"Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

Jeff Wilson · 01 May 2011, 02:51 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:51:56 -0500
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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On 4/30/2011 9:29 PM, Matthew Knapton wrote:
> Well, it's a comment that even when the 'gain' is as huge as it is in
> Omelas, there's something wrong about the purposeful mistreatment and
> deprivation of an innocent. Whether you like the story or not, that's
> undeniably a moral statement, yes.

But is "there's something wrong about the purposeful mistreatment and
deprivation of an innocent" a useful or meaningful moral statement? Is 
the wrongness greater or lesser if the mistreatment is without purpose, 
or if the purpose is unknown? Compare Jackson's "The Lottery," and the 
news items about the third-world villages poisoned by 1st world computer 
waste.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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