Walking Away from Sustainability

Philosophy of Sustainability Seminar, 23 November 2010, Malaysia

Ursula K. Le Guins story The Ones who walk away from Omelas introduces the happy city of Omelas. The citys happiness depends on a child sitting in a locked room, so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually. Everyone in the city views the child at least once and learns the terms of the arrangement, that if the child were released, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. That viewing affects everyone, but differently. Most accept the situation, and even believe that it is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. But there are some who, after the visit, do not go home at all. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. They are the ones who walk away from Omelas. The story reduces the resources of Omelas, or we may say, industrial, global capitalism, to one child; in reality, the terms of the present civilization are that 1 billion children will suffer so that one billion people can enjoy their lives;1 that $13 will flow to rich countries as debt repayment for every one dollar received in aid;2 that the U.S. military budget is larger, by 123 billion dollars,3 than every other countrys budget in the world combined; that 90% of large fish are gone and we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. Speaking of globalization-as-sustainable-development, Fidel Castro told the U.N., The

existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history.4 Indeed, it is harder to justify the present system than that of Omelas. The
genius of the allegorical story of Omelas is that it forces us to ask whether any use of another being is acceptable. The citizens of Omelas have made a conscious, fully informed decision to stay. In contrast, in our society, when one questions the right to use or exploit living beings, one begins to sound like a duck, as Derrick Jensen describes it. In response to a statement at an

1http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

World Bank, Global Development Finance 2002, Financing the Poorest Countries, p. 22. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm Cutting global poverty in half would cost $20 billion (Technical Report of the High-Level Panel on Financing for Development www.un.org/reports/financing/report)full.htm#appendix) Malaysias military budget is 2.5 billion dollars (2005). 4 William E. Rees, Professor at the University of British Columbia, writing in the Toronto Star 22 April 2002 Squeezing the Poor: Maybe Castros Right. Maybe Thats All Globalization Really Is About. Rees writes, In the 1960s only three dollars flowed North for every dollar flowing South; by the late 1990s, after 30 years of unprecedented growth and increasing globalization, the ratio had grown to seven to one. In 1970 the richest 10 per cent of the worlds citizens earned 19 times as much as the poorest 10 per cent. By 1997, this ratio had increased to 27:1 and the wealthiest 1 per cent of the worlds people commanded the same income as the poorest 57 per cent. Just 25 million rich Americans (0.4 per cent of the worlds people) had a combined income greater than that of the poorest 2 billion of the worlds people ( 43 per cent of the total population). As I said, Castro had a point.
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environment conference that we need to save those plants because theyre our medicines for the future, he replied, Thats precisely the problem.The belief that the forests belong to us. Theyre not our medicines, and theyre not our forests. First, the plants belong to themselves, and they belong to the forest. Several people looked at me as though I had suddenly stopped speaking English and begun quacking like a duck. This is what often happens when you cease to speak the language of unbridled exploitation untethered selfishnessand begin to suggest that the forests, and the creatures who live in them (including indigenous humans), have the right to live on their own, regardless of how useful or not they may be to us.5 Sustainability, and sustainable development (SD), rushes over the question the people of Omelas ponder seriously. Sustainability focuses with deep sincerity and in great detail on the condition6 of the child locked up in the cellar, not the fact of the imprisonment. That the creature exploited in Omelas is a child makes the story meanginful, but in reality, as Jensen points out above, whether the creature exploited for the goodof the larger community is a child or an animal or plantany living thingthe violence committed is of the same quality. Abuse directed against animals is indisputably linked to child maltreatment and domestic violence. Society has traditionally compartmentalized these acts of violence and those agencies charged with their prevention. But evidence is mounting that violent acts are not separate and distinct, but rather have common origins and influences.7 Extending Omelas, we cannot escape our responsibility to every single creature in creation. If we add a social-political layer to Ursula Le Guins tale, there are three kinds of people, in Omelas and in the world today. (I will later put these categories into `arab mubn.) The first kind of person thrives on the terms and gains great benefit from exploiting resources. The second kind of person accepts the terms, but uneasily. The third kind walks away. We can analyze these three responses to the conditions, starting with the first kind of person. The infant begins to realize, in the first few months, that he or she depends utterly on the mother. The eyes focal range which used to be only the distance of the mouth at the breast to the mothers face now lengthens, and the infant can see the mother leaving and returning. The beginnings of individuation are now, when the infant realizes that the mother is separate, and can be divided from him. The process now is to form his individuality, that
Jensen and George Draffan [2003] Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, p. 13. And what people consider acceptable changes. Incarcerated children are being drugged: Fifty years ago, we were tying kids up with leather straps, but now that offends people, so instead we drug them," Robert Jacobs, a former Florida psychologist and lawyer who now practices psychology in Australia, told Kelly. www.naturalnews.com/030391_juveniles_antipsychotics.html
6 5Derrick

