The Kidnapper's Illusion (Blog-Off Entry #3)

"Somebody was kidnapped. By the supermarket." Zhou JieJie's voice scratches through my phone.
"Who?"
"Somebody. I don't know. Lu Laoshi wanted me to make sure everybody is okay. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Who got kidnapped? A Westerner or Chinese?"
"I don't know. Just be careful. Don't talk to strangers."
"Okay, yeah, don't worry I'm just at a cafe."
"Okay. See you."
"Yeah, bye."

I think back to a conversation I had with Kelly. She told me: "The only reason I want laser surgery is that I want to be able to see where I am when I wake up, you know? At any time, no matter what. If I have glasses, I might not always be able to put them on".

To wake up and not be able to see where you are. To walk down the street, and get grabbed, stuffed, punctured, taken away, restrained, controlled, demanded. Or, as we've read: to be trapped in a hotel in Mumbai, guns rattling bullets stampeding down hallways through skin blood bone heart stomach lung carpet wallpaper door brain bed air thick with chaos sound hate confusion.

Why?

On one hand, you have the act for what it is: the feeling of control, to make decisions that greatly affect not only your life but the life of others, to claim godhood with the ability to choose the exact moment when someone's life ends, and to use that as justification to make them do whatever you want, theoretically--instant power.

And then, there's what the act represents: it's not the person, but their whole race, country, culture, whatever it is that you want to use them for. Conquer an American tourist, you can conquer America. Same goes with slavery (really, just a more elaborate and lasting version of kidnapping). Conquer a person of another skin color or background, and you assert "superiority" of your race over theirs. Control. Power. Or at least the illusion of it.

What is power? Is it really what it claims to be? Does it actually exist? I'd go as far to say that power, as in power over people, money, property--the most common conceptions of power, the idea of ownership and control--is actually one of the most pointed expressions of insecurity, misunderstanding, and, ultimately, non-control. To claim power over something is to claim possession, and therefore control and understanding. But more often than not, to claim understanding of something is to not understand--to create a simplified replica of what you want to have power over, and therefore to fall prey to illusion, abstraction, non-reality. Power is invented. Money is invented. Property is invented. To fall under the spell of control--to believe that you can really control something--is to displace yourself from what is real. And I'll stand by the fact that what is real is good, and that it's worth dedicating one's life to finding, receiving, creating, living as much of what is real as possible. Y'know, Socrates style.

But I should add a disclaimer. I'm no total anarchist, nor fatalist, because of these ideas. A person does have a certain amount of control in their thoughts and actions in the world. But this thought comes attached with two tags: 1. that real control comes with understanding (at least understanding as much as possible as opposed to claiming complete understanding) and compassion. 2. That nothing can be completely controlled, even the self. Otherwise we'd be gods.

-s