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The Zone of Comfort

January 13, 2025

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On a recent flight back from Las Vegas after a vacation with my daughter, I watched Jonathan Glazer’s disturbing 2023 film, The Zone of Interest. The movie is about the family of Auschwitz concentration camp commander Rudolf Hӧss and their day-to-day lives in their beautiful home and gardens located just outside the walls of hell. 

Hӧss’ wife, Hedwig (“Heddy”), is proud of the lovely home and flowers she has cultivated; when she gives her visiting mother a tour of the premises, Heddy sounds much like any suburban American wife smugly pleased with the comfortable life she has created for her family. Hӧss is portrayed as a caring father who reads bedtime stories to his daughters (including a chilling reading of the story of Hansel and Gretel, who push a witch inside an oven to avoid being pushed in themselves).

That the comfort of the Hӧss’ home is just a wall away from the unimaginable suffering of the concentration camp is, for me, the essential message of Glazer’s film. As I watched, it began to dawn on me how fitting it was that I was watching The Zone of Interest on my way back from Las Vegas—a place where feeding one’s desires for comfort, consumption, and constant entertainment reigns supreme; meanwhile, the suffering of the “real” world can occasionally be glimpsed on the giant TV screens that cover almost every spare surface in Vegas. Reports from Gaza, Ukraine, and California ablaze in wildfires seep through cracks in the wall of infinite entertainment, just as the Hӧss family occasionally hears gunshots from the other side of the wall between their home and the camp.

Perhaps the analogy is extreme. Are those of us living large in Las Vegas, or even just wallowing in the unprecedented comfort that is daily life for most Americans, as culpable as the Hӧss family for the suffering “behind the wall”? I think the answer is yes and no. No one in Vegas is committing genocide. And there’s nothing that horrific about blowing off a little steam in “Sin City,” especially if you’re just watching Cirque du Soleil or the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel. But I think Glazer’s movie is trying to make us think about how the Holocaust was made possible not just by extreme callousness and blatant evil, but also by a certain kind of nefarious turning inward that happens when we relentlessly pursue our own comfort. Perhaps he’s implying that the comfortable First World is committing a sin of omission. 

Secular culture seems to tell us that the point of life is to be as comfortable as possible, to avoid even the most minute inconvenience or irritation.

In my women’s Bible study group, which follows the Walking with Purpose curriculum developed by Lisa Brenninkmeyer, we discuss false gods—the things we worship perhaps unwittingly in our everyday lives, like money and the need to please people. Brenninkmeyer acutely understands her audience when she points out that in our culture we often worship comfort. It’s perhaps the most pernicious of America’s false gods. 

One need only watch ten minutes of advertisements to get the message that discomfort is to be avoided at all costs; indeed, one senses that discomfort is perhaps even a bit immoral. We must have shoes that our feet effortlessly slip into, over-the-counter medicines that wipe away every possible ache and pain, and cars where a world of music and anything else you can get from your smartphone is at the touch of your fingertips. (I’m as guilty of this as anyone else. When I recently bought a new car, I insisted on heated leather seats.) The goal seems to be completely pain-free bodies, totally convenient access to all forms of food and drink, and a constant drip infusion of entertainment. Secular culture seems to tell us that the point of life is to be as comfortable as possible, to avoid even the most minute inconvenience or irritation. Like the princess and the pea, we collectively toss and turn, seeking to eliminate the least bit of discomfort from our lives.

The worship is not just of physical comfort, but of emotional, interpersonal comfort. It invades our personalities and affects the way we walk in the world with others. We become afraid to have difficult conversations, endure the challenges of complex relationships (like marriage, parenting, or caring for elderly parents), or even take jobs we find somewhat unpleasant. We avoid people and situations that are uncomfortable, which keeps us from interacting with people who act, look, or dress differently than us. It puts us in a box bounded by four walls of the fear of pain, and shields us from the pain of others.

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What are the costs of this obsession? Maybe not the deaths of millions as in Glazer’s movie. But perhaps the resources—mental and monetary—that we incessantly throw at this obsession could be redirected to alleviate real suffering, beyond discomfort. The kind of true suffering that happens in the world behind the wall of Heddy’s garden or behind our own walls of neighborhood, social status, even religion. From a global perspective, maybe we could sacrifice a little comfort to donate resources to the 10 percent of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization, who are affected by hunger every year, or to prevent the trafficking of fifty million people. Here in our own country, the cost of padding ourselves in relationship comfort leaves behind a wake of failed marriages, children who feel unloved and lack resilience, and elderly people who are isolated and lonely. We’re a country in which the need for emotional comfort has led to an epidemic of anxiety and depression—ironically exacerbating the very suffering we’ve sought to avoid.  

I’m not flagellant or an ascetic. I’m not saying we should be intentionally uncomfortable or that anyone should suffer unnecessarily. But I am a Catholic who believes in the essential nature of the corporal works of mercy, which by their nature require us to step out of our comfort zone. Could we share the money and resources we spend on our own comfort with those who suffer more intensely than we do? Our faith says so. Should we bear some difficulties in relationships for the benefit of those who need us? The consequences of decades of a societal focus on “self-fulfillment” tell us yes. 

Pope Benedict XVI said, “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” Our obsession with comfort blocks us from leading fuller lives—lives with more texture and meaning. If we were not meant for a life of greatness in the conventional sense, perhaps we were meant for a life as a great spouse, a great parent, a great caregiver, a great community member, a great humanitarian, or a great friend.

Comfort is good. It just isn’t the ultimate good. When it becomes the ultimate false god, as for Rudolph and Heddy Hӧss in The Zone of Interest, it can become quite bad indeed.