Ursula Le Guin and the Horror of Utopia

Listen to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas    • Video   Watch ‪@Shaun_vids‬ video on Palestine and Omelas    • Palestine   Watch our video on Shirley Jackson's The Lottery    • 'The Witch' | Shirley Jackson’s Hidden Mas...   Join our Discord:   / discord   Support us on Patreon:   / books_ncats   Imagine you’re driving a runaway trolley. You can’t stop it. You see it hurtling towards five people who are unable to get out of the way in time. You’re powerless to do anything, but then you see - there’s a diversion in the tracks! If you pull the lever in front of you, you can divert the trolley away from the five people, sparing their lives. But down the other track is one person, who also won’t be able to get out of the way in time. If you choose to pull the lever, you save five, but kill one. This is the ethical dilemma at the heart of Ursula Le Guin’s iconic short story, 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', but rather than a philosophical experiment, this is a heart-breaking piece of story-telling that leaves its readers undone, and forces us to consider: in the face of unspeakable evil, can we (and should we) walk away? Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe @books_ncats Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips @ma_ps_ mphotos.uk Bibliography Bauman, Christopher W., McGraw, A. Peter, Bartels, Daniel M., and Warren, Caleb, 'Revisiting External Validity: Concerns about Trolley Problems and Other Sacrificial Dilemmas in Moral Psychology', Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8(9), (2014) 536-54 D'Olimpio, Laura, 'The trolley dilemma: would you kill one person to save five?', https://theconversation.com/the-troll... Le Guin, Ursula, 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', The Unreal & The Real, Selected Stories Volume 2, Outer Space, Inner Lands (Gollancz, 2015)