Beyond the level of everyday habits, the same pattern of subsiding and re-pressurizing operates through systems of meaning. Here we are no longer dealing with scattered individual reactions, but with narratives that from the beginning emerged with the promise of reducing suffering. The suffering of death, uncertainty, injustice, insecurity, and the inability to control the world demanded responses that could render the world livable. Religion, metaphysics, and ideology appear at this point—not as instruments of domination, but as possibilities of endurance.
Narrative quiets anxiety. Death is answered with continuity, disorder with cosmic order, injustice with final judgment, and loneliness with belonging. Meaning here acts as a sedative, a condition that allows life to continue. Yet the moment meaning becomes stabilized and settles into institutions and power, its form changes. Meaning is no longer a possibility; it becomes an obligation. Subsiding turns into control.
At this point suffering does not disappear. It simply shifts. Questioning is subdued in order to preserve certainty. In-group security strengthens while out-group insecurity expands. The calm of some is achieved through the elimination of doubt and the exclusion of others. The suffering that was meant to be contained returns in the form of exclusion, discrimination, and violence.
The same pattern repeats in ideologies. A promise is made to reduce structural suffering, and in the beginning it appears legitimate. But when ideology becomes identity, doubt turns into threat. Opposition must be silenced in order to preserve cohesion. Subsiding succeeds because an answer exists. Re-pressurizing begins at the same time, because whatever falls outside the answer becomes a new site of suffering.
At this level, re-pressurizing is no longer incidental. It becomes law, education, and collective memory. Some are calmed because they possess meaning; others suffer because they stand outside it. What sustains this process is precisely the initial success of subsiding. The narrative works, it reduces anxiety, and for that reason its costs remain unseen. Suffering moves farther away, becomes invisible, and is rewritten in the language of justification.
In many religious systems, homosexuality is defined as a threat to sacred order. This definition simplifies the world, draws boundaries, and lowers anxiety. Yet those very boundaries transform exclusion and elimination into legitimate acts. Fear subsides, and suffering reappears in another body.
Utopian narratives also emerge from the suffering of loss and historical humiliation. The promise of returning to a sacred land generates hope and makes suffering bearable. But once the ideal becomes an absolute right, the presence of others becomes an illegitimate obstacle. Killing and displacement take on the meaning of restoration. One suffering subsides while another is reproduced on a wider scale.
In ideologies of eternal salvation, violence acquires a sacred form. Anxiety about death subsides through the promise of paradise, and the elimination of dissent becomes a duty. Violence is not the goal; it is the consequence of preserving inner certainty.
What makes this process dangerous is its rational appearance. Suffering is redefined as a necessary cost. When the suffering of some is declared the condition for the calm of others, re-pressurizing becomes logic.
When the process enters the sphere of politics and security, it moves beyond narrative into decision. Here suffering is experienced as collective fear—a threat that must be contained. States often arise or legitimize themselves through the promise of reducing this fear. Security must be ensured. The enemy must be controlled. Subsiding occurs collectively: fear decreases and order becomes imaginable.
Yet suffering is not removed. It merely changes geography. The security of one side is stabilized through the insecurity of another. Violence is justified through the language of prevention. What is called peace in one place becomes bombing, sanctions, occupation, or repression elsewhere.
In the narrative of war, killing is framed as an unavoidable cost. The present of some is sacrificed for the future of others. The same logic repeats: the reduction of suffering here, the production of suffering elsewhere.
The same pattern appears in domestic politics. The suppression of protest is justified in the name of stability. The anxiety of disorder subsides, while the suffering of prison, exile, and extinguished lives spreads elsewhere. What becomes visible is order; what remains hidden is the human cost of that order.
At this level, distance becomes decisive. Suffering turns into numbers—into reports, into statistics. The more abstract it becomes, the more tolerable it appears; and the more tolerable it appears, the easier it becomes to repeat.
This process rarely begins with malicious intent. The starting point is usually an attempt to reduce suffering. But when the only way to reduce suffering becomes the imposition of suffering on others, violence turns into the instrument that preserves subsiding.
The pattern is the same as the one observed in the individual body, only now with a wider scope and more irreversible consequences. Subsiding succeeds because it produces a sense of security. And precisely for that reason re-pressurizing continues. Suffering has not been removed. It has been accumulated elsewhere—and it will return, with the same language, the same justifications, and the same promise of peace.