The Consequences of Repression
Updated: Jan 28
If we think about it, life in the external world is unhealthy. Gone are the days when the people we regularly interact with care deeply for our emotions and personal problems. It has become the norm where being too personal with others is either a taboo or at least embarrassing.
This dehumanization of human beings in civilization has created generations upon generations of people who suffer from mental problems due to the external encouragement to hide their emotions under a façade of officiality. While such pretending is beneficial to the world, in the name of more "important" things, like paying bills, work, etc., it indeed does make us humans more detached from ourselves. Detached, from the ability to be completely honest, and from feeling safe enough to "commit" eccentricity.
All in all, we can learn from this that even if society is by large beneficial for our survival, it still isn't necessarily good for our health. According to this logic, society is toxic to a degree.
This is what happens when we are encouraged to repress our authenticity: the emotions are directed inward, not outward, and are kept away from the relief of expression. Due to this, they lie permanently within the subconscious, where literally every memory you have ever had remains there, either following or haunting you for the rest of your life.
This is technically how much the external world can poison both our individuality and our honesty, leading said world to be a well-oiled machine of facades who are too afraid to be honest with themselves.
The solution to this problem is this: counterattack the pretentiousness enforced by the social norm, encourage people to be more honest with themselves and with others, and accept the possible fact that our well-being is often more important than what others think of us. And indeed, it seems that our reputation is often more important to us than the strength of our well-being, which on the long run, is absurd, especially given the fact that a deteriorated well-being can be inherited to the next generation we produce.
I have supported repression before. I claimed that we can use our repression to transcend our humanity and achieve a more solitary nature that does not depend as much on the tyranny of social escapism. However, realizing that repression is actually counterproductive, and is actually a tool used by society to maintain control and order, I have come to the conclusion that we should not repress something so powerful as an emotion that could in turn haunt us and our children potentially.
Regardless of the solutions I gave, the sad reality is that society does not care as long as it functions and provides its individuals money in return for their service to maintain it. The problem with such a mechanism is that it is too narrow-minded. There really isn't purpose beyond material gain and household preservation. There are literally countless professions whose main purpose is to just be able to pay the bills or beyond, without necessarily any hope beyond it.
Because of that, the many unnecessary things of the world hinder us in our quest for serenity, while we are working usually under pressure and under inhuman apathy, generating, usually, more and more of them, as the world's resources are dwindling in the name of consumerism.
This is my advice: If you are willing to sacrifice some of your reputation in the name of relieving your stress, you should indeed consider it since the perspective of others should not supervise every single area of our public and personal lives. We should also better distinguish between the law of the country and the social code, since both are highly different in their severity, should they be crossed.
My hope for a more humane and tolerant society might end in disappointment, but as a philosopher, I'm just doing my job: seeking what I believe to be the truth, even if disturbing, and analyzing it based on observation, logic, or both.
Hence why I believe the taboo of the personal aspect of our lives should be less restricted, so we can have the chance to prevent more and more potential people from suffering from psychological problems that might haunt them and their children for the rest of their lives.
Everyone can be a mental victim to repression, even those who were completely fine in their well-being thus far in their lives. It is a silent killer that can arrive to anyone at any moment, after all, so no one is completely safe from its consequences.
......
With all the repression I am today asthmatic. Asthma is a product of repression.
I am today, this:
I have repressed myself far enough, to the point that I am disabled and weak physically.
So I live to work. Do I look like I have a choice in this cruel and heartless society?
