Many years ago (high school?), I read “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” by Ursula K. LeGuin.
I have been appreciating (perhaps “enjoying” is the wrong word) the recent short stories that build on this concept.
Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole
by Isabel J. Kim
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/
The Ones Who Stay and Fight
by N.K. Jemisin
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/
They are worthy reads.
I think of Omelas as a sort of koan; I think this is because I cannot bear the responsibility of what it would mean to accept the reality of the world we live in. I can try to reduce my dependency on items manufactured with slave labor, my need for things that objectively make the world a worse place; but I don’t know if I can rid myself of all that entirely.
I am not a follower of Christ. I have not sold all my possessions to take up my cross and follow him. I chose a different path, many years ago. Around the same time as I read Omelas, in fact.
But I can still try to get as close as I can to that ideal, in reasonable small incremental steps.
It’s not enough. But it’s not nothing, either.
Emilybook 