About The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

A free child visits a cellar in which a scapegoat child is imprisoned. 

The presence of the scapegoat and the reasons for it were explained to them when they were between the ages of eight and twelve (and so 9-11). 

The children who go see this child and decide to immediately leave Omelas are described by Le Guin as "adolescents." 

Adolescence is understood to start around 10 years old. 

The imprisoned child itself, according to Le Guin, is "near 10."

So to summarize, sometimes an adolescent child goes to visit another adolescent child who is in a terrible situation, trapped in a cellar, and later an adolescent child leaves that cellar and the city of Omelas altogether, leaving behind a child in the cellar.

Do you see it now? Is Omelas now a bit more credible?

Upon being confronted with the vision of the suffering child, the visitor is shocked and sickened and disgusted by the injustice of the situation. It seems to be a Catch-22. Free the prisoner, help it, and you alleviate the child's suffering, but at the cost of causing suffering for everyone in Omelas.

And yet the thought of leaving that room, knowing now that the child is here, knowing the conditions under which it is subsisting, and enjoying the fruits of its abominable suffering by rejoining the joy of Omelas that is predicated on it, is Intolerable.

But there is a way. The only thing blocking the obvious solution is self-interest.

The child has not always lived in the room. The child remembers its mother's voice.

For that matter, the child is young. Again, perhaps ten, though it looks closer to six, because it has begun to regress toward a more original state.

And then it clicks home. The solution.

Do the only thing possible for a true human being to do.

Take the child's place. Omelas needs a scapegoat. A child. A child your age. Become the scapegoat.

Give the child your clothing, and take theirs -- the costume of the unfairly persecuted and damned for no good reason -- and wear them.  Be a total goddamn fool. Step into the room, walk into the darkness, and let the color lock behind you. 

And let the prisoner leave, to return back to the world. 

As Le Guin says, it is too uncouth, in truth, for Omelas now. So it leaves the city, wearing your clothes. Out into the darkness and the wilderness, where it can behave naturally, and be free.

Do this, and hope. Hope that like you, and almost certainly like the child you are saving, and also the one it saved the same way, another child will come along to make the same decision. Have faith that you will encounter an actual human being at some point, who will step into your shoes, take your burden upon themselves, and set you free into the wild, whatever that is, and whatever that will mean.

This, and not the child's suffering, is the engine on which the glory of Omelas is predicated. 

Compassion and empathy and selflessness. 

"I" am not more important than "you." 

We are both divine. We are of the same substance.

Regardless of our DNA, once you travel deep enough down the chain into the lowest quantum levels, of subatomic particles, this is literally true. There is no distinction between one person and another. Or between a person and a stone, for that matter. Just a big smear of probabilistic strangeness, wave functions and the like.

The adults who end up leaving Omelas are the parents of children who have made the sacrifice. Consider. Their child goes to visit the scapegoat, and like so many others, does not return. Someone probably reports seeing a child wearing their clothing leaving the city on the day/night of the visit. The parent, grief-stricken and troubled, decides to visit the scapegoat, to see if they can collect any clues as to what exactly their child saw that caused them to leave, or where their child might have gone. They look into the tiny room and to their horror, the child they see looking back at them is their own.

They are horrified. Once again, it seems to be an impossible choice. Save their child, doom everyone else. Preserve Omelas, doom their child.

They go home and grieve and rage against the injustice of it. Until finally, after some time, they realize the truth of the Cycle. The child that their child has saved once made the same sacrifice, taking the place of the scapegoat before them, who no doubt took the place of the one before them, and so on.

Understanding this, the parent has excellent reason to believe that at some point their child will be set free in a similar fashion and released into the wild. The best way to ensure that they can be with their child as soon as this occurs, is to venture into the wild themselves, and wait. 

Out there, among the freefolk, they will encounter human beings who can make hard choices for the betterment of all.

So they walk away, forsaking the facade of a happiness predicated on injustice for the far more substantive and lasting peace provided by authenticity and integrity.

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“For I have given You an example, that You should do as I have done”

John 13:15

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.'"

Matt 12:30-31

What about this isn't clear?

"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested."

Matt 4:1

"Jesus told his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?'"

Matt 16:24-26

"It's your turn now to stand where I stand."

Tori Amos

"Silent All These Years"