Skip to main content

The Mechanisms of Repression...

The mechanisms of repression continue their grind, like the inner workings of a clock....In an age of openness and complete transparency, no less...What is being repressed and why? Even now, at a time when trolls spew venom from their basement laptops...what is there that still must be kept buried? Thoughts that are considered vagaries,  forbidden, alien, unlawful, creepy, outrageous, unlucky... thoughts that do not represent "who we are"... Career-ending thoughts....hostile, angry, reckless thoughts.... ugly, twisted, bestial thoughts, ... Thoughts that disparage and drag down others, thoughts that shame and lay blame to.... hostility toward the brighter lights, covetous thoughts meant to demean....Thoughts that circle around an unseemly topic...obsessing over car crashes, prison conditions, serial crime, ....an unhealthy fixation on wild-fires and boating accidents,  poison and torture, hoarders in houses and the morbidly obese, missing persons,  runaways, vagabond youth, fascination with failure and tragedy, the early deaths of celebrities, fascination with dictators, their odd rise to power, how luck or fate seems to buttress them until the bitter end, schadenfreude as when other people have their breakdowns, their failed flings, their lost jobs, their ruined properties, their unforeseen disasters ...a secret lust for chaos, rioting, looting,  political upheaval, bacchanalian excess, the need for breaking things up... one cannot ventriloquize a Tasmanian devil in ordinary discourse ... rather, there must be a rhetoric of civility for the sake of order...But within each one of us...in the innermost recess of what we call the psyche, who or what constitutes the "inner censor"? Who decides that such "material" is unacceptable, verboten, disgusting, vile, unclean...that it shall not be touched, sampled, endorsed, enjoyed, wallowed in, that it shall not be recognized as part of us, as as part of some passing mood? What harm are we spared by means of such repression - how say those of you who claim that nothing need be repressed?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1974

Prologue - > We are fortunate to live in a time, or so it is said, when we of the future no longer feel the burden of gender to such a degree as in previous ages; nowadays there is no pre-established norm or "role" for us to perform or hold onto like a chain about the neck. There was a time, of course, and not so long ago, when men were de facto expected to be  tough strong, resilient, athletic, assertive... and which to judge by the role models in movies and popular culture which we could add on silent, stoical, protective, while no great shock was registered if there should be a woman or more than one who in some degree was known (also through popular culture, movies, novels, songs, etc. in comparison with her male counterparts) as:  soft, demure,  flirtatious, sociable, wise,  and to which one might add on: practical, prescient, intuitive, gregarious, solicitous, nurturing and perhaps multi-tasking,  socially-aware, loyal, resilient .   With regard t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Suburbs

 I have spent much of my early life in the suburbs and after a brief stint in the big city - with its noise, crowding and cramped spaces,  I find myself immersed again in this familiar realm - an environment that seems part of my destiny. I've always thoughts of the suburbs as a place meant for children - where children can feel safe and protected - with non-busy streets and clean sidewalks - room to ride one's bike or go door-to-door selling cookies. To consider how many of our early impressions and sensations were spawned by this largely artificial world...How different such a milieu is from other places on earth, war zones, rain forests, Siberian outposts, tiny mountaintop villages or large sprawling mazes of high rise apartments in vertically-inclined mega metropolises...The suburbs are a place where a definite order and routine can be imposed...where regularity is king... lawns get mowed on time, shrubs are trimmed, garbage bins are placed at the curb and returned to thei...
Post a Comment
Read more

The "Endless Summer" Feeling a.k.a. "Time Stop Mechanism"

Growing up out west - we had what was known as the "endless summer" feeling - a moment in the summer when - not Time per se - but hectic, anxious, nerve-wracking time would come to a standstill. Change would still happen of course, things would continue moving, interacting, but at a slower, more predictable pace...the rhythms of summer would take over with sunny days giving way to balmy nights...a certain degree of repetition would lend structure to this seeming "pause" in the action...Clouds still move across the sky, waves still crash against the shore, traffic on the roads, people walking, biking, swimming - but all in a self-contained world over which one had some semblance of control..Long days at the beach, lying in the sun or playing tennis at the community college, watching the heat rise on the pavement, shooting baskets on the outdoor courts, sitting poolside at a neighbor's house, sitting on the lawn at dusk, staying outside on summer nights with no wi...
Post a Comment
Read more