Holding back

If you live in a system that repeatedly chooses to punish or sanction a particular type of behaviour, over time you have almost no choice but to hold that back, repress it. This seems so obvious as to not be worth stating.

But this also applies on the edges.

The desires and actions which are more quiet, that the systems in which we exist choose to quietly suppress, are far riskier. The overt ones are easier to see, to revolt against. Collective action becomes easier when physical violence makes it abhorrent to not act.

But the quieter ideals that are pushed back? That’s much harder. When collective action doesn’t act as a support mechanism, at this point you are on your own. You have to decide whether to honour the call of an internal desire; whether to let it surface.

Because the other option is to repress it, to do so in a conditioned manner, and as a result to use a sort of violence on yourself and in doing so honour something outside of yourself.

That seems like no choice at all.