Why kill yourself if you can just kill your old self?

What could be a good enough reason for a person to disappear?

by Jean Léon Jaurès

The simplest being; to be sought by the law. The definition of who is a criminal is very broad, and is both chronologically and culturally relative. The things that were illegal yesterday, such as homosexuality, being an intellectual or a communist, a gipsy or a Jew, are treated differently today but could also change again tomorrow.

Because most of us are not outlaws, it is easy to think that as long as you haven’t done anything illegal, there is no reason to fear that your born identity would stand in your way.

At first the family that you were born into saddles your position in society, your education defined your view of the world, the country you were born in created the rules you have to obey to. The passport you hold regulates your possibility to travel between countries. The clothes you wear define the looks you get on the street and the way the salesman is going to treat you in a shop. The color of your skin determines how many times you are going to get stopped on the street by the police. Your accent might be more important than what have you actually said. Our given identity defines our way of moving around in the world.

And if that isn’t restricting enough; as a resident of a technological society you are constantly being watched and at the same time receiving information from the outside world. Mobile telephones, radios, televisions, newspapers, computers are everywhere in our daily surroundings, from our private homes through to the dentist’s waiting room. As we walk down the street we are unconsciously flooded with advertisement and ‘telling offs’. The same means that are being used by us to watch the world and get our way around between our offices and the supermarket are also the means of tracking us down.

For example the Internet is an eye that shows us the world but at the same time registers our behaviour on the net. Our mobile phone connects us with others but the Global Positioning System (GPS) shows our exact location. Solitude has no economical value therefore you won’t find it advertised, freedom of choice expresses itself mainly by how you spend your money and consume in. Eloping this social order is impossible; walking on the street faces you with slogans and desires that are seeded by commercial thought. You cannot avoid banks anymore, -all payments go through- you get your salary to your bank, and knowledge, information is gathered on the net.

Unfortunately the situation is not that easy as: “If I don’t have anything to hide, why bother let them know who I am?” Political maps can change, it would take only few terrorist attacks in couple of cities and it could lead to a new page in an old black book.

The main reason that the Social Nazi party could destroy and murder so many people is the fact that they had access to ‘private’ lists of European citizens. In countries where those files got destroyed such as Sweden and Denmark, many outlaws of the time (such as Jews, homosexuals and communists) could escape the doomed destiny the Nazis planed for them.

It doesn’t have to become as extreme as in the World War Two or the Cold War. We can simply get our insurance companies to refuse to cover us, because we drink too much beer or wine. As they will be able to check our supermarket membership card when our consumer profiles are sold off. It can start with a simple nicotine test that is becoming more and more a necessity in able to get a health or life insurance, and end in a dark and unknown place.

Liberalism and freedom were important slogans in the western world in the decay after World War Two. During a period of forty years Europe and America were standing as an opposition to the Eastern Block. Due to this opposition, the difference between the east and the west had to be made clear. The picture that got portrayed in the west was that communism gave its citizen no freedom of speech, privacy and freedom of movement while the roaring west was a melting pot for different cultures, ideas ambitions and dreams.

Till this day it is commonly believed that every individual has the right to choose the way he lives in the western world. But nowadays, fifteen years after the USSR lost its power, the need for the western world to prove itself as an opposition to the ‘KGB’ way of life in the east, has disappeared.

Our world has changed fast since the fall of the Eastern Block, the boarders between war and peace became vague after the Iron Curtain disappeared. It seems as the war takes place on and only on our television screens. But at the same time a bomb could explode just about anywhere on our streets; the nearest World Trade Centre, train or underground. It is uncertain who the enemy is, where is this enemy lives (amongst us probably) what language this enemy speaks, what kind of passport does he/she holds, what this enemy looks like, what are his/her ideals and ideas of the world. In this indistinguishable situation of war and peace our European government has set a different priority. Instead of the liberalism of the seventies, nowadays control is becoming more and more a necessity, or at least that is what we are told.

Different people have different needs while travelling in the identity change lane. If you are an immigrant, changing your identity is part of your everyday life. If you are an illegal immigrant, hiding your identity can be part of your way of living.Illegal immigrants are an invisible group making an opposite journey. They would like to emerge from their invisibility in society and to take part in it.

Travelling the identity change lane is not just a physical journey, but primarily a personal one. Trying to build a new life is not just about crossing a former national border, but about changing your way of life.