Slipping into the Mainstream

The river was the center of society. It provided water for drinking and agriculture and abundant fish for the taking and eating. The people settled both banks, making the river's central position quite literal.

The river had no name. It was the only river anyone could see, so they just called it "the river," and that seemed to work fine. After a while, though, they also started calling it "the Mainstream" because, well, that was what it was.

In its capacity of sustainer of life, the Mainstream was respected and revered. And it took on symbolic status as the standard of everything that was good and right and noble and virtuous. Early inhabitants of its shores took great pains to protect it, to keep it clean and pure so that it might continue its life-sustaining functions. Anyone, and there was always at least one, who attempted to use it as a rubbish dump or a toilet, was rebuffed and severely reprimanded. "Take your garbage and ... whatever somewhere else," the people would say.

And so they would. But the problem was that the "somewhere else" was never quite "else" enough. It might be a tributary of the Mainstream or it might just be a hole that leaked down into the groundwater. Little by little, pollutants found their way into the Mainstream, but the process was slow enough that most people didn't notice.

One day, one of the more observant citizens noticed that the river was brown, sludgy, and slow rather than clear, clean, and swift.

"Look!" cried the citizen. "Our river has become one big open sewer!"

"How dare you!" gasped his fellow citizens.

"No, look," the guy persisted. "Just look at it. It's full of sewage. It's disgusting."

"How double dare you!" gasped the others. "That is the Mainstream! It is the gold standard ... no, the Mainstream standard ... of all that is Good and Right and Noble and Virtuous!"

"It's brown," insisted the guy suicidally. "I'm just making an empirical observation. The Mainstream has changed."

"The Mainstream never changes!" roared the man's mob of fellow citizens. "It's the Mainstream! This person is a dangerous radical!"

And so the radical was hurled as a sacrifice into the river, which had become so thick that he was able to walk across it. But society had been saved in the nick of time from the forces of radicalism.