Walking away from Happy Valley

by | Monday, November 14, 2011

I have been haunted the past week or so with the scandal enveloping Penn State. Much as been written about it already – and I really have nothing fundamentally new to offer to this discussion. What I did want to share was a parallel that struck me recently about these terrible events and a lovely yet horrifying short story I had read a long time ago.

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Variations on a theme by William James) is a haunting short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is a short, sparse story, almost a parable, with almost no distinct characters.

It is about a beautiful city called Omelas, a city of happy people unburdened by any pain or sorrow. But this happiness is the result of a faustian bargain—a bargain where the happiness of all is dependent on having one child bear all the pain and sorrow of the entire city. This child lives in a dark, basement room, neglected and in constant pain. The story says that many people, though initially shocked, learn to accept this and seek to lead fruitful lives in Omelas. However, the story concludes that, there are always a few, who walk away, from the city, never to return. The story asks the question of whether it is, “right for the happiness of many to be built on pain and sorrow for one.”

I know that my synopsis does not do justice to the story. Do read it for yourself right here. Yes, right now. I can wait.

OK. Welcome back. Now wasn’t that a great story. I truly think it is one of the greatest stories ever written (at lease one of the greatest I have ever read).

So now coming back to the sorry state of affairs at Penn State. It seems to me that the Happy Valley in some sense struck a bargain similar to the one in the story. The entire football and university staff who knew or suspected what was going on chose to turn a blind eye to what was going on. The graduate assistant who stumbled upon the scene in the showers chose to let the child suffer to protect the good name of the program. The suffering of one child was worth it in exchange for maintaining the reputation of the football team or the University. The students who rioted after the firing of Joe Paterno were willing to make the same choice as well.

This is truly sad. I just hope that in the days and weeks to come, more and more people will have the courage to walk away from the Omelas.

Topics related to this post: Fiction | Personal | Philosophy | Worth Reading

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Visualizing periodic tables (What not to do)

Sean Nash (of Nashworld) sent me a link to A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods of Management. This is a very cool looking representation developed by Ralph Lengler & Martin Eppler at the Institute of Corporate Communication at the University of Lugano,...

Cleaning and coding Interviews with AI

Cleaning and coding Interviews with AI

I have previously written about how AI can possibly help with qualitative research AND how how AI has given me a superpower which is the ability to write computer programs. Well this post is an extension of both of these topics. To provide some context, for the past...

Learning Games & TPACK @ Drexel: Video now online

Back in January I was invited to speak at the Drexel Learning Games Network (DGLN) seminar series. As I had written in my original post (TPACK & Games @ Drexel), DLGN is the brainchild of  Aroutis Foster, former graduate student, now rising star academic and...

Penang update

Today was my presentation at the University Sains Malaysia. I was picked up this morning by Abdul Hamid, a huge beefy man, with little English, but a great smile. A beautiful half-hour drive along a sea-side highway led us the University which is perched somewhat on a...

Creativity in Surgery, Music & Cooking

Creativity in Surgery, Music & Cooking

Here is the next article in our series Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century for the journal TechTrends. In this article we feature an interview with Dr. Charles Limb,  professor of Otolaryngology and a...

Computer Fiction: Two new ambigrams

For one reason or another I have not been bitten by the ambigram bug for a while - till suddenly a week or two ago, two new ambigrams popped into my head. A bit of work with Freehand later... here they are. Enjoy Computer Fiction

Turing’s Tricksters: How AI Hijacks Our Social Instincts

Turing’s Tricksters: How AI Hijacks Our Social Instincts

In a recent article in The Atlantic (Shh, ChatGPT. That’s a Secret), Lila Shroff delves into the surprising willingness of people to share intimate details with AI chatbots. To be clear, this did not come as a surprise. Readers of this blog will know this is something...

Hello Hong Kong, goodbye Hong Kong

A short and sweet trip to Hong Kong, one full day, two nights, fly in fly out. I was a guest of the University of Hong Kong and gave a talk there yesterday, the last in my series of TPACK talks. I had a good audience, the talk went well, though I did not manage my...

Alien Games

A journal article on games and gender, that has been years in the making is finally going to see the light of day! The complete reference and abstract can be found below. Drop me an email if you would like a copy. Heeter, C., Egidio, R., Mishra, P., Winn, B., & Winn,...

1 Comment

  1. Mike Hasley

    Interesting thoughts. I’m going to read the story next and pass it on to friends I have in State College. I’m not disagreeing with your post, I just heard another theory as to why so many people turned a blind eye. Folks like Paterno and such wanted to protect the goodness of Penn State, the institution. They knew the good it did and didn’t want this to hurt it. So, they acted unethically. It was said for the Catholic church scandal, too. Just an interesting idea.

    Good luck against Wisconsin!

    Reply

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Walking Away…. « Amy J Nichols – The Things I Do - [...] out the depressing details of the story as they emerged with so many people. I think this blog post, and…

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *