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UTOPIA

Ursula LeGuin's best work
is a short piece that plays
with our gut-level perception
that a perfect society is
impossible.  She describes an
idyllic place named Omelas,                A joke from usenet:
repeatedly harping on how it               If an imperfect utopia is an omelas,
all seems like a fairy tale.               then a small imperfect utopia
Finally, she adds one last                 must be an "omelette".
element to the scenario: a
suffering child locked away                It took me a while to get it,
in a closet, and *then* it all             but the word "omelette" is
seems much more realistic.                 probably the source of
                                           LeGuin's word Omelas (just as
                                           "Earth" was mutated into
Once I considered			   "Urras" in the Dispossesed):
myself one of "The Ones Who
Walk Away From Omelas", but		      You can't make an omelette
I've long since wandered back		      without breaking a few eggs.
to it.

                                                   (Though LeGuin says
                                                    that it's just
                                                    from a highway
                                                    sign: "Salem, O"
                                                    spelled backwards.)





    From Brian Eno's "A Year With Swollen Appendices":


    At lunch discussing comparative philosophical systems.
    Bono maintains Judaeo-Christianity shows good results.
    I say it's a question of what number and type of casualties
    you're willing to tolerate (arrange various philosophies
    along such axes).  Some systems produce only total
    losers and flat-out winners -- the banana republic
    model -- while others attempt a 'spread it evenly'
    approach -- welfare-stately.  Is 'scapegoatism' -- a big
    feature of many 'primitive' societies -- a way of trying
    to visit all current psychological distress on to just
    one person?  And, if so, how do we feel about that kind
    of deal -- where one person suffers enormously in lieu
    of everyone else?  Is this the basis of torture and The
    Ordeals?


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