Are you one that walks away from Omelas?

The ones that walk away from omelas is a story (2 pages or so). Here is a summary.

Omelas is a city. A paradise, really. Insert anything you think of when you think of paradise. Happiness, celebration, games, love, fuelless power, washing machines, even an orgy if you want.

Religion, yes.

Clergy, no.

The one hardfast condition of this city is the existence of a small cellar beneath one of its buildings. No windows. A mop and bucket are in the corner. A small child, looking 6 but actually about 10 is locked in the cellar. It is malnourished and neglected. It is afraid of the mop. It was taken from its mother. It still remembers the light of day.

It is not loved. Yet each person in the city knows of it. Most go to see it when they are young, but others see it many times, and some none at all.

They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible their happiness.

After seeing the child some go home and cry, others are angry. Yet once in a while, an adolescent or sometimes an adult does not go home at all. They silently walk away. They must go alone, past the city gates. They walk away in the darkness, and they do not come back.

The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Would you walk away?