The Nature of Control

The Nature of Control

The whole place is so crazy that no one can see how crazy it really is.
“I’m not a control freak, I just demand control.” He said that to us, right to our faces, without a smile, without even the faintest trace of any sort of existential irony. He drove across campus—goddamn, the whole kilometre over—wearing his shoes inside and a tie that was far too lavish for such a solemn occasion. When he came in, we all stood up, in unison, like some sort of monogamous vehicle to his greatness. We stood up to greet him in our pyjamas and sweatpants and a mishmash of facial masks and creams and hair, still dripping, from an evening shower. He acknowledged us, the unwashed masses, and allowed us to sit down—generous soul, he was, giving us the priveldge to sit down on our sofas.


Then, of course, we got the lecture. Everyone knew it was coming, from the moment that yet another phone had the audacity to go walking. They often do, those sneaky creatures, just like skirts or vinyl shoes with yellow flowers or scarves or bracelets or calculators. Everything goes missing every now and again, but only phones have the dubious honour of getting another session of lecturing, posturing, guilt-tripping, whatever. Well, he stood up there, making some vague effort to be casual by half-heartedly sticking a hand in his pocket and by waving his other idly around. He straightens his glasses a little too often.

“Hopefully you all know what this meeting is about,” he began, “And I assume you do, so let’s get right to the point.” He waffled around the issue for a bit instead, making half-hearted jokes about his position, his power, his ability to squash us all without so much as lifting a finger. We laughed appropriately nervously. He must practice those one-liners, in front of the mirror, somewhere between his intense sessions of signing documents, being a figurehead and making his inferiors feel guilty. I zoned out for a moment, considering the relevant historical parallels to Stalin, perhaps, and when I came back in, he was still talking. Rattling on about—get this—how important trust is. Trust. Motherfucking trust. A smidgen of irony had grown wings and fangs, turned around, and seared off the eyebrows of the crowd, and no one particularly seemed to notice. I shuddered a little too visibly. He caught my eye and I looked away.

Were we honestly expected to put trust in each other when they didn’t have any trust in us? They could argue their position ‘til their lips fell off, but the fact of the matter is that not a single powerful person in this demented hierarchy trusts anyone below them at all. They subscribe to that “Lord of the Flies” school of thought, that the young are savages, to be tamed and groomed into the ideal workforce that the world will, apparently, so desperately need in the future. If given an ounce of freedom, we’ll all squander it, making the “wrong” descisions. If we get a minute of privacy, we’ll drug ourselves sick and have crazy sex on anything with a pulse. Those sort of urges need to be beaten down early, children! Drugs are not okay under any circumstances, unless it’s for your bipolarism or your depression or vertigo or impotence or because you have a papercut. Sex ought to only exist within a marriage, be it first, second, or twelfth. Sleep when we tell you to, eat when we tell you to, run laps because we tell you to, abstain from what we forbid. I guess they’re called “head-masters” for a reason.