[ SECRET POST #4917 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4917 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #704.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Why are you here.

No, seriously. Why. You must know that your lifestyle is built on the backs of the less privileged. Our food is farmed by slave labour. Our phones are cheap because tech giants start wars in African countries to mine the raw materials that make their batteries possible.

And yet here we both are. Because at some point we made peace with the fact that our comfort depends on the suffering of others. Or so we tell ourselves.

But sure, the story is unrealistic.

[(Anonymous)]

Thisssss. It's an allegory, y'all.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

It really is, though. And equating how people react to a bunch of people suffering in lands far away that their society gives them all the tools to rationalize away, and the setting in the story of one child suffering forever in a basement somewhere, is foolishness really.

It is the very
1) diffusion of responsibility in numbers
2) distance between "us" and "them"
3) insurmountability of the issue in terms of size and scale and the feeling that one person can't make a difference

that lets people forget and live the way we do. That is not true when the one child suffering in the world lives in your neighbors basement and you know it.

A bad allegory by all terms.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

To be clear here, I get what it's trying to say and agree with the message, but the story was a dumbass way to try and do it, because it ignores all the features of the problem that make it ignorable in society today.

[(Anonymous)]

What's bad about an allegory that removes that distance, though? Like, genuinely?

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. I'd say the way it forces us to confront our own choices by removing the distance is one of the strengths of that story.

[(Anonymous)]

The distance, size, scale, and numbers are what makes the problem feel big or out of people's control and let people shrug and not care because what could they do about it effectively anyway?

Removing all that raises the 'unrealistic' claim because a lot of the people in scenario A) where everything is broad and giant and big and they are a tiny individual who feels powerless and therefore do nothing, would absolutely act if they knew that there was a child suffering in their neighbor's basement and they had the power to save them.

It's just an entirely different problem when you change all the factors. That part seems obvious enough to me.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

It's a bit like reducing war to having a ~magical curse~ called War that forces 100,000 men per decade to leap off a cliff just because people say they must and everyone is sad about it but it must go on.

Like right, I get what you're going for here, but if someone called that unrealistic and a pretty non-specific and bad way to give an anti-war message that deals with literally none of the problems and issues about why this happens, yeah, I'd agree with them.

[(Anonymous)]

When was the last time you saw a homeless person? They weren't one ocean away. They weren't some giant, unsolvable problem. They were right there.

You could have changed their life by inviting them to live with you. You wouldn't even had needed to fight an entire city convinced that the homeless person needed to suffer in order to help them.

Did you do it?

No?

There you go.

[(Anonymous)]

Again, you miss the point. A lot of people don't do that because that's 1 homeless person out of 1,000,000 homeless people, and they don't feel that their contribution helps the overall problem.

If they went in knowing that taking in that one homeless person would end homelessness forever maybe they would take that poor child in.

However, this has nothing to do with my or your morality, or anyone's moral choices.

It's simply not a very good allegory when you're not comparing the same issues.

[(Anonymous)]

If they went in knowing that taking in that one homeless person would end homelessness forever maybe they would take that poor child in.

Why bother? They'd just replace the child. You can't take every single child in. It wouldn't help the overall problem.

And if you can't solve a problem completely, why bother do anything about it, am I right? Why help one person if you're not going to help them all?

[(Anonymous)]

Sigh. That's a deliberate misreading of my point and you know it is. I'm going to drop this thread here, as you've done that twice already.

[(Anonymous)]

You're the one deliberately misreading the point of an allegory that had been analyzed to death, but suit yourself!

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Or maybe it is just a bad allegory that doesn't actually work as a commentary on the real world.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT You can just say you don't like it. It's a perfectly fine allegory, just not your taste. That's fine.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

It is a flat allegory, at least in my opinion, and in my opinion that makes it a bad allegory. In my opinion, it only works on a surface reading. There is no depth to it. Once you actually think about it there are all sorts of reasons why it doesn't work. The only way it works is if you just accept it. And personally that's not the way I read.

Yes, it is my opinion. It is my opinion that is bad writing.

[(Anonymous)]

So do nothing because it doesn't solve everything? Amazing choices, and one made by the people of Omelas all the time. If they free the child, well, then, everyone else suffers, so why bother!

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! My area of research in human trafficking and I can guarantee you that there is slavery happening local to you. Farming, restaurants, salons, or even behind closed doors in your neighborhood; it's there. And this is to say nothing of the sex trafficking.

[(Anonymous)]

Ooh! I have a personal anecdote about this!

Some years ago a Chinese restaurant a couple of blocks from my apartment building was suddenly closed by the police. Turned out that they'd been running a sweatshop in the basement for years and nobody had any clue about it.