It's straightforwardly dystopian by most people's standards and I can only read Jemisin as being ironic or at least intentionally provocative with it It's an attempt to mimic the deliberately confrontational tone of the original Omelas story that I'm not sure came off
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
I'm not saying I fully reject the mindset of the story but the presentation didn't work on me The tone of Omelas worked because it was an ironic tragedy, the hectoring voice of the narrator trying to get the reader to accept something the author, irl, doesn't accept
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
The snark about the paradox of tolerance notwithstanding, the situation in this story obviously is tragic - the only way to deal with bad ideas is to ban them? Nothing can defeat racism but murder and brain implants? - but the tone doesn't really acknowledge it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
I mean you can't just crumple up the paradox of tolerance and throw it away The paradox of intolerance is just as bad - great, as soon as someone says anything evil they should get two in the back of the head Now who gets to decide what counts as evil
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
I get what you are saying and yeah, I’m also troubled by the implications about bad ideas. But I find it compelling because in our current reality, we really ARE facing the fact that the things we were told would defeat racism; education, argument, reason, etc. have-
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-utterly failed to defeat it and other forms of bigotry, and indeed have been hijacked (as has free speech in Pen’s original point) to, in fact, FURTHER these things.
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The supposedly dystopian solution to terminally dangerous ideas looks appealing when we find ourselves in a place where nothing else seems to work against them.
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Replying to @dreamingnoctis @Nymphomachy
Okay but come on it's not like the reason no one's tried killing people is we're all just too nice, and if we just had the courage to get our hands dirty for once the problem would be solved
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
No one is saying it is, and I think thats clear. But its easy to see why something like this story would come off as not QUITE dystopian, or as dystopian as it intends, given the specifics of the situation.
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Maybe it's my spectrum-y utilitarian instincts but I remember having to read Omelas in Grade 9 or something and being so confused about how everyone else seemed to see "intolerable dystopia" instead of "big improvement on what we've got now"
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Well yeah and then everyone says "I would burn Omelas down!" and then you point out "You live in a much worse society than Omelas" and they're like "And I *am* burning it down!" by which they mean they donated $150 to Bernie Sanders in 2016
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Replying to @arthur_affect @georgetakesajob and
The most negative interpretation of "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" is people thinking they really are "staying and fighting" to build Um-Helat by cussing out Trump voters on Twitter or something
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Replying to @arthur_affect @georgetakesajob and
(I mean look FFS the inspirational call to action at the end of that story is pretty hard to take literally considering by the laws of Um-Helat the only possible course of action in the present day is to go on a shooting spree or trigger a nuclear war or something)
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