I was born to shiver the in the draft of an open mind.
                        –Samson Shillitoe, in A Fine Madness by Elliot Baker.

Why, we seem to have decided, should we take seriously any era that:

     1) had no cell phones,
     2) spent more time worrying about hair care than erectile
         dysfunction, and
     3) thought that having got rid of Hitler and the Soviet Union
          that was pretty much it as far as Evil was concerned?

Certainly the 20th century left a lot to be desired, but it’s beginning to become clear that too often in reacting to that troubled age, we’ve thrown out the baby with the bath water.

Take Freud for example. As the century waned, the only people still taking Freud seriously were the French, and their highfalutin thinkers used him just as a springboard to launch themselves into a glorious, abstract wonderland with a single rule: All is theory.

Freud didn’t get everything, not by a long shot, but he got a lot, from religion (Moses and Monotheism) to violence (Civilization and Its Discontents) to stand-up comedians (Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious).

One of the big losses when we tossed ol’ "Biology-Is-Destiny/Penis-Envy" Sigmund out the window was his (pardon the expression) theory of repression, which reduced to its most basic form, stated:

     1) Shit happens, and
     2) We mostly contrive to forget the shit that has happened.

(Naturally there’s a lot more to it than this, as Freud spent some decades of his tormented life pointing out, but as New Millennialists we when faced with a choice between short-and-sweet and complex-and-bitter choose to simplify, simplify, simplify, which among other things explains both George W. Bush and the popularity of SUV’s, but that’s a whole other story.)

Any half-awake observer of the human comedy can only nod and between the tears of laughter and tragedy, affirm, "Right on, Siggy. We ARE repressing like hell but we just don’t KNOW it!"

Turn on the TV, attend a church service or a political rally. Hell, hang around outside your bathroom door for a while. Whatever we officially think about Freud, repression reigns.

Bigtime.

Still.

The question is NOT "Are you repressed?" The question is "HOW repressed are you?"

Any way you look at it—philosophically, theologically, scientifically, free-market-ly—some repression is good. I mean, if we don’t repress at least a little bit we can’t get out of bed in the morning.

By the same token, too much repression can lead to abject—and extremely hazardous—denial of reality and belief in castles-in-the-air, resulting in delusional societies of the most dangerous sort. Maoists, Mouseketeers, Microsofts, Baptists, Republicans, Free-Marketeers: all sterling—and frightening—all examples of repression run amok.

The more accurate question then is: Are you TOO repressed? Have you, with the best of self-interested intentions, inadvertently gone that one tiny step too far in DENYING STUFF?

Why, you perhaps ask, is too much repression a bad thing? What’s wrong if you’ve by hook, crook, or sheer luck got yours—your gated-community house here and your condo in Aspen, your stock portfolio, your his-'n'-her Hummers, and now you’re trucking along comfortably, so what’s wrong with that?

What’s wrong with that? Does the expression "house of cards" meaning anything to you?

The danger is, your repression becomes so nearly perfect that you begin to see yourself as—sorry, there’s no other way to put this—safe. Impregnable, so to speak (pace, Sigmund).

One thing any less-than-perfectly repressed sentient being quickly realizes is that no one, nowhere, no-time, is safe. Mostly safe? Sure. Often safe? Sure. But never, ever really, really safe the way the truly repressed think they are.

Yes, Virginia, there is a world, quite a vast world out there, and yes, dear, we are, like it or not, part of that world. No amount of denial or repression changes that fact.

Our task—OK, one of our tasks—is to figure out a way to balance our egotistic cleverness with our undeniable (if not always entirely clear) place in the larger, often chaotic, sometimes dangerous order of things.

Not to despair. Such a balancing act is possible, as for several millennia the few wise humans who survived the repressive ministrations of their less-wise fellows long enough to utter a few pithy sayings have repeatedly reminded us.

So. Are you TOO repressed? Here’s your chance to find out:

Click here to go The Magellan's Log Test of Reality-denial. >>