We abduct them, they abduct us. A tale of justice of sorts.
It all has something to do with the Greek concept of the seizure of women by the gods (ἁρπαγή) usually found in aetiological tales of the cosmic order (that reach their telos in the tales of rapture by Christ). This is hard to figure, but it means somehow that "abduction" operates as a myth still, one about the horizon of our science and knowledge, and of our political and cosmic authority within a higher order.
I have not fully understood yet this striking nexus of ideas, but it is certainly liminal between disenchantment and its opposite, being both rational and strange. I mean that the abductions are both scientific (in the real, an objective act conducted by scientists both human and alien) but also absurd, magical, and dream-like. Even the location of our physical, real, abductions is called Dreamland.
Like myth, abduction can create narratives about political and natural reality, such as the X-Files or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like myth, it can become a cultic identity or ritual of life, the conferences and conventions, the books of witness to contact, all invitations to a modern mystery cult and confessional box.
The aetiological element of the myth is less clear. The justice of Zeus was about the balance of cosmic power, the limits of man within a context of puzzling and plotting, and the ethics of sexual danger and opportunity that surround us. The aetiology of alien abduction is more really that of a proto-diplomacy in the context of a colony or reservation. Primitive exchange and monitoring. A qualification of the American dream as something solely limited to human aspiration.
In the end, abduction behaviours suggest that cosmic law is negotiable, as when Abraham argues with G-d, or Christ submits to the cup, as when Socrates debates, questions, and dies. It is the suggestion that within the end lies a new beginning of unknowns.
