(Crossposted from my Substack; written as part of the Halfhaven challenge.)

Ever since I named my blog Fool Heart, the short description of the blog has said:

The only way out of Omelas is to die.

Allow me to explain.

In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin describes a beautiful utopia called Omelas, then points out that you, the reader, probably don’t find a perfect upotia like that to be believable. So, to make it more realistic, she introduces a twist. Somewhere in the beautiful city of Omelas is a small child held captive in a closet and perpetually tormented. All the people in Omelas believe their society is only perfect because of the suffering of this child. When the Omelasians are young and first see the child, they are upset by its suffering, but as they get older they come to terms with the fact their society is built on the suffering of this child, and they accept it. They even seem to appreciate the sacrifice of the child, as it gives meaning to their otherwise “vapid, irresponsible” happiness.

Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.

While most people in Omelas grow to accept the suffering of the small child, a small few reject it. These people walk away from Omelas, never to return.

Le Guin’s story is usually described as a criticism of utilitarianism: the idea that it’s right to maximize human wellbeing and minimize suffering. The situation in Omelas is straightforwardly justified by utilitarianism. If you can have a near-utopia at the expense of only a single person’s suffering, then that would be far better than any society that has ever actually existed, according to utilitarianism. Le Guin is said to be criticizing utilitarianism, holding up those virtuous few who reject such coldhearted reasoning and instead walk away from Omelas.

Recently, Tobias H on LessWrong pointed out that people often misread the story when they believe it’s a criticism of utilitarianism. Tobias points out that the entire first half of the story is just describing the utopian city of Omelas, and showing the reader that the idea of a pure utopia is not believable to them.

“Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy?”

“No?”

“Then let me describe one more thing.”

Most people think utopia is too good to be true. There has to be some kind of catch. To prove this, Le Guin introduces a catch in the form of the small suffering child, whose suffering somehow gives rise to the flourishing of the city of Omelas. Once there’s a catch, suddenly Omelas feels more believable. That is the point of the story. That most people cannot believe in pure happiness as a possibility.

But Tobias and some of the commenters don’t agree that “most people cannot believe in happiness without a catch” is the only theme of the story, because of the ending. The people who walk away from Omelas are seen by Tobias and the others as rejecting the utilitarian calculus of the Omelasians, and this seems to contradict the “most people cannot believe in happiness without a catch” theme.

I disagree they leave Omelas because they reject utilitarianism. I think they leave Omelas because they are among the few who can believe in a pure utopia, without a catch, and they reject happiness built on suffering. They walk away from Omelas to find something greater. A pure utopia. Something “even less imaginable to most of us than” Omelas, as Le Guin says. Less imaginable because most people cannot imagine a happy society that isn’t built on suffering. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas isn’t a critique of utilitarianism, but an endorsement of idealism.

Maybe I’m worse than the Omelasians, or maybe Ursula K. Le Guin lived around much different people from the ones I’ve known, but I’m pretty sure her view of humanity is wrong. I do not think people would walk away from Omelas. Not because nobody would ever feel the desire to, but because it would be illegal, and punishable by death.

Omelas is a paradise built on the misery of a small child. Most people cannot stomach a “terrible paradox” like this. For most people, there is no room in their heart to see themselves as evil, even if it’s a necessary evil. No, people would not cry tears when they saw the suffering child for the first time. Not unless they were tears of joy. Of ecstasy. For the people of Omelas would hate the small child.

The first time a young Omelasian got to see the child, it would be celebrated as a coming-of-age ritual. The young person would be eager to finally have the opportunity to personally torment the evil one. The one whose very wellbeing is the only obstacle to the goodness in their society. They would laugh and scream in delight as they kicked the child. Their parents would hold them back, not out of concern for the child’s wellbeing, but only to make sure the child isn’t damaged too much.

When have humans ever been able to accept evil, even necessary evil? When American white people held black slaves, they didn’t say, “sorry, we know slavery is bad, but we really need this for our economy. We treasure your sacrifice.” They talked about how black people were naturally subordinate and suited to slavery, and how the kind white folk were providing food, shelter, and civilization to those too incompetent and too violent to get those things on their own. They held the African Americans in paternalistic contempt.

