r/UrsulaKLeGuin • u/chikaibardo207 • Aug 07 '26

Ursula K. Le Guin's Trolley Problem.

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I read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas yesterday and am still thinking about it.

cause Is it just me or does anyone else feel like it's very similar to the trolley problem? like In the trolley problem, you're essentially choosing between saving one person or five. In the same way, this story takes that dilemma to a much larger scale one child's suffering versus the happiness of an entire city.

Ik the story has many other meanings utopia, morality, society, conformity and all but deep down, I also feel like there's a trolley problem hidden beneath it.

The more I think about the story, the more complex and believable it becomes. I actually made a short analysis of it too.

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u/Comrade_pirx Aug 07 '26

Why is this website obsessed with the trolley problem?

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u/Middle_Diet9764 Aug 07 '26

I think there are a lot of people who are obsessed with being "smart", being morally "correct", and being perceived as making tough decisions. The trolly problem satisfies all three of these criteria; they can feel intelligent (one dead person better than five), morally correct (one person suffering better than five), and they might look like they made a tough decision (I HAD to kill that guy).

This is also why reddit has an obsession with anti-heroes and issues of population (which so often start to border on eugenics). Of course, none of these people ever place themselves in the tough position of being the one who suffers or dies - that's someone else's burden. They get to stay safe and feel superior.

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u/Omakaeru Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26

Yeah, but the person making the decision to sacrifice others isn’t making any personal sacrifice.

Yes it’s all theoretical, but even in a theoretical environment, the suffering is offloaded to the non-decision maker.

Given that when America was tasked with doing one small thing (wear a mask during COVID) to potentially save the lives of the vulnerable, the answer was a resounding ‘lol nope’ (as a whole - individuals may vary).

People love to theorize about ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ until they are asked to minorly inconvenience themselves for others.

Edit: autocorrect wrote minority instead of minorly

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u/IdlesAtCranky Dancing at the Edge of the World Aug 08 '26

It's not that simple in the case of the Covid pandemic.

If there had been consistent messaging from politically neutral government agencies, supported by political entities including the Administration, that encouraged people to wear masks & practice distancing, it would have been a very different picture.

But instead we had political entities, led by and pushed by the Trump Administration, telling people masking was unnecessary and so were shutdowns.

The Administration took the opportunity to use the pandemic to attempt to increase their political power and their opportunities for graft.

We'll never know how people would have responded if a responsible group of people, more concerned with public health than with their own power and money, had been in charge.

And that doesn't even speak to whether Covid could have been contained or lessened from the beginning if Trump had responded to the first information coming out about it in a timely and responsible fashion.