Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,” besides a sense of awe and wonder, left something behind upon its completion. Humans feel connected, if not to each other, to some group or shared commonality that they can relate with.

This connection can be genuine, complete and strong. On the other hand, you may find yourself in a “granfalloon,” an idea from the novel’s ficticious religion Bokononism concerning a false sense of community.

To study a granfalloon, the prophet Bokonon teaches us, “just remove the skin of a toy balloon.”

I see a granfalloon in the idea of citizenship to a country, and I wish Kurt Vonnegut were still here to help spread the idea.

The idea of loyalty and pride behind one’s country is a charming one. It’s endearing, warm, and alluring. Our nation gives a lot to us, and we, certainly, to it. It tries to protect us from ourselves, others and itself, all with varying degrees of eventual failure and midterm shellacking.

The bond of citizenship to one’s country is a necessary bond until it reaches the point where violence is included in the relationship. From there on out, I see the bonds that link human to human as much more meaningful.

Citizenship is a necessity only because we’re still afraid of other places, and thus, other people. Our national granfalloon lends a sense of well-being and complacent acceptance without encouraging us to trust anything outside of it.

We can recognize, but not understand, the idea of infinity. On a similar note, as Jeff Mangum explained, some of us simply can’t believe “how strange it is to be anything at all.”

That’s just it. We’re capable of realizing that we could have been anything (or nothing) at all, but weren’t. That we’re capable of recognizing this is just as astounding as the strange possibility of being “anything” is. This shared realization should be what unites us, not the arbitrary lines we draw for fleeting geopolitical security.

If we were to unite ourselves according to the things that we do not understand instead of by the things we force meaning upon, our granfalloon will sail away, deflated.