The events at Penn State, the indifference of our politicians to the plight of many citizens of our country, including children, and the 1% who have it all and want still more call to mind Ursula Le Guin's science fiction/horror story titled 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'.
My mind is a jumble about the connection, and my association is not even original, because I read John Scalzi's post on Omelas University on Facebook and immediately connected with it.
I think of the concept of the scapegoat, which is also not original, but comes from it's margaret.
I think that many of us here in the US and the West are culpable, because our comfortable lives depend upon the labor of a good many people, including children, who live desperate and sometimes violent lives in very poor countries.
See? My thoughts are far from coherent. They're scattered all over the place, and perhaps I'd have done better to leave them unwritten and hidden in my mind in their jumbled state. But LeGuin's story haunts me, so perhaps the post serves as a kind of exorcism.
If you haven't read the story and would like to, the link above will take you to the text.
Apropos of perhaps not much, I came across the following quote from Honoré de Balzac's novel Le Père Goriot. From Google Answers, here is the quote in its original French:
Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.An English translation:
The secret of a great fortune without an apparent source is a forgotten crime that has never been found out, because it was neatly done.Picture of William Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat from Wikipedia.
Mimi, do you remember my blog?
ReplyDeleteIt's long gone---as is all its content, apparently >:-/ ---but I've never forgotten one entry I made.
It was during the ORGY of coverage of the Death of JP2/Election of Papa-Ratzi. While this Rome-obsession going on---ignoring Rome's Pedophile Victims, natch---that the little *blurb* came out re Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno (hero!) having his leg amputated (due to an incurable infection).
The contrast of these stories (attention given them) made me entitle my blog post "Limping Away from Omelas".
Anyway, that's my horn-blowing re your post here.
JCF, I do not remember. What was the title of your blog?
ReplyDeletePerhaps the meaning of the scapegoat as presented in the Hebrew Testament does not apply here, except in the case of Mike McQueary at Penn State...Mike who could have intervened on the spot, but didn't, but who then went on to report the matter to the authorities of the university. What would I have done as a graduate assistant?
Then, I think why on earth would McQueary want to stay at such a place after he graduated?
Grandmere, thank you for the Omelas' story, the link to Scalzi's post --and the Balzac quote. They help a great deal in my continued mucking about in prayer on this topic.
ReplyDeletemargaret, I'm pleased of be of help, m'dear.
ReplyDeleteWhat Counterlight said:
ReplyDeletehttp://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2011/11/economics-as-morality.html
"Those who have will always tilt the tables and rig the game in their own favor and at the expense of those who have not. The very rich among us do this at the expense of all the rest of us, and we do this together at the expense of the rest of the world, and we do this without even thinking."
Glenn Greenwald piles on the load of despair:
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/13/gop_and_tp_on_obamas_foreign_policy_successes/singleton/
"Thanks to Barack Obama, this twisted mentality about what the 'rule of law' means and how treason is decreed (not by a court, as the Constitution requires, but by the President acting alone) has now been enshrined as bipartisan consensus. . . . Crazy/Insane Ron Paul also objected to the killing under Obama not only of Awlaki, but, two weeks later, of Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, also a U.S. citizen, and his 17-year-old cousin. Think Progress forgot to include those dead teenagers on its list of Obama’s 'foreign policy successes' "
Where do we go to walk away from Omelas? Somalia? We sit here in the United States, impotent in the face of the stolen 2000 election, the illegal war in Iraq, the bankers' assault on the safety net, and elections in which the choice is between two candidates supported by the oligarchy. Crossan was right when he translated a Beatitude as "Only the destitute are innocent." Any participation in this corrupt order is to be complicit.
Odd how the horror of Le Guin's Omelas parable lies in the torture of one child. Our prosperous civilization brutalizes millions of children -- and others. Was it Stalin who observed that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths are statistics?
The wealth of Wall Street is now almost entirely a fantasy -- manipulation of numbers with no supporting production. Further, we are nearing the end of two centuries of cheap energy, in which machines replaced human and animal labor. We are Prodigals who seized our inheritance and wasted it in riotous living. But there is no homestead to return to -- we despoiled it as well. We are seven billion people circling about two chairs, and the music is about to stop.
Thanks for spoiling my Sunday, Grandmère.
[wv: rearm!]
What Counterlight says is true.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Crossan's, 'Only the destitute are innocent.'
I don't know where we go to walk away from Omelas.
Thanks for spoiling my Sunday, Grandmère.
Thanks for making mine worse. :-(
Now I'll go see what Greenwald says