Frank Ascione and Phil Arkow [1999] Child abuse, domestic violence, and animal abuse: linking the circles of compassion for prevention and intervention. Purdue Research Foundation, p. xvi.
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unit which cannot be divided (un-divided, as Steven M. Rosen points out, is in-dividual). Milk and love can be withheld, and this other has a life of her own. That fact may enrage the becoming individual. The infant is dependent and helpless, but as he grows, he acquires skills and powers, and he does so to prevent ever again that someone should have her own life and that what he wants could ever be withheld from him. Such an infant may grow up with a belief that the world is a harsh place and his needs are not met. He must therefore find for himself the things he needs, and take them forcibly. He has no room for compassion or empathy or other weaknesses. No one is going to help him, so it is up to him to gain the skills and knowledge needed to control, seize, and use resources. Such a person may develop a fully antisocial personality disorder,8 or may exhibit only some of those traits. Certainly in an abusive person there is the assumption of instrumentality, that people only exist for his use. Another trait is deception and lying. Words and sentences exist as one more means to make people do what he wants them to do, and to believe what he wants them to believe. To expand a similar psycho-spiritual analysis to the global capitalist society, we may identify the Mother with Mother Nature. Rosen speaks of containing chaos, Mother Nature, apeiron9 as the basis of the scientific endeavor. The drive to contain the Mother comes from the anger at being dependent on another for milk and love. He says, The existence of homo rationalis is predicated on an assumption that itself has been obscured for centuries. Never enunciated but always taken for granted is the supposition that man has contained Mother Nature and now stands free and clear of her. It is this posture of detachment and power of containment that most essentially defines the individual. He maintains himself as an in-dividualas he who is one, undivided, unitaryby containing her. At bottom, this is what sciences quest for unity has been all about.10 So the first kind of person, thriving on the terms, learns how to exploit resources and how to individuate and disconnect his self from his Mother and from the Other. Resources, human and other, exist for him to use as he sees fit. Nature is his good little girl or Good Mother, but if chaos should occur, nature becomes a witch, a Medusa, a demon that must be cast out.11 Hence the drive to contain, to control, to predictthe goals of the (phallically) hard sciences. There is also a threat to his perfect control from the second group of people, who are uneasy with the terms. They have too much compassion and empathy. They accept to some
That is, glibness/superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, callous/lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility for own actions.
8

From , infinity, boundlessness (Liddell-Scott). Steven M. Rosen [2004] Dimensions of apeiron: a topological phenomenology of space, time, and Individuation. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B. V., p. 61.
9 10 11

Rosen, p. 128.

