It lies on the borderline between fantasy and reality. It’s the culmination of the continuing legacy of beings that never found peace until they found it. “It” is the paradise you’ve always longed for but never really deserved. “It” is Omelas.
Omelas is a city that you can’t quite pinpoint on the globe, for it lies anywhere you want it to lie. Maybe you favour a spot that’s in the southern hemisphere, or maybe you fancy the northern lights; Omelas is where you want it to be. Moreover, Omelas is what you want it to be. It's a city greener than the Amazons, or a concrete jungle if that’s where your thrill is to be found. In it, everyone sings instead of speaking—or no one utters a sound if that's where your comfort lies.
It seems like the very endpoint of our collective efforts, a piece of Eden on Earth, without forbidden fruits; everything is permissible. A land of fulfilment, a physical manifestation of everyone’s subjective understanding of what it means to be happy. Everyone is happy, or at least on the surface… How did they get there anyway?
Nothing is without a price, and achieving Omelas was not for free. You see, every powerful city needs its fuel, and Omelas relies on an environmentally friendly substitute for petroleum—one that doesn’t require much fiddling in the Middle East. Not only is it renewable, in fact, you seldom have to worry about carbon footprint or questionable foreign policies at all. That substitute is the everlasting agony of one child.
Omelas is bound by a contract: in exchange for this permanent misery of the child, this utopia keeps functioning as it is. This child is locked in a very small room in which the light rarely finds a way inside through the cracks of the walls. He’s kept alive, but only barely. The population of Omelas are restrained from showing any form of kindness towards this child, so much so that they only use the pronoun “it” while referring to this child. It is hungry, it is thirsty, and it probably knows no more about love than any unicellular organism. Technically, not everyone is happy, but at least everyone “else” is happy.
This contract is fragile, so fragile that the most minute act of kindness or sympathy towards the child could stop this dream state from being what it is. Although anything in Omelas can change to cater to the individual preferences, this child is an objective truth that everyone has to deal with to live in this paradise.
Moreover, everyone in Omelas has to learn about the existence of this wretched child, and realises that this is an act of evil. To ease their rest at night, however, they deem it a necessary evil. Despite the fact that the picture I painted depicted everyone living merrily, it's rather deceiving to think of it this way. Some people didn't feel too strongly about this exchange; the ones who walk away from Omelas.
This text is inspired by and based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1973). Somewhat a short read—about four pages—but I implore you to give it a read. Walking away from Omelas means an uncertain destination, uncertain destiny, and ultimately wouldn’t change much as it doesn't salvage the matter at hand.
The matter at hand is a bit more complex as breaking the contract by any means only means that Omelas loses its status as a perfect paradise, degraded into a city where far more people could and will eventually suffer. Is it worth it? The price of eternal joy hit its all-time low—but even at that price, is it worth it? The net happiness is through the roof, evil has been almost wholly condensed and concentrated to be inflicted on a single entity, but… you get the question by now. Omelas may have no army to protect it (because it doesn't need one), but the most powerful weapon in its arsenal is manufactured helplessness.
Some have a little more conscience to grasp the amount of evil, but they grease the gears and get going with the simple excuse of having no power, being of no help. The drill is to sulk and frown for a few moments and then go about. Individual power is truly dwarfed in Omelas and maybe that’s the case, but it’s never completely absent.
To me, at least, Omelas doesn't only represent a perfect paradise, it's a caricature of the status quo. Little discrepancies are to be found here and there, but people are overall satisfied with the order of things, not because it's good, but because it's the norm—the way things have been since they were born—and it flows with their currents. It’s easy, convenient, and it doesn’t offend their pockets (for the most part).
Before you find your way back to bed, ask yourself instead about the real cost of today if, to form it, suffering is the regular way.