feotakahari

Omelas needs little in the way of a plot summary, inasmuch as it has little in the way of a plot. It proposes a society in which every person save one is happy and content, but that one lives in pain and agony. Without that one’s suffering, it would not be possible for the others to live so happily. Most people accept this, but a few choose to leave the city rather than live under such a contract. 

A scene in Guardians finds the protagonist in the sewage pit of a wealthy and opulent city. Living so finely produces a tremendous amount of waste, enough to overflow the pit were it not somehow disposed of. In place of laborers, a single baby dragon is chained in the pit, forced to burn away the waste day and night so that it does not drown in sewage. The people of the city seldom go near the dragon, nor do they listen to what he has to say. But the protagonist breaks the dragon’s chains, letting him free and allowing the city streets to fill with waste.

Omelas is light and airy, a thought experiment without context. There’s no explanation of why one person needs to suffer, because an explanation isn’t the point. Guardians, by contrast, is grounded in knowledge of exactly what’s happening and exactly why it’s tolerated. This means that Guardians can make a point Omelas isn’t equipped to discuss: creating utility is not the same as moving utility around.

Maybe you would be unhappy if you had to pick fruit in the hot sun. But if someone else picks the fruit for you to eat, their utility loss doesn’t become zero just because it isn’t your utility loss. It’s not necessarily a gain in utility if someone other than you washes your clothes, or if someone other than you cooks the food that you eat. You’re not assembling your own iPhone or mining the diamond for your wedding ring, but you still have to remember that there are actual human beings doing those tasks, and that it matters whether those people are exploited.

There’s no solution for Omelas, but Guardian’s city is fixable, and that starts with letting the streets flood. When the citizens are reminded that waste exists, they can discuss why there’s so much waste and how to have less of it. There will always be some waste that needs to be burned, but if citizens of the community are burning it, there can be an actual discussion about how much waste should be made and what level of consumption will lead to the most total happiness. It’s not as tidy and out-of-sight as a chained dragon, but it means no one has to suffer as much as the dragon had to suffer–and maybe, just possibly, our own lowest-paid laborers don’t need to be as poor and ill-cared-for as they currently are.

(Side note: this is one of the few points where I see eye to eye with Jessa Crispin. She makes some great points about how “self-care feminism” often means paying poor people a pittance to care for you, then pretending you don’t have or need support from anyone else.)