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extent that mothers have their own lives and that sometimes they cannot get what they want. In order to keep this second group in Omelas, in order to keep them from obstructing their relentless drives, the first group must lie. They must tell lies. The latest lie is sustainability. Let us consider Wal-Marts new sustainability pitch. (If the company were a country, it would be ranked about 38th in the world, with Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Egypt.) The company is going local, they say. David Correia asks, What does this actually mean? First, its a part of ongoing efforts by corporate actors like Wal-Mart to brand sustainability as a corporate-friendly term synonymous with productivity, efficiency and maximization. Sustainable means, in other words, whatever Wal-Mart says it means. Consider their tricky term local. A 2004 Counterpunch article by Yoshie Furuhashi used a Teamsters organizing map of Wal-Mart distribution points to demonstrate that most states are already served by local Wal-Mart distribution centers. The term local, in other words, as a definition of sustainable doesnt require any transformation to existing Wal-Mart distribution patterns. Its green washing at its most sophisticated. Wal-Mart has joined the crowd and has seized on the new green economy as insurance for their continued growth and expansion. Its the new model but it means the same old thing. It means sourcing products from huge agribusiness firms who grow monocrops dependent on the heavy use of pesticides and make narrow profit margins by brutally exploiting farmworkers. Bon Appetit.12 The word sustainable is used instrumentally; it is used to sell the lie. It is the latest lie, and corporations will go on to other lies, knowing that the focus is not the words but the individual consumers confidence. Jill Ettinger describes it this way. What's incredibly evident, if not downright chilling, is just how smart Coca-Cola is. Among countless ways they're dominating markets, they've realized there's really only one product ever worth selling, one that never goes out of fashion: You. Their biggest moneymaker is consumer confidence and nowhere is this buoyancy more prominent than in the booming sustainability movement.13 The Healthy Forests Act in the U.S. means that logging companies could circumvent environmental protection laws by unilaterally declaring that a certain forest was overgrown, and therefore a fire hazardunhealthy. The Act meant that more forests could be cut down with even less oversight. It was sold with the word healthy, while the reality would have appalled its audience. But if one confronts the first group with unpleasant realities, they will protest that they are helping the Earth! If they are told, Do not spoil the Earth!

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David Correia [October 15, 2010] Greenwashing the Wal-Mart Way in counterpunch.org http://www.realitysandwich.com/zero_calories_or_zero_waste

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They reply, Rather, we are the ones doing good! [2:11]

The same theme is found in the GM biotech deception. Multinational biotechnology giants like Monsanto continue to spread their genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) around the world in the name of ending world hunger and reducing poverty, but a new report out of Sweden has found the exact opposite to be true.14 It is unpleasant both for the critics who sound like they are quacking like ducks and the proponents who must continually deceive. The proponents have their closed-door meetings where they can drop the pretense. When a member of this first group goes to such a gathering, he may affirm that he truly belongs to this first group and disavow the lies. The situation may be something like this. When they meet the ones who are grateful, they say, We are grateful ones! But when they seclude with their satanic [associates] They say, We are with you! We rather mock [them]15

Oren Lyons, a native American activist, tells of an awkward moment when invited into the inner circle at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This is what happened. I asked this man, do you have any grandchildren? He said yes, I have an eight-yearold grandson. I said, why, I have a grandson eight years old too. So we were two grandpas talking about our kids. I asked him, when do you cease being a CEO and become a grandfather? And there was silence. He couldn't answer that. It got very uncomfortable in there. He would not answer the question so finally somebody says, well Chief, we hear about Indian prophecies. Can you tell us a prophecy? I said okay, how about a guaranteed prophecy? Ever hear of a prophecy guaranteed? They said no. I said, I can tell you one, being an Indian. They said okay, what is that? I said, you are going to meet next year and nothing will have changed. Guaranteed. That was the end of the meeting. What did I do? I brought a moral question into an economic forum and I was way out of line. They couldn't or wouldn't answer me
According to a recent piece in SvD, a Swedish newspaper, the transition of South American agriculture from small-scale, localized, diversified farming to primarily large-scale, industrialized, GMO soy farming is destroying the environment, increasing poverty, and harming human health. http://www.naturalnews.com/030390_GMO_soy_poverty.html
14

: : said, When misfortune befalls the muminn, they say, We are with you, we are indeed your brothers! But when they seclude to their satanic [associates], they mock the muminn. From alTabaris commentary on 2:14, Jmi` al-bayn f tafsr al-qurn (altafsir.com).
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because they couldnt verbalize what they all know. And the World Bank remains the largest public funder of fossil fuel projects in the world.16 Oren Lyons was not with them, because he did not mock the people outside who pose moral questions, so it was simply an awkward silence that ensued. We will return to the verses quoted above, but first we go on to the analysis of the second group, who want to believe that there is no torture involved in their energy source. They are lied to, but another way to look at it is, they demand lies, as they demand the maintenance of the illusions and hopes that make their lives tolerable. This group actually fits the part of an abusive family, as Derrick Jensen shows in The Culture of Make-Believe [2004]. We like to think that lies proceed from one party and are imposed on another party. But as Michel Foucault pointed out, the more meaningful way to see power is as collusion, where the abuser and the victim have a strange co-dependency. As frustrated social workers will affirm, victims of abuse seem not only to stay in abusive relationships but almost seek them out, going from one abuser to another. And too, victims of abuse often grow up to be abusers, perpetuating a cycle of violence. R. D. Laing put this into a song families with abuse sing to each other. One requires collusion to play Happy Families, he says. Individually, I am unhappy. I deny I am to myself; I deny I am denying anything to myself and to the others. They must do the same. I must collude with their denial and collusion, and they must collude with mine. So we are a happy family and we have no secrets from one another. If we are unhappy/we have to keep it a secret/ and we are unhappy that we have to keep it a secret and unhappy that we have to keep secret/the fact/that we have to keep it a secret and that we are keeping all that secret. But since we are a happy family you can see this difficulty does not arise.17 The defense mechanism of the collusive family is that any attempt to pierce the deception will simply sound like a duck quacking. In addition to the collusion of the first group and the second group, the first group imposes what poet John Trudell calls the trinity of chains: guilt, sin, and blame.18 The
16 17 18

