I begin my musings with this question: is it enough to survive, or should we have to deserve it?

This question was posed in the first episode of Battlestar Galactica, but I found myself posing it again as I was grading my most recent set of papers. In class we just finished reading a short story called “The Ones That Walk Away From Omelas”—a story that, in a nutshell, asks the question if you could live in a utopia at the expense of one child neglected and ignored in a basement far away from the light of day, would you? All the people of Omelas are happy, mature, incredible human beings with an incredible society. But this one kids suffers for them all; a kid kept naked in a broom closet, sores festering from sitting in his own waste all these years, starved and cut off from all human interaction. One kid who did not make the choice to suffer for his people; no, the decision was made for him as he was picked to bear all of society’s ills on his shoulders.

Many of my students would leave the kid in the closet. I can understand the appeal. A utopia is an appealing idea indeed, but it begs the question of worthiness. Is a society like that worthy of survival? If you’re willing to sacrifice another’s happiness for your own, what does that make you? You would stop disease, famine, war—all the biggies. But you resign this one child to a life of incarceration and abuse.

It isn’t comparable to war or self-sacrifice because the kid isn’t making the decision to sacrifice himself. The adults are making it for him. The kid isn’t noble or righteous, the kid is just screwed. And once you’ve done that, once you’ve decided the fate of someone else’s life without their consent or input what sort of person have you become? What is the difference between someone willing to sacrifice one kid to torture and someone willing to napalm the ghettos? If we cut down the population crime would lower; if we killed everyone but the rich and contributing society would run smoother. But everyone is quick to say that is a heinous act. We’re all quick to remember World War II and stay as far way from concentration camp logic as possible, but when the same logic is presented at the cost of only one it doesn’t seem so bad.

For all our talk about individuality and human rights we have still been taught to think of each other as part of a collective whole, or worse to think of others as part of a whole. We are special; we are unique. Obviously it wouldn’t be me in the closet because I am me. But the fact is, once you start sacrificing others’ rights, yours are never that far behind.

I worry I’ve failed to make that point to my students. I can only hope I’ve been slightly more successful with you.