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

Jeff Wilson · 01 May 2011, 03:42 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:42:10 -0500
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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On 4/30/2011 10:23 PM, Matthew Knapton wrote:
> Well you're asking a mouthful there. It's certainly meaningful, at least
> - what constitutes a morally wrong thing, whether such a thing can be
> justified (and how, if so), etc, are all real issues in the field of
> ethics. More particularly, Omelas seems like a utilitarian society; a
> criticism of it is a criticism of its principles, and there has been
> plenty of criticism and discussion of utilitarian ideas over the years.
>
> Whether the story is useful is less easy to say, though even if it is
> you can't really move from dismissing it to dismissing the large swathes
> of ethics it happens to touch upon :)

But there aren't any societies that are able to avoid harm to innocents 
for the benefit of others. How can it be morally wrong when it's 
impossible to do otherwise?

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

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