Faithkeeper: An Interview with Oren R. Lyons, Realitysandwich.com 08/26/2010 R. D. Laing [1971] The politics of the family, and other essays. New York: Routledge, p. 99.

As an aside, I was wondering whether this central tenet of guilt in contemporary society had a referent in classical Arabic. The English-Arabic dictionary provides for the word guilt the following Arabic words: ithm, ma`iyah, khai`yah, and mudhnib. Those words, though, connect to

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connection of these terms to sustainability is obvious. Our sin of existence means that we make carbon footprints. It is our fault the environment is degraded, because we take long showers19 and drive cars.20,21,22 We feel guilty about all this and so embrace enthusiastically the concept of sustainability. The satirical newspaper The Onion takes the logic to the end; if you and your carbon footprint are bad, then the best you can do is die.

offense, disobedience, mistake, and crime or again offense. None of the psychological depth of guilt can be found in these Arabic words. Derrick Jensen http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/ Or lets talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, Im responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) arent dying because the world is running out of water. Theyre dying becau se the water is being stolen. 20 The domination of the car in the U.S., for example, was not a foregone conclusion. In the 1930s and 1940s automobile companies, especially GM, bought up public transportation systems and destroyed them, to make the car inevitable. See http://culturechange.org/issue10/taken-for-aride.htm In other countries, the car economy is introduced to make some people very rich, through financing, sales, tolls, and infrastructure contracts. 21 Ivan Illich writes, The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry. http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/illich02.htm 22 In the late 70's, I found myself unable to save money because I miscalculated how much my vehicle was costing. In 1986, I talked with a neighbor who was driving his pickup a hundred miles every day to work for $5.00 an hour, work being hard to find at that time. He had never thought about calculating how much it cost him to drive. But even the roughest figures make it doubtful that his $40.00 daily pay, after taxes and work-related expenses were deducted, would even cover his vehicle costs, let alone compensate him for his efforts. He would have been ahead to have stayed at home. http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/advocacy/autocost.htm
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Executives at Philip Morris USA this week unveiled Marlboro Earth, a new ecofriendly cigarette that gradually eliminates the causes of global warming and environmental destruction at their source. By killing off the No. 1 threat to the environment, new Marlboro Earths will have a long-term effect on the overall health of our planet," Philip Morris spokesperson Janet Weiss said. "If everyone in America does their part and joins our new green-smoking movement, then together we can eradicate man's destructive practices once and for all."23 One of the psychological consequences of the environment of lies, guilt, sin, and blame is something like obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Because people in the second group have little feeling of efficacy to really change their situation, they resort to controlling the tiny things that they can. One gets obsessive about greening everything, and one uses green products compulsively. Mother Jones magazine, traditionally weighted toward social political action, has a feature addressed to the isolated individual called econundrums. In this column, questions about whether it is more green to turn off the computer or keep it on are addressed. One may assume from the column that its readers are obsessed about every detail of their lives being sustainable, and compulsive in religiously turning off (or keeping on) their computers. In another piece from The Onion, we are shown the pitiful spectacle of the green obsessive-compulsive. But by carefully conserving water with the specially designed low-impact toilet I had installed, I can take comfort in the knowledge that I did what I could do to delay this inevitable global death-age by as many as several nanoseconds. Won't you join me in this ongoing effort to foster an imperceptible improvement to this doomed and dying planet? You'll be rewarded with the