...and I find that it parallels so many situations in our society.
We are being conditioned to "look the other way" and to accept that some will
suffer in our society--and to DO NOTHING.
I agree that this applies to our healthcare system.
I also find similarities with most of the big corporations that are taking our planet down.
They are willing to harm the environment *just a bit* in order to make a profit--that temporarily makes them happy. What they don't realize is that when they allow suffering--for personal gain--it taints their cause and their society--and ultimately will lead to failure.
Look at what the banks have done. They thought they could make trillions off of risky mortgages and selling those risky mortgages rolled up into bunk securities. Worked so well for them, for a while. Until they nearly brought down our entire economy. To the banks--those who suffer are just a group of little kids in a basement. What do they care? They've got theirs. Look at the Penn State sex abuse situation. Penn State's entire top brass--and others--decided that it was ok for some children to suffer--so the football program could thrive. The entire Penn State community was the Omelas--trying so hard to preserve some utopia, that was really a shameful, dishonest, sickening cabala--because they sacrificed innocent children for self interest.
A paradigm like this will always fail--because the suffering takes over. The suffering grows with the victims--and it also eats away at those who look away.
The problem with our society is that we are conditioned to be in denial. Heavy denial is what enables serial killers and other perpetrators to harm people and feel nothing. We are all being trained to be psychopaths. To look the other way. To know that there are people suffering "in the basement" but to shrug it off as the cost of running a society.
We will rot as a species behaving and thinking like this. It's a lie that "one child must suffer in the basement" for all of us to thrive. If only the Omelas (or everyone on our planet) would realize that we are all worse people for allowing the suffering of anyone--in order to protect our own interests.
The most courageous--are the ones who stand up, rescue the child from the basement and demonstrate to everyone that watching others suffer and knowing that they suffer--hurts everyone--and can never lead to happiness, peace and fulfillment. No matter how many possessions or how much good fortune one has.
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