Partly love this. Biased as I once had a debate where sb claimed ‘Omelas obviously critique of utilitarianism’ and I disappointedly claimed ‘No that’s too narrow for that’ but was a bit dumbfounded as hadn’t quite organized what seems wrong in that simple take of that so deeply moving story. Thanks for providing some relevant points why the story clearly is broader.
One point for which I consider Omelas not at its core a critique of utilitarianism is: The utilitarian-half of me distinctly gets the feeling of Omelas offering an interesting basis for discourse about the theory rather than a clearly intended rebuttal. As follows: To the same degree as the non-utilitarian half of me tells my utilitarian “there you go, clearly you can’t claim you like the situation”, the utilitarian in me tells the other half “there you go, while you claim you don’t like Omelas, but you and everyone else don’t even want to blow up real Earth—on which there is obviously a ton of such equally unjustified and pointless, evil suffering plus much less happiness than in Omelas—you exactly proof to accept the very horrible tradeoffs that you claim only me cold terrible utilitarian could be willing to accept”[1] - or something.
Partly love this. Biased as I once had a debate where sb claimed ‘Omelas obviously critique of utilitarianism’ and I disappointedly claimed ‘No that’s too narrow for that’ but was a bit dumbfounded as hadn’t quite organized what seems wrong in that simple take of that so deeply moving story. Thanks for providing some relevant points why the story clearly is broader.
One point for which I consider Omelas not at its core a critique of utilitarianism is: The utilitarian-half of me distinctly gets the feeling of Omelas offering an interesting basis for discourse about the theory rather than a clearly intended rebuttal. As follows: To the same degree as the non-utilitarian half of me tells my utilitarian “there you go, clearly you can’t claim you like the situation”, the utilitarian in me tells the other half “there you go, while you claim you don’t like Omelas, but you and everyone else don’t even want to blow up real Earth—on which there is obviously a ton of such equally unjustified and pointless, evil suffering plus much less happiness than in Omelas—you exactly proof to accept the very horrible tradeoffs that you claim only me cold terrible utilitarian could be willing to accept”[1] - or something.
I don’t claim this imaginary statement to be very perfectly worded; the gist of it is the point.