Question: Does our happiness come at the cost of others' misery?
After reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and The Lottery, I realized that we've made misery an essential and necessary part of our happiness. Deep inside our human nature, we are hypocrites, evil, and selfish. In order to pursue our happiness, we tend to hurt others and forget about our actions. For example, in the The Ones Who Walk Away, the author writes about how Omelas is a utopian society with celebrations, wealth, and etc. This utopian society is only perfect if they sacrifice one child to be locked up in a basement with no light, windows, or bathroom. The citizens of Omelas are forced to visit this child once in their lives. Many become angry, upset, or guilty. However, they realize that if they do something to help this child, their happiness would be gone. As a result, many come to terms with the fact that this child has to be a sacrifice for the greater good of Omelas. So, they ignore the child's misery and continue to live a content life. This portrays our society today because we don't like to suffer or be unhappy. Even if they have to make a sacrifice by making someone suffer, they don't mind as long as they are happy. The same thing happens in The Lottery. The lottery, a tradition when a person in the community gets stoned to death by their own friends and family through a lottery, portrays society as evil and hypocrites.
After reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and The Lottery, I realized that we've made misery an essential and necessary part of our happiness. Deep inside our human nature, we are hypocrites, evil, and selfish. In order to pursue our happiness, we tend to hurt others and forget about our actions. For example, in the The Ones Who Walk Away, the author writes about how Omelas is a utopian society with celebrations, wealth, and etc. This utopian society is only perfect if they sacrifice one child to be locked up in a basement with no light, windows, or bathroom. The citizens of Omelas are forced to visit this child once in their lives. Many become angry, upset, or guilty. However, they realize that if they do something to help this child, their happiness would be gone. As a result, many come to terms with the fact that this child has to be a sacrifice for the greater good of Omelas. So, they ignore the child's misery and continue to live a content life. This portrays our society today because we don't like to suffer or be unhappy. Even if they have to make a sacrifice by making someone suffer, they don't mind as long as they are happy. The same thing happens in The Lottery. The lottery, a tradition when a person in the community gets stoned to death by their own friends and family through a lottery, portrays society as evil and hypocrites.