😂
Religion yes, clergy no.
so, not "organized religion" just belief or theology.
One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.
In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten.
the use of pronouns in this story is *chef's kiss*
dehumanizes the child, makes us complicit in the torture
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.
But it isn’t an answer. It’s a question.
how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain.
Omelas already exists: no need to build it or choose it. We already live here – in the narrow, foul, dark prison we let our ignorance, fear, and hatred build for us and keep us in, here in the splendid, beautiful city of life. . . .
are we the happy people in the city, the ones who walk away, or the kid?
