Topic: If you were a citizen of Omelas, would you stay or would you walk? Please explain and justify your decision.
When I answered the poll on the blog asking if I would walk away or not, I answered "yes" without virtually any hesitation. But looking back in hindsight, I'm honestly not so sure. Of course I’d want to walk away, but I think there’s a difference between wanting to walk and actually walking. It’s like saying that I really want to lose weight without making the effort to create a healthy meal plan and stick to it. What’s the point of wanting change to occur if we’re not going to take action for it? But given the choice, I would walk away from Omelas.
To be honest, being so firm about my decision to walk away from Omelas makes me feel a little on edge. It makes me wonder whether I seriously believe that walking away would be the right thing to do even it came at the expense of my happiness, so to speak. I’m actually the kind of person who doesn’t hesitate to give money when I see someone asking for it. I’d also like to think that I’m generous in the sense that I always smile at people in the hopes of showing others that they are worth being smiled at. But at the same time, I feel as if I often only make the effort to go out of my way to solve an issue if it’s guaranteed that my efforts will make a difference.
To be honest, being so firm about my decision to walk away from Omelas makes me feel a little on edge. It makes me wonder whether I seriously believe that walking away would be the right thing to do even it came at the expense of my happiness, so to speak. I’m actually the kind of person who doesn’t hesitate to give money when I see someone asking for it. I’d also like to think that I’m generous in the sense that I always smile at people in the hopes of showing others that they are worth being smiled at. But at the same time, I feel as if I often only make the effort to go out of my way to solve an issue if it’s guaranteed that my efforts will make a difference.
For example, I am aware that most of the clothes and shoes I wear are made through child labour. But I can honestly say that knowing that isn’t the first thing I take into account when I consider buying a pair of Nikes. And I can admit to not making the extra effort to gain more awareness about child labour outside the context of school either. It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to know more, because I really would. Yet sometimes I do feel helpless towards issues such as child labour and I can’t deny that I would find it extremely difficult to abandon my current First World country lifestyle. It’s one of those uncomfortable truths that I hate admitting to myself, but that I’ve accepted. And I think that the citizens of Omelas face this same problem—knowing there is a problem to be fixed, yet feeling as if there’s nothing one can really do to fix it. Maybe it’s because we’re selfish and ignorant to some degree; maybe we don’t even realize that we are. But I think that mostly, we just feel powerless. And it’s our level of confidence in our own capacity to actually make a change that makes the difference between staying and walking away.
I would want to walk away from Omelas because I don't believe that deliberately ignoring guilt is equivalent to true happiness. I also don't believe that settling for anything less than true happiness is worth it. With that said, I am currently living with the reality that most of my material comfort is a product of the discomfort of others in countries that are much less wealthy than my own. So much for “walking away”.
I really, really would WANT to walk away from Omelas. Like, GENUINELY. But I honestly don’t know if I actually would. Maybe I just haven’t mustered up the courage to walk very far yet. And I'm still trying to discover what walking away actually entails.
I can see that you have taken many of the comments that have been made into consideration and have done a masterful job of revising many of your finest posts.
ReplyDeleteI can also see that you definitely would not have time to respond to anyones comments, because clearly you were quite busy re-working all of these already great topics into excellent ones.
As an aside, if your looking to learn more about the global market, child labour, worker exploitation, etc, read any of the great books written by Naomi Klein.
Sincerely,
Your faithful reader,
~Surrey's last poet...
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ReplyDeleteThank you again as always for reading my posts! And for observing that changes actually have been made to them, haha. Yeaaaah, things have been so INCREDIBLY hectic lately that even revising these posts have taken a while :O
ReplyDeleteThank you for your advice!
No problem at all.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine that your schooling is ramping up significantly towards some sort of a winter/Christmas break period. Hopefully that does not include any examinations, as those can be overly stressful, and all in all do not actually give the kind of information needed to properly evaluate a student's learning, in my opinion.
To properly evaluate a student's learning it is much better to use assignments and the occasional project to continuously evaluate the progress being made, and this also results in less stress for the student, and is much more valuable to assessment versus a one time, one chance, one shot exam...
Did you ever get a chance to find any of the music I recommended in one of your other posts?
Sincerely,
Your faithful reader,
~Surrey's last poet...