Does Empathy Cause Us to Care Too Much About the Wrong Things?

And too little about what matters most?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In 1973, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a fascinating short story called, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. In it, she describes a utopian city, where life is essentially perfect for all its citizens. They have art and science. Festivals and community. There are no monarchs or slaves. They have an abundance of food and drink. They even have drugs that pleasantly alter your state of mind with no troublesome side-effects.

Le Guin asks the reader to imagine the perfect life. Whatever it is that would make life worth living for you, it is there in Omelas.

So, what’s the twist?

The perfection of Omelas depends on one dark truth. In the basement of a nondescript house, there is a child trapped in a tiny room. The child can’t remember ever having been outside the room, and will never leave it. The child is occasionally fed, but never spoken to or given any sort of comfort.

All the citizens of Omelas know about this child. At some point, each of them is taken there to see the child for themselves. They all know that the perfection of Omelas rests on its endless torture.

We aren’t told why the suffering of this child results in the near-perfection of Omelas. We are asked to simply…