![]() ![]() Children are introduced to the ugly truth at tender age. In Ursula Le Guin’s city of utopian joy and happiness, no one can claim to be ignorant of the suffering their happiness relies on. ![]() He pointed out how people like to turn away from the origin of the cutlets on their plate, the meat that once was a breathing creature like themselves, slaughtered out of their sight by others so they don’t have to associate it with murder and suffering anymore. Instead of presenting the thoughts of other philosophers to us, he went on a mission to raise our consciousness on what he called the ugliness of de backside of things: what is happening at the outskirts of our towns, in the slaughterhouses the messy extensions to houses built in the back garden without permission which one cannot guess from the well-tended, flower-filled front gardens and whitewashed facades. This allegorical and troubling take on moral choices and the price society is willing to pay for happiness reminded me of the teachings of our professor of ethics. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. ![]()
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