Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?
--From "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula Le Guin
First of all, the citizens of Omelas are enjoying record profits. The recession hasn't just been over for more than a year. It's given way to the biggest corporate earnings quarter in the history of the American Republic. American corporations made money at an annual rate of $1,659,000,000,000. That's a lot of money. And the citizens of Omelas are more than happy to spend it.
Part of the reason the recession is over is that luxury goods are flying off the shelves. The citizens of Omelas are buying up big screen TVs, computers, games, toys, and RVs. Life is so good in Omelas, bright-towered by the sea that its citizens can even buy luxury items for their pets. Nothing is too good for the people or the pets of Omelas.
Why limit oneself to the run of the mill luxury items? In Omelas, even people can be purchased as pets if the price is right. "A Morgan Stanley trader recently tried to hire a dwarf for a bachelor party in Miami, asking the dwarf to meet him at the airport in a "Men in Black" style suit, according to e-mail exchanges."
Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about,offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt.
I know that it is hard to imagine for most of us. Can there really be a place where all the finest jewelry, the latest technology, the grandest mansions and the best healthcare in the world are right there at your fingertips? Is there really such a fairy tale world where even undergarments are made from the finest jewels? I know it must be difficult for so many of you out there to believe that such a world exists.
Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all.
But this world isn't far away or once upon a time. It is here and now in America. And like its fictional counterpart in Omelas, it harbors a terrible secret.
In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. In the room a child is sitting. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes.
Now the fairy tale city seems more real, doesn't it? The good life of some built on the suffering of others...now that sounds more familiar, more tangible, more real. Someone has to pay the price. Someone must bear the burden. And such a one would become monstrous, unrecognizable and inhuman. Soon it would be easy not to feel compassion or pity for such a one.
It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits haunched in the corner. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
There it is. The unemployed worker. The illegal immigrant. The welfare queen. The juvenile delinquent. That one can stay in the basement. That one can stay outside the walls of our gated Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. That one can take out the trash and tend the gardens and clean the toilets. But that one must be outside the gates and back in the basement when the citizens of Omelas return home to enjoy the good life.
That is how it was in Santa Barbara, California. For a time I would tutor the sons and daughters of the wealthy who lived up in the Montecito hills. And each day I would arrive just as the army of day laborers was leaving. They were mostly immigrants in the backs of pick up trucks. Dirty. Sweaty. Exhausted. And with miles to go before they slept, for there is no affordable housing in Santa Barbara, California. And at the same time an army of SUVs and BMWs were returning home, passing through the gates to the illusion that perhaps the gardens and the toilets and the trash somehow took care of themselves.
Many people read about Omelas, bright-towered by the sea and express revulsion. How could anyone live with that knowledge? How could anyone tolerate the inequality, the injustice? How could they ignore Lazarus at the gate? How could they stop by to open the door and kick the child while it's down, just for kicks?
Well, how is it that both the Democratic and the "compromise" tax bills do just that to the working poor right now? The new tax deal has been hailed by the mainstream media and the right as "tax cuts for all." But buried deep within an article from the "liberal" New York Times is this appalling fact: the new deal raises taxes on any individual making less than $20,000 and any family making less than $40,000. The reason is that no one is fighting to extend the Making Work Pay tax credit.
Here in my home state of West Virginia, the median household income is right around $38,000. So while we were arguing about "tax cuts for all" or just "tax cuts for the middle class," no one was bothered one iota about raising taxes on the working poor. Our DINO Senator Manchin joined the Republican ranks to make sure the wealthiest 2% would get their tax cuts. But has he even bothered to raise the issue that either tax bill would amount to a tax increase on nearly half of his constituents?
One of the comments (by camelopardalis) from my previous diary put it this way:
The secret is something like this.
There are about 40 million un/under employed.
Most business has adjusted to a market with 270 million consumers instead of 310 million consumers. Most businesses are now doing just fine.
If not a single one of the 40 million un/unders ever spends another $ again, it doesn't bother business.
There are 40 million excess people. They have zero leverage with the business world.
But, hey, it is a secret!
There are forty million excess people. There are forty million someones locked in the basement. As another great diary put it, Work Sucks and There's Not Enough of It. American corporations are doing just fine while excluding millions of Americans from the American dream. Even prior to the recession, income was stagnant for everyone but the top 10%. Even before the recession, income inequality was soaring to record levels. As we saw on the rec list yesterday, the jobs outlook for the future is worse than we thought. Part time jobs and low wage jobs are the only ones coming back. That just leads to more inequality, more poverty, more division. And that gross inequality is immoral, irresponsible, and bad news for everyone in the long run, including the citizens of Omelas.
But is that all there is to the story? An elite class lives in the lap of luxury while some poor one must suffer? Is that all there is to this fairy tale kingdom? Is that all there is to be found in our earthly history?
But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.
At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back.
Do we have that kind of courage? That nobility? That integrity? Can any of us leave the comfort of Omelas, walk ahead into the darkness and never come back?
How many of us have that courage? Even those of us who are not wearing bejeweled undergarments and buying separate summer homes for our pets are all to willing to live in Omelas and shut our eyes to the cost. Too often we let ourselves benefit from the low cost of items produced overseas at slave wages. Too often we hold our tongue as our co-worker is laid off and bend over backwards to pick up the slack for fear that we will be tossed out into the darkness next. Too often we cling to our little corner office in Omelas, bright-towered by the sea instead of walking away or talking back or kicking down the damn door and letting that child out into the light of the day. And so the citizens of Omelas, bright-towered by the sea live not only off of the suffering of a few down in the basement but off of the complicity of every citizen who would rather not walk off into the darkness.
And what is the darkness but the unknown? And we are terrified of that unknown. My job might suck and I might have been cut to part-time and I might have lost my health insurance benefits and I might be making shit for wages but the alternative is...unknown.
Well I say that the unknown is preferable to a city that hides a suffering child in the basement, yet alone forty million suffering ones. I say that the unknown darkness is preferable to a society that entertains itself watching a select few of those forty million ones desperately compete for a million dollar ticket into the light on games shows whose hosts shamelessly say "I really hope you get that money." Bullshit. You have the money. Just give it to them.
The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
We're not in a recession. We're in Omelas.
Will anyone walk away with me? |
