The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin.
Written in 1973, this work is as much a thought experiment as a short story. Le Guin was inspired to write it based on the following passage from William James' essay The Moral Philosopher and The Moral Life:
"Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone and
millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition
that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead
a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent
sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately
feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the
happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?"
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas was the recipient of the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1974 and continues to provide fertile ground for the exploration of ethics, utopias, and walking away from rationalizations today.
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