With the conversation about the #deathpenalty in Singapore reaching a fever pitch, I feel a need to share what I believe is the most important work of sci-fi I've ever read, Ursula K #LeGuin's 4-page story: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1/x)

The story has been referenced by NMP Kuik Shiao-Yin in an amazing parliamentary speech — for it speaks of a wondrous paradise of Omelas "without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb" (2/x) https://www.facebook.com/notes/shiao-yin-kuik/the-ones-who-walk-towards-2017/10155014195068427

Omelas is perfection, however you imagine it, but with a price. In a tiny room below Omelas, a child that lives in dirt and darkness: "the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks. “I will be good" (3/x)

Denizens of Omelas are disgusted and shocked by this truth. "They would like to do something for the child... but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms." (4/x)

The story conveys the idea of the scapegoat, that someone always *has* to suffer, so that others may live and flourish — this must be a fact of human existence. (5/x)

But the beauty of the story lies not in how simply and poignantly it captures this central fact of human existence, but in its rejection of this 'fact' as myth (6/x)

They walk away because there was another way. There is always another way. This story invites the reader to imagine what that way — "even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness" — could be (7/x)

Ethical justifications used for the death sentence often speak of deterrence + the need to punish a few to protect the many. Singapore is far from perfect Omelas, and many would argue that those sentenced are unlike the innocent child... (8/x)

But the core idea remains the same: We *must* have a scapegoat. Their suffering sustains us and gives us life. Our morals, our stability, and our way of life are under threat if we do not punish them. Attacking them might even make us cherish our existence more. (9/x)

What value is one life when measured against the collective many?

Many would have you and I believe that this suffering is a fact and requirement of human existence and a functioning society. Do you agree? Would you walk away from Omelas? (10/x)