When we force a third of the country into jobs with low pay and unstable work schedules, do we respect them for doing the jobs we don’t want to do? Or do we call them too lazy, too stupid to have gotten a better job? Do we accuse them – mostly immigrants – of having stolen the job from someone who deserved it more?

When we let drug addicts and the mentally ill languish on the streets so we can save money, are we grateful for their sacrifice? Or do we blame them for having chosen a life that nobody would ever choose?

People never want to accept being evil. If, for whatever reason, a society benefits from the suffering of a group, even if justified under utilitarianism ideals, people will not accept that it’s happening. They’ll engage in protective hatred, holding their scapegoats in contempt so they don’t feel the bitter sting of the double-edged blade of empathy. Nurses and doctors who care too much sometimes end up hating their patients, transforming their empathy into hate. And Omelasians, who naturally don’t want to weep or go home “in a tearless rage” at the injustice of their society, of themselves, instead would hate the small child whose suffering is necessary to their society. And thereby they’d give themselves a free pass to do what is necessary.

Protective hatred is required for people to engage in utilitarian calculus at all. Otherwise we would be unwilling to make straightforwardly, obviously good tradeoffs that benefit the average member of society. We would be unwilling to survive. Since the dawn of time, we have captured our enemies and tortured them, often while the women and children of the tribe cheered. If you can’t hate the person you need to torture, then you can’t torture them, and that means your tribe is feared less by the other tribes and goes extinct.

I’m not a utilitarian, but sometimes doing some utilitarian math is better than refusing to do the math because your heart hurts and you’d rather just pick whichever option doesn’t make you sad right now. Refusing to pull the trolley-problem lever (letting five people get run over on the main track, sparing the one person on the alternate track) may seem acceptable to you if you’re not a utilitarian. Maybe pulling the lever and thinking of yourself as a murderer gives you bad vibes, so you’d rather not. Maybe you think pulling the lever would be immoral because murder is wrong, or because actively doing something is different from allowing something to happen, or whatever. But if a real person in that situation had time to think it through, I think they would come to hate the one person on the alternate track. Why did you have to lie down there, of all places? I need to divert the train to save these five people, and you’re getting in the way! They would flip the lever in in a fit of anger. Protective hatred would allow a normally softhearted person to do the necessary utilitarian math and save five lives over one.

Le Guin believes in humanity, in idealism. I guess I’m more of a pessimist. I don’t think any amount of “believing in happiness” or celebrating the ones who walk away from Omelas is going to change human nature. I think science and technology will one day enable us to live in harmonious paradise, but that will come from cleverness and hard work, not a mere belief in goodness. After all, belief in goodness is not permitted. Those who walk away from Omelas would be stopped, and put to death.

The short description on my blog is currently, “The only way out of Omelas is to die” for a reason. Refusing to torment the small child, or even trying to leave the city quietly, would be a direct challenge to the deep cognitive dissonance the entire society is built on. Those who tried to leave would threaten to reveal that hurting the poor child is not actually morally righteous, and thereby threaten the paradise of Omelas. Such people would themselves be hated, and would be killed in as public and gruesome a way as possible, to discourage others. In this way, Omelas reveals itself to be an impossible fiction. You cannot have a society built on the suffering of one child. Such a society would commit greater evils, as they would celebrate evil, since the celebration of pure evil and pure goodness are the same. The desire for utopia and for dystopia are the same desire and lead to the same place.

We cannot escape reality. We cannot walk away from Omelas. Wherever you go, the incentive structures are the same. The tradeoffs imposed by reality are the same. The way to human flourishing is to study the universe with science and gain power with technology. This is not easy. That requires you to see things other people do not. To see things other people refuse to see. But be warned, because going against the grain, even if you’re right, will make you hated by others. If you want to lament with the poor child in the closet in Omelas, if you want to save them, you must be ready to suffer and die with them.