Group oneness is an essential catalyst of change on any meaningful scale; the higher the manpower, the more widespread the effect. While movements of this nature can only function by targeting an “enemy,” this does not contradict the goal of unity when the target serves an actual threat to a more fulfilling world. Work of this manner, however, becomes impossible when we are taught to fear things or groups that do not actually cause harm. We are told that nebulous forces carrying both widespread control and inherent inferiority—paradoxes—are out to destroy all that we know that brings us comfort. But is all that we know really beneficial, and is much of it really worth saving?

Irrational fears supposedly help us protect our “freedom”—our gas guzzling cars, our insecure belief systems, our dirty blue jeans—yet they only restrict us to strategies of division and conquerment. The “other” is a lurking threat, and you’d best amplify your greed as much as you can to prove that, no, you will not become one of “them.” Exiting one’s comfort zone becomes betrayal, a crime. These fears keep us from enjoying new experiences or any form of change; we are left to our inoculating bubbles, safe but inexperienced and idiotic. We are told to live in fear.

It reminds me of a narrative that has sparked my attention recently. It regarded a pale-skinned man with a wife and two children of differing sex, a dog, and one car. They lived comfortably in a suburban Colorado development just far enough away from society to put him at ease while close enough to it to assimilate him to the eyes he knew were always watching. His preferred methods of faking conformity were leaving to work at eight in the morning five days a week and hosting backyard cookouts featuring homemade lemonade and Frisbee. Repairing his car in the driveway was his second favorite hobby, though this lingered far behind tending to his obsessive thought patterns which demonized all who surrounded him. In a way, his constant state of paranoia paralleled that of men weaker than him, men who had completely rejected methods of assimilation and retreated to the seedy backwoods of America in avoidance of the truth. To them, the facade of normalcy and wholesomeness in a world gone mad was not worth it when hoarding firearms in a remote cabin was a possibility. Our subject, however, had not succumbed to the call of the wild, primarily out of fear that the effort he had put into the construction of his life would be wasted should he abandon his family and the suburbs. He shared their same fears, but he owned a shame that the others had let go of long ago: the shame of looking like a crackpot to others.

He still read the daily paper during breakfast the old school way like his own father had, and he still carried Chick tracts in his briefcase to leave in public restrooms. He took three little white pills a day, and so did his wife. Meatloaf was always dinner on Mondays, and every weeknight, before the nightly news came on, each family member would go to their bedroom, put on the custom fitted military grade combat uniforms that he had special ordered for everyone, and then gather in the darkened sitting room. They would then situate themselves on and around the couch as they faced the television set tuned to their channel of choice, watching intently and completely focused should any violence or staticky primordial material come leaking out of the screen in a direct attack on the concept of the nuclear family itself. He held his rifle during these sessions should anything happen. The television remained unplugged and covered by a floral print sheet at all other times. His children were not allowed to leave the development, and his wife rarely did.

Our hero, who lives in a perpetual time warp, seems bound to the model family as propagated by America’s post-war culture of the 1950s. His obsessions prove wrong the common assumption that rises in divorce rates, single parent households, and mixed relationships have made the nuclear family ideal extinct. As much as some would love to say that old traditions are being eradicated (for better or for worse, depending on which side you’re on), they still exist and inform our ways of living (for better or for worse). Our hero falls in the latter category—he is still trapped in his bubble, so deathly afraid of popping it that he armors himself against a world that cannot attack him (and would most likely accept him if he offered himself). Sound familiar?

Also, his mistrust of his television set appears to be an exaggerated version of the relationship most of us hold with technology. Despite suiting up in defense of it, he still makes a ritual of its consumption. We may question how much surveillance our computers have over us, but we still use them. We have to. So-called technological progress has strong-armed us into a love-hate relationship, an endless battle between tradition and progress, one that perfectly sums up our hero’s sad existence. The same patterns reverberate on, sometimes in different colors or speeds, but always fundamentally the same. There is no end; the news channel runs twenty-four hours a day.