knowledge that, despite the irreversible effects of centuries of sustained environmental abuse by the human race, individuals, working together, can fight this inevitability in a real, concrete, tiny, and totally ineffective show of unity.24 I have tried to show that the concepts of sustainability and greenwashing exist as lies to ease acceptance of the underlying reality that is kept hidden: the energy that powers society has been taken; it has not been given. To the extent that this energyoil and other resources, including humancreated, support, and sustain this society, this Omelas must acknowledge its basis. Finally, what about the ones who walk away from Omelas? The first thing one notices is a lack of ego. Margaret Wheatley writes that the effort to avoid chaoswhat Rosen talked above about as apeiron and Mother Naturehas been a fearful posture. She says, Three centuries ago, when the world was imagined as an exquisite machine set in motion by Goda closed system with a watchmaker father who then left the shop
Eco-Friendly Cigarettes Kill Destructive Human Beings Over Time June 1, 2010 theonion.com. Continuing the eco-friendly theme, the Onion wrote In the Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly? Panelists discuss ways to wage a greener war in Iraq, such as driving biodegradable tanks and shocking detainees testicles with wind power. 24 Im Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment May 10, 2006, theonion.com
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the concept of entropy entered our collective consciousness. Machines wear down; they eventually stop . . . . This is a universe, we feel, that cannot be trusted with its own processes for growth and rejuvenation. If we want progress, then we must provide the energy to reverse decay. By sheer force of will, because we are the planets intelligence, we will make the world work. We will resist death . . . . What a fearful posture this has been!25 Wheatleys exploration of chaos and the fractal universe shows the insights, and peace, that come from abandoning Newtons mechanical world with its dead or absent god. The sheer force of will to make the world work is the voice of the ego, and the sustainable and green movements have no lack of egomountainous egos! For example, evolver.net has as its banner, Its Our World to Change. Wheatley says it is time to take the world off our shoulders. As the saying goes, Give the ego a breakits not easy being the center of the universe! The following passage from Ibn `Arabi seems to speak lyrically to the burden of the ego lifted away. (About) the provision to each creature of what is fit for each creature, as he needs, from divine wisdom: it is his word, He gave each thing its creation, then guided it [20:50], that is, he explained that he, ta`l, gave each thing its creation such that none of the things would say, I lack such and such, because that lack which one presumes is fleeting, arising because of ones ignorance of ones self and an absence of ones faith [in the verse 20:50], if his word had gone out to him that He gave each thing its creation. The created being will not recognize his completeness or his lack because he was created for another, not for himself, and the one who created him created him for Himself, not for himself; and He gave him only what suited Him ta`lbut the creature wants that it be for himself, not for his Lord. So because of this, he says, I want such and such, and I lack such and such. But if he knew that he was created for his Lord, he would know that God has created creation in a most perfect form suiting its Lord. I take refuge in God lest I be among the ignorant ones [2:67] [who dont realize this]. This issue is one that is most forgotten (even) by our companions, despite the understanding of the greatest of them of it. It is something needing to be understood at the beginning, middle, and end. It is the basis of courtesy toward the divine, which True One demands from his creatures. But only they know it who say, Our Lord, you extend over everything with kindness and understanding [40:7]. But those who say, Will you make on Earth one who spoils her and spills blood? [2:30], they did not stand with the intent of True One who created creation. If the matter did not transpire as it did [with spoiling of the Earth and spilling of blood], many names in the divine presence would go idle and would not come out in force. Messenger said, If they did not sin, God would have gone to another people who sinned, and they would ask forgiveness and God would forgive them.

