My title today comes from the Usula K. LeGuin short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelos.” In this story there exists a perfect society. There are a few flaws, but they are the most benign blights a society could have. There exists only one fundamentally unfair, unchangeable thing – a single child is kept in a small dark room and is left there with only just enough food to eat for its entire life. Each citizen is brought before this child, without which society could not exist, in order that they understand. Some stay, and appreciate the sacrifice. Some walk away. We are asked to contemplate just what they are thinking.
When we were asked to contemplate this story in class, I remember thinking rather bleakly that such was the cost of living in any sort of society. There wasn't really a way of walking away from Omelos. The ones who did were really just kidding themselves.*
People who have known me for a short time see that I am very optimistic. People who have known me for a longer time know that I am also very cynical.
Another idea I would like to play with today also comes from Ursula K. LeGuin. In high school, I read 'A Wizard of Earthsea,' in which magic stems from the true name of each object, creature, and person. LeGuin is not the only person to use this device, and I would guess it comes from older Celtic or Druidic traditions. I remember at the age of sixteen thinking about how powerful language was, and playing a mental game in which I tried to disassociate words from their meaning. The fact that signs made up of lines, curves, and circles could create images in my mind was a miracle I had taken for granted. I would try to force myself not to imagine their meanings, to look at the words as only what they were – images. In an elective creative writing class in high school, I remember our teacher talking to us about the power of words and how the very sound, even without its meaning could have the power to create an image. Her example was the word 'pus,' which she thought produced a visceral image purely through sound. My friend Emily pointed out to her that the word 'bus' sounds almost the same and produces no similarly gruesome image. Four years latter in Japan something reminded me of this idea – of an object's essence lying within the name, and I remember thinking how small and limiting that idea was. It seemed to understand theoretically that languages could be complete yet unrelated, yet not understand its actuality. Language is a human construct. Without humans the world has no names. There are no words, no power, while the physical world remains undisturbed. But this does not mean language is not powerful. It is so powerful as to tie the world together in all of our minds. It does not tie them in a way that mimics reality, but in a way that is whole and entirely original.
Recently I talked about homesickness. Homesickness affects different people different ways. Before we start, I think I have to make it clear that while I sympathize with people who have very strong homesickness I have trouble empathizing with them. I remember feeling homesick only two times in my life – the second time I have described already on this blog. Both times were around a holiday, and both times I recovered as soon as the holiday had passed. I feel I should explain this about me before I continue, because what follows may not ring true for persons with different personalities from myself.
Humans rely on predictability. When things are predictable, then we feel secure. This makes evolutionary sense. You don't need to run. You don't need to starve. You can plan ahead to avoid both situations. A great deal of socializing is based on predictability. We only recognize social patterns when they are absent. We avoid people who behave in an unpredictable way, a way deviating from social norms. Ostracizing these people also, I believe, unfortunately makes evolutionary sense. Patience, understanding, behavior therapy are all luxuries of stable societies, several steps away from primitive man. If the rules change – if suddenly we are the ones who do not understand the social signals or norms when previously we did, it can give one the feeling of going mad. It can feel as if the physical world itself has altered itself somehow. An alternative is to declare that everyone is mad except one's self. Others have the 'correct' 'natural' way of interpreting the world hidden from them, but one is able to intuitively understand it so it must be true. This I believe is analogous to language and the physical world. Without language the physical world would still exist. Similarly, I believe that without social norms human personalities would still exist. Our mental framework is fundamentally rooted around perceiving one using the other. It would be a mistake, albeit a very easy one that everyone makes, to think the two equated each other.
Most people, cultures, etc. interpret one's ability with language to equate one's ability to think. As teachers it is difficult to predict at times what sorts of things others are exposed – and plenty of times information that is commonly available in the United States, such as sexual education, critical thinking, hostile debate, is not accessible in China for cultural or political reasons. But we are very young, with limited life experiences ourselves. We are separated by a few years, not decades. We are older brothers and sisters, not uncles and aunts.
So who are the ones who walk away from Omelos? They are the ones who are not comfortable with what they saw, and cannot live with themselves once they have that knowledge. They have seen what they consider to be a fundamental part of humanity to trampled upon. I sympathize with their discomfort. I disagree with their observations. I disagree with their premiss – of ideas being as directly connected to speech as objects are to words. I disagree with their conclusion – that humans are not beings filled with contradictions, that some values might only be different but not less valuable to each human. And I do not believe we can escape these things by walking away.
Afterward: There is a pink elephant in the room as I write this, and that is the question of values. What are values? Are they universal or culturally specific? No one really believes them to be on the extremes, but it is easy to make emotionally satisfying arguments about why absolute universalism and absolute cultural relevancy are wrong. I heard my Uncle Matt say once, “Academics fight so hard because there is so little at stake.” I am cautious to talk about cultural relativism in this essay because I am afraid of having to then defend myself against arguments similar to those I have made in the past against cultural relativism. Really, everyone should have the same degree of universalism and cultural relativism as me, and I am sure my views contain no self contradiction on this point.
*Please debate me on this story and interpretation in the comments. I encourage you. I really enjoy these kinds of debates, and some of you I know enjoy them too.
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