Are we still in time to recapture our desires? Or have we now been permanently condemned to be tele-directed by interests alien to our will, driven by consumer logics, algorithms, and invisible mechanisms that decide for us what we want, who we are, what we should become? It is an urgent question, not only philosophical but deeply existential, that affects us every day, every time we choose-or believe we choose-between a product, an idea, a lifestyle. Are we really free when we desire? Or are we just answering an external call, packaged just for us?
Desire has complex origins, both conscious and unconscious. Sometimes it arises from a real need, sometimes from a symbolic void. But in the present time, this original mystery is colonized, analyzed, exploited. Everything that can be desired can be sold. And everything that is sold must first be desired. This is how emotional capitalism works, which first awakens immediate desires — hunger for status, for attention, for recognition — and then offers them ready-made, packaged, monetized. It is the logic of the “click,” the “call to action”: if you do not desire, you do not consume. If you don’t consume, you don’t exist. Fortunately, not everyone surrenders to this distorted view. There is an ethical and philosophical current of desire, an attempt to restore meaning and dignity to this primordial force of the human being. Spanish scholar Manuel Cruz Ortiz, for example, speaks of the need for a “civilization of desire,” that is, a cultural and political process to lead desire back to a human, lived, conscious form. In this perspective, it is not a matter of repressing desire-as some ancient morality often did-but of giving it the proper form, of reordering it, understanding it, educating it. Desiring is natural, but not everything we desire makes us happy, and not everything that pleases us makes us good.
One of the great omissions of our time is the educational silence about desire. In school we talk about math, history, grammar, even citizenship. But who teaches children to understand what they desire? Who helps them distinguish an authentic desire from an induced one? Where are they taught to think about the dynamics of desiring, its deep motivations, its pitfalls and possibilities? There is no discussion of pleasures or their priority. We are not taught to enjoy life freely, but only to pursue results, goals, performance. Thus we grow dissatisfied, because we live a multiplicity of consumption options, but without compass, without depth, without direction. An apparent paradise, which often hides an existential emptiness.
Therefore, more than repressing desires, we need to play with them, to dance with our drives without being slaves to them. We need a strategy that does not eliminate desire, but makes it an ally of life, not an enemy. Desiring is not bad, but it is necessary to learn to desire well, with measure, with conscience, with joy. A civilization of desire should teach precisely this: the pleasure of desiring, the pleasure of waiting, the pleasure of building. A lived culture that puts the priorities of desires, not their accumulation, at the center. A culture that allows us to understand whether we are more than our own will, or whether, on the contrary, we are entirely determined by it.
In the digital world, everything is accelerated. Social media, platforms, algorithms sequester our desire to turn it into dwell time, clicks, profiling. Our every action is designed to generate new stimuli. But this overexposure comes at a cost: we lose touch with the origin of our desire. We become reactive, compulsive, disconnected from ourselves. In this sense, the recapture of desire is also a cultural and spiritual battle. It is about our time, our freedom, our ability to construct meaning. Because to desire is not just to want: it is to design, to create, to give direction to one’s life.
We still have time, yes. But a radical change is needed. A sentimental education, a philosophical practice, a new culture that helps us rediscover the genesis of our desiring and direct it toward what truly fulfills us.
After all, we will never be fully free unless we learn to know, order and inhabit our desires. For he who controls the desires, controls the soul. But he who knows them, lives them and guides them, can finally become self-made again.
The article Between manipulation and freedom, toward a civilization of desire comes from TheNewyorker.
