My World Politics professor chuckled as a student in my class asked if the degree of obedience to authority would vary between people who grew up in repressive political regimes and other groups, say, "rebellious college students like us".
He then proceeded to tell the tale of him and his friends conspiring an elaborate--and as it turned out-- successful plot to overthrow the student government back in his college days--"Now that", he said, "was rebellion". Well, that is indeed one rather radical way to address the frustration against authority, but the resolution of such emotions comes in different forms, and the relationship between individuals and their respective authorities play a big part in determining how people cope with repressed emotions.
Freud nailed the term "sublimation" to describe a coping mechanism where people ease their repressed sexual desire or aggressive drives by channeling them something that's considered culturally "higher" by society, like writing or making art (instead of acting directing upon those desires). When we associate the theory with the time period when it was raised, it's not hard to imagine a conservative society which holds people back from talking about topics related to sex. However, in today's society where sex and violence can be expressed in a crude way--one example being pornography--and people are sexually liberated to a much higher degree, are we completely free from repression?
When I think about the question, I picture a painfully typical college campus where young people would get drunk every weekend and then proceed to conduct sexual intercourses with like minded associates, celebrating their hard fought victory of liberty. The representation of liberty or the extent thereof is now being defined by the amount of alcohol consumed and the reckless actions that follows. Are these college students living the dreams of their suppressed predecessors? Sociologist Herbert Marcuse holds a negative view.
Marcuse argues that this "liberation" is a false illusion that the capitalist society has given its people to make them believe that the repression has been removed and to distract them from the real problems of the society using things like crude sex. In the above mentioned case, college students would entertain the idea that they're being rebellious by getting shit faced every weekend, so that they're distracted from overthrowing the student government and potentially the real government. He calls this phenomenon "repressive desublimation".
When we fathom the profound question of why we do what we do, we can find rather mind blowing results. Is it for the sheer joy of it or for the social pressure? It is surprising how much our behaviors are governed by the society we live in, and how our psyche cope with the change of environment around us.
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