Breaking The Omelet
“In order to make an omelet, you must first break a few eggs.” The omelet metaphor has been used many times to justify sacrifice in the present to achieve a goal in the near future, however, when looked at closely, the omelet metaphor crumbles like a dried, empty eggshell.
Due to its implicit use of force, the omelet metaphor smacks of violent coercion and implies that in order to achieve goals, sacrifice is required of someone either voluntarily, by force, or by threat of force. It implies the need to pound people into submission and seems to justify the use of force to break people to one’s will. I completely disagree with the omelet metaphor. Most of the time, if one thinks first of breaking eggs, opportunities for more creative solutions are ignored. It seems that if modern man would learn to compromise and solve problems creatively so much more could be accomplished than by breaking and destroying as a first resort. The Omelet metaphor no longer seems apt.
Another reason I don’t like the metaphor is that the sacrifice described therein is never being made by the person using it. Most people who have sacrificed something for a greater good do not feel the need to make excuses to others for their own sacrifice. In reality, they need make no statement to defend their decision or to clear their conscience. For example, a man who cuts off his own foot to escape a trap is breaking his own eggs in order to survive, but I doubt he would feel compelled to use that phrase. No one would need to ask his justification. His reasoning is clear. It’s when that phrase is used to justify someone else’s forced sacrifice that it rubs me wrong. Most people use the omelet metaphor to explain to others why someone else must sacrifice for a “greater good.”
Breaking down the words of this phrase, we find that they don’t really mean what they are intended to mean. By their very nature, eggs (if fertilized) represent potential offspring; they represent the future. It doesn’t make sense to me to call the eggs (or the potential animal in the egg form) a sacrifice, because the eggs in the shell are not of much use as such. When making an omelet, one is merely taking an otherwise useless object (an unfertilized egg) and transforming it into something useful. Even the stated goal of the metaphor, an omelet, seems short-term, short-sighted, and hardly worth the sacrifice of future chickens (turtles, or dinosaurs, whatever offspring might come from them). Certainly the loss to the person breaking the eggs is far less than the loss to the mother of the unhatched eggs or to the families of those who are sacrificed.
By their very nature, eggs represent potential offspring. It doesn’t make sense to call the eggs (or the animal in the egg form) a sacrifice, if as you say, the eggs in the shell are not of any use. Basically, I’m arguing against the idea that people or the use (primarily in military actions) of people as a resource without fully appreciating the value of life is a great mistake. So to devalue potential life within an egg to make an omelet is to say “We are sacrificing future eggs, future omelets, and future chickens (or whatever the animal is that laid the egg) for the here and now, for our immediate gratification. I don’t think that metaphor makes sense in 99.9% of the situations I’ve ever heard it.
I understand the impossibility of converting everyone to pacifism. It’s pointless to teach pacifism. Teaching all people the true value of EVERY human life (it is all each of us truly has) on this planet is paramount. Teaching people that killing for religious reasons is not acceptable. Teaching people that killing innocent civilians for ANY reason is ever justifiable is atrocious, because doing so is tantamount to saying that some human lives are disposable. I would also suggest that the human race must teach every child empathy, the ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and understand the situations others find themselves in, sometimes as a direct result of their environment/upbringing/culture. Until that happens, someone will always be happy breaking someone else’s eggs to make an omelet.
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Themocracy
Keith!
I know we had this argument.
The reason we had the argument is because I was missing one thing: “someone else’s eggs.”
Sure, forget Halliburton and KBR (more importantly, the politicians in charge of said organizations) and their willingness to break their contractor’s eggs over in Afghanistan.
I’m speaking from “I have six men with me, and if we take the objective, our battalion can move in” mindset.
Granted, I’ve not been in that situation, and I don’t want to sound like a hero, but I’m honestly saying that I COULD say the words “Ready? Go!” — if it involved the breakings of eggs. Even my own.
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In the situation you describe, what is your omelet? Basically, you seem to be saying that the short-term improvement of a military position is worth the price of several human lives, including your own. To me, you’d be wasting something extremely valuable for something relatively trivial. Your choice, I suppose.
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The omelette could be anything.
Securing the perimeter for establishing a fortification, which leads to the buildup of a self-sustaining base. The self-sustaining base has its own infrastructure, workers, food and fuel supply – thanks to a couple GI’s that cleared the area first. (Whether or not the GI’s BELONG there is another topic. I’m inclined to adopt a US-centric approach to fighting a war anyway.)
Sabotaging pickup trucks so they can’t be used in drive-by attacks by insurgents. Of course, I’m ret-conning a bit here – so I’ll substitute pickup trucks with Tiger Tanks, and ignore for now that our sabotage usually means a missile attack.
Killing Hitler. How would you feel if a soldier on a Suicide Mission infiltrated Hitler’s bunker, shot him, AND got away? What if he didn’t live? Would you feel different?
I think some objectives can be that important.
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Targeting Hitler with a suicide bomber seems extremely unlikely to work, and without taking out most of his supporting officers, there would be no meaningful change in the direction the Nazis were taking Germany. I think 99% of all issues are more complicated than can be fixed with a bomb or a suicide mission. Hitler was a symptom of a greater problem, a problem far greater than just one human being, and I sincerely doubt that merely killing Hitler would have changed anything. Why get stuck in the idea that trading death for death is a constructive way to solve problems at all?
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