25 Margaret Wheatley [2006] Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, p. 19.

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So he pointed out that everything that transpires in the universe transpires to bring out the force of a divine name. And since the matter is like this, there does not remain in all-possible-worlds any more wondrous than this universe, nor more perfect. There only remains in all-possible-worlds the likes of this universe, on and on to infinity. So understand that!26 The second quality the ones who walk away have is thankfulness, described in the next passage as the original instructions,which the Six Nations peoples described to the U.N. in Geneva, in 1977. All things of the world are real, material things. The Creation is a true, material phenomenon, and the Creation manifests itself to us through reality. The spiritual universe, then, is manifest to Man as the Creation, the Creation which supports life. We believe that man is real, a part of the Creation, and that his duty is to support Life in conjunction with the other beings. That is why we call ourselves Ongwhehonwhe-Real People. The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives --the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end.27 The archetypal description of human society and the environment in the Qurn is the Marib Dam, its collapse, and the ensuing cataclysmic flooding. In the following, the text is split up to reveal a rhetorical structure. {A} There was for Saba in their settlement a sign (a) two gardens on the right (b) Eat of the provision of your Lord, (c) a land good, {B} {C} but they turned away (a) So we sent against them a violent torrent (b) and we changed their gardens (c) into two gardens, producing bitter fruit, and tamarisk, and a few lote-trees That was their recompense for their ingratitude Do we recompense any but the ungrateful? and left and be thankful to him and Lord forgiving

{Ingratitude} {General} {A}

We made between them and the blessed cities a visible city (a) and we measured them for journey-stages (b) Journey there nights and days, safely

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Futt III:143-144. http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/6nations1.html#part1a

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{B} {C}

but they said, Lord, increase the distance between our journey-stages And they darkened their souls (a) (b) So we made them lore and scattered them, all scattered

{Gratitude} {General}

In that are signs for every refraining, thankful one Iblis, his opinion was confirmed against them They followed him, except a fragment, the believers

{A} is the sign the people of Saba had, described in (a) and (c) with (b) being the description we the audience imagine as we hear the divine command to themeat and be thankful. {B} is what they did instead. {C} is the divine response, the negative a, b, and c mirroring the positive a, b, and c. The theme is ingratitude, and a generalization is made. {A} is another sign they had, described in (a) and (b), with (b) a description we the audience imagine as we hear the divine command to themjourney there safely. {B} is what they did instead, parallel to {B}. {C} is the divine response, mirroring a and b. The mirror theme is gratitude, and a generalization is made. The lesson from the collapse of the Marib Dam is thankfulness and restraint, As a sign for each one who is restrained, thankful [34:19].

The commentaries on refraining ones and thankful ones describe the opposing pair as follows: when something (good) is given, one is thankful; when something difficult is given as a test, one is restrained. In the Lisn al-`arab, Ibn Manzur says it is binding ones self or soul when anxious. To connect abr to an ecology, it is refraining from exceeding the boundaries, waiting patiently. Connecting back to this passage, we can see that the ones who darkened their own souls did so by not being thankful for what they had, and also by not refraining from exceeding the boundaries, in this case by greedily or arrogantly asking for increased distance between the stages so they could gain economic benefit from outfitting and supplying the travellers. To connect these terms of an `arab mubn, we may configure the following. The mumin is the one with mn, semantically situated in Lisn al-`arab as mn; its antonym is kufr. In the following verse, shukr and kufr are opposites.

We guided one to the way; one is Thankful, one is Ungrateful [76:3]

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The mumin is thankful, someone who acknowledges that we receive Gods blessingit is not there for the taking. Such a person walks away from Omelas. The kfir is semantically situated as kufr, the contrary to mn, and kufr of blessing, that is, denying and covering up blessing; the contrary to thankfulness (shukr). The kfir denies Gods blessing, derived from covering up. Such a person denies that God provides blessings and believes instead that resources are there for the taking. The munfiq is semantically situated as the jerboa tunneling (naffaqa) into his tunnel (nfiqi), and from it is derived the word munfiq. The attribute of the munfiq is displaying mn while inside is kufr [Ibn Ab lib al-Makk, Al-hidyah on 2:14, altafsir.com]. In the commentaries on the verse we have considered, If they are told, Do not spoil the Earth! they reply, Rather, we are the ones doing good! [2:11], there is one argument that the they in this verse are actually sincere in their statement.28 One of the meanings of il (as in, we are al-mulin) is reconciling two parties. In this situation, one argument goes, the theyof this verse are trying to reconcile two parties, the muminn and the kuffr. In our allegorical tale, perhaps the first party in Omelas try to reconcile the second party with the ones who walk away. But I think that Ursula Le Guins ending is correct. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

28 In Razis commentary on 2:11, that is, this group are proceeding to il (reconciliation) between the muslims and the kuffr (altafsir.com).

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