The Dejection of a Confined Child: Conversations in Le Guin’s Omelas and Dostoevsky’s Karamazov-Rebellion
Let’s build an imaginary world. Let’s say, an inexplicable existence told you and the whole population to confine an unknown, unclaimed, powerless child, to achieve an ultimate common happiness.
Would you do that, to achieve a greater happiness for 99.9% of population?
Well, Ivan Karamazov (of The Brothers Karamazov) vehemently opposes and resents the idea.
“Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony.
And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest the truth is not worth such a price.” He lamented to Alyosha.
The context of Ivan’s almost-monologue was actually the existence of Hell, Divine Forgiveness, and Prayer, but we can catch to that later on.
The correlation of it to the very first statement above, however, is crystal clear: the talk of a sacrificial-child to achieve a certain greater purpose.
Was the ‘imaginary world’ a real place? Not really.
That was basically the description of Omelas in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The One Who Walks Away From Omelas”.
Omelas was quite an extreme depiction of Utilitarian & Utophia-Dystophian World, yet the conversation of utilitarianism it self was inspired by a real world take.
But is there truly any real world situation comparable to Omelas?
Think about child labor cases that delivers your incredibly cheap goods.
Think about orphans in refugee camps.
Think about street children in a metropolitan city.
What Le Guin wanted Omelas to convey was the willful ignorance, the ultimate decision-making of humans to stay in their bubble of happiness.
There is a reason why ignorance is truly a bliss, you know.
I can’t help but pointed out how most of us, both conscious and unconsciously, chose a life of willful ignorance.
A utilitarian life that ignore small matters just because the bigger picture look somewhat peaceful.
That include the willful ignorance of children, unknown to us, uncoveted by the world.
Please, do not befallen to an assumptive thought that I do not acknowledge each one of us’s sufferings.
I do understand that each life has it own weigh of suffering, incomparable to each, as we’d never known the degree of pain in which others shoulder.
After all, Buddhism always reminds us that; to live is to suffer, no?
Yet, Ivan brought a point that I must highlights: adults have clear consciences when they bit the poison apple. But the children? They are innocent! Why should they shoulder solidarity in sin among men?
A child, somewhere in the world, has been sentenced for a life of solidarity in suffering. The child, dejectedly carry on with life confined in a (sometimes) gilded cage called gratefulness.
Le Guin attempted to brought how eventually, people would chose their own happiness. Is that so wrong?
Not really. People deserve happiness. I’d always argue that happiness is a fleeting emotion that will never perpetually stays, but humans simply wanted to avoid pain as much as possible.
Bentham’s school of thought also constantly glorified that — it is within human nature to avoid pain and pursue happiness.
Of course, I am a human as well — I’d known of happiness, I’d known of tremendous pain that burnt you alive. I understand this side of human most, since I’m unfortunately a human as well.
Yet again, is the willful ignorance such a wrong notion?
Are we truly responsible for the lives of others?
Aren’t we only culpable to our own questionable existence?
Do we exist for ourselves, or for others?
What’s better? Individualism or communalism?
Critics of utilitarianism, unfortunately, never truly touched much of those points. Thus, everything is still, well, questionable.
Yet, you know.
You know, at times I’d ask myself: How many bones I’ve stepped upon in order to be alive? How much blood’s on my hand to persist in this wretched world?
Its pure torture, at times, knowing your uselessness and irrelevancy of you existence at the face of structural suffering.
Sometimes you were mad at the glorious world. Sometimes you were just mad at your insignificant self.
Questioning your morality, your ethics, while pointing out you own hideousness, your own hypocrisy, was such an intense experience. I would recommend it, though.
So, the conversation. Of innocents, of sufferings, of dejections, of happiness. The only conclusion that I can get for this discussion is unfortunately, only a single thought:
That we all are inevitably, inescapably, interlinked with each other.
It is now the time of ‘re-thinking your position in this world’ o’clock.
