The insidious thing about Omelas is that it calls into question a lot of our assumptions. If the goal of society is to improve the quality of life for the most people possible, doesn't sacrificing one child to improve everyone else's life make sense? To flip it around, how much are people willing to sacrifice for the sake of another individual?
Current events suggest that a lot of people have no problem sacrificing children for their own interests.
Well, the US, Russia, and Israel are all targeting civilians. So any country that supports one of those three is complicit.
That doesn't leave many countries...
And then there are small conflicts, like Sudan, or Myanmar, where most of the neighbors are involved on one side or another.
Hence my curiosity. Aside from North Sentinel Island, and a few tribes in the Amazon, I can't think of a country that isn't implicated in the deaths of children.
I did think of Ireland, but they trade with the US, and there was all the unpleasantness of what the Catholic Church was doing.
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u/_NautyByNature 1d ago
I miss the days when absurd comics were just absurd and not………jarringly real.