To walk or to not walk

2. Although the people of Omelas are fully aware of the child's suffering, those who remain in Omelas don't seem to feel any guilt. In fact, Le Guin reinforces this in her story.   Do you think it's possible to constantly feel guilty about the misery of others?  Please explain and provide examples.

At first when this question came to my mind I simply just thought that my answer would be to walk away “in tears, or in tearless rage” because of my strong emotions towards the cruel scene would not allow me “face this terrible paradox”. Whereas I believed that I would be a citizen of Omelas who could not be able to stand the doings towards the child and cannot do anything about it. I supposed that I would be different from all of the citizens of Omelas because I considered that I could try to stand up for the child and change.

But then as I put more thought into the question my answer slowly changed because there was not any guilt, pain, and grief in this utopian world. I started to question myself, if I was to born and raised as a citizen of Omelas, I would just follow the regulations and do what everyone else does since I would not know or feel things outside of what I would be surrounded by, since I would be just like them, a citizen of Omelas. Being a child that grew up in a society like this would just follow everyone else because they were raised like that. For example children in other countries where war occurs or were raised to go to war do not know more of what happens outside their society or think what they are doing is wrong.

Then I thought that since there were already citizen that “would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they could do.” I might not be able to change or do anything.  Nevertheless to walk away means to ignore the situation, however for myself to ignore this, living in around this would be hard. It’s just like when my parents would drive by Hasting and I would notice outside the window of the scene, they just told me to ignore those people out there. They are still considered people, to just simply ignore them and forget about them ruthless, but then it’s a natural thing that people still do.

As my thoughts wonder all around this question to fight for my concluding answer between what I think, what I believe, what I would feel, and what I know. The answer would be that I would stay since there was no guilt, pain and sadness, just happiness. I would not be able to ignore and forget about the child. I would just simply try to live and find happiness, with the child being in the back of my mind. This may sound greedy, selfish, and merciless but if I were to leave Omelas, it would not be an improvement at all. What I realize that even though at a point in time we are sympathetic and feel guilty for what has happen around us and the world, but in someway we slowly continue onwards with our life and maybe even forget about what had happen for awhile, just like the citizens in Omelas.