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Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

And insofar as Omelas is trying to make a point about life in general, history in general, potential societies or lives in general, it is simply reactionary. Who is even Ursula Le Guin to tell us that everything must have a seed of evil in its core?

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I don't think that's le Guin's thesis. The Dispossessed is her book that explores the nature of utopia, its subtitle is "an ambiguous utopia" even. I think the focus of omelas is the juxtaposition of outward peace and prosperity and internal brutality. The key to the book is how people react to seeing the rotten core of their society. It's not a thesis on what all societies look like-- le Guin has constructed many complex, lifelike societies that don't have such brutally evil defects, but a kind of society that sounds awfully familiar. The point of this story is how one reacts to the revelation of the society's nature, both within the narrative and externally in the reader. Who walks away from Omelas?

Yes, absolutely. I think LeGuin is the last "great" Utopian writer we've had. The Dispossessed is a beautiful work, and one that doesn't have a dark heart. It has bad parts, it might not last, but it's not Omelas. You're exactly right, Omelas is about how we the reader would choose.

Would you leave everything behind because of evil? Would you live with it?

A good answer to a good question!

It's been a while since I read that short story, but the message I took from it wasn't that there was a seed of evil in the society, but that no matter what society or system exists, there will always be those that cannot fit into it. Perhaps someone considered a failure in one society, would be a "king" in another. If someone doesn't have something that society values, perhaps it will be hard to coexist in that environment, causing them to leave or become something deemed worse. Maybe Le Guin had other motives with her story. Maybe Utopia is just a step towards the next Utopia, which will itself be another step, due to an inherent lack of satisfaction. There are many ways to interpret the story, which is why I have always enjoyed it.

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