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News Story - Omelas exiles appear south for the second time in a year (Part II)

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News Story - Omelas exiles appear south for the second time in a year (Part II)

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For the 2nd time this year, for the 10th year in a row, droves of children and young adults have been found wandering through the villages south of the mysterious city of Omelas, where they claim to hail from. Not much is known known about the city of Omelas, as it is closed off to outsiders and receives no knew citizens aside from children born inside, and while people have been walking out of Omelas for a decade now, the majority appear to be too disturbed and perhaps even traumatized to be able to share more information about the city and their experiences living there. Even those who left years ago, and those who have settled down in the villages with their people, still refuse to speak of what goes on inside. The only information that has been given by these people is that there are apparently deeply troubling events going on within the city that that has caused the he city with no plans of going back. As with all previous years, attempts will be made to gain new  information from this current wave of exiles.

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Through this whole unit, by studying Plato’s allegory of the cave, reading Oedipus Rex, and watching the Truman show, I have explored the question ‘Is knowing more - better?’, which is also known as ‘Is ignorance bliss?’

Before beginning this unit, I was straddling the line between believing that ignorance is bliss and that knowing more is better. We had studied this unit in freshman year in the Humanities in Action I course, where my classmates and I were exposed to some of cruelest and most horrifying realities or our world since the very first day, where we learned the source of most store-bought chocolate - child slavery and labor in places such as Ivory Coast. And even then that had been one of our milder topics of study. While I as a person and my mind was strong enough to handle such information, it would be a lie to say that it didn’t disturb me in the slightest bit - it did more than that. It even caused a great paranoia about my simple everyday actions, and while it may seem irrational, knowing that something so mundane such as buying chocolate was an ethical choice, such worries were not unfounded. While I am certainly incredibly fortunate to be receiving an education - which many kids, even if not especially in America, do not receive - the cost of such deep study was the safe bubble or perceived moral purity that so many of us wish to continue living in. It made me think that knowledge can at times be a mental burden, yet at the same time, a life lived in ignorance is oftentimes an extremely sad one, devoid of opportunities. This is why my parents and the parents of my classmates work so hard to pay to pay such large tuition fees for the sake us us receiving a world-class education, and why education is believed by many to be a right that all should have, not just a privilege for the wealthy. Education is a tool that can change lives for the better.

However, schooling and academics aren’t the only type of knowledge, no the only means of attaining knowledge. Experience is a priceless, inimitable source of wisdom that books or the internet cannot provide on their own. While nowadays you can search up issues and questions about love online without ever having been in love, only being or falling out of love can grant you wisdom about love and how to handle it in your own life. Same with loss, bullying, and other kinds of emotional or mental suffering. Or the concept of karma or justice when it comes to being wronged or doing wrong unto others. We cannot truly say we know about these things until we ourselves have dealt with them firsthand. And in our world, happiness and sadness come together, as with joy and pain, good and evil. While we wish that we could only have the positives, the negatives are required to not only learn and gain experience from it, but as well to enjoy the positives in full. If we’re happy all the time and never sad, then are we truly happy? How can we know? It can only be found out through experience and knowledge. And while it may be more comfortable and less frightening to wish to stay in ignorance and stay in your comfort zone, never venturing into areas that are scary or make you question things, there is a question as to whether it is better than the alternative of taking the harder road and perhaps achieving a more desirable outcome, and if it’s worth it. In my opinion, it is.

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Truman's point of view of what the world outside Seavhaven is like