In our emotional lives today, we are looking for our partners with tools that increasingly resemble the market economy. We have apps, we have thousands of people who go on dates with a click of our fingers and we have to choose, we have to choose who will be the one, who will be the soulmate.
That soulmate that up until now has been a confluence between spirituality and connection. And we are searching for that soulmate who will offer us this sense of belonging, that sense of meaning, that sense of ecstasy, that sense of transcendence, everything that people have previously sought in the realm of religion. Now, all of this has been transposed into the romantic realm.
But I am finding this soulmate in a market economy and with tools that are borrowed from economic and political models. I talked about the 'bargain' that is made in this case, if this is a good deal, I talked about the return on the investment that I have made, I talked about how this is not what I agreed to, I am speaking in economic language, to assess the quality of my emotional life. But the same thing is happening on the other side.
We are bringing a level of emotionality and intensity to our workplaces that has never existed before. The private sphere is literally invading the workplace. The narrative of suffering has become one of the markers of our identity, and it is also entering our workplaces.
The social consequences of this emotional narrative, in which values ??are replaced by emotions and we're talking about emotional intelligence here, not ethics, and the confluence of the two... I like the concept of emotional capitalism. It describes two currents that have generally been separate and that are now coming together.
And what happens is that, in all of our relationships, there's another parallel happening. For a long time, our marital relationships, our love lives, have been about survival, about grounding, about shelter, about nourishment. Then, we move to a level of belonging, and meaning. Then, if we're going to follow Maslow's ladder, we've moved to the level of self-actualization.
Now I don't just choose you because we're going to build a life together, but I also choose you, my soulmate, to help me become the person I want to be. And since I'm not choosing you at 18, but when I'm 28, or 30, or 34, the cornerstone is no longer love, but romantic love, and this comes after 15 years of romantic and sexual nomadism.
So, when I choose you, this choice, this exclusivity, do you know that you are the one for whom I will have to delete all my apps on my phone... this is the new ritual of commitment. For you and through you I seek, I end my search and this gives you an extraordinary value.
So, if you hurt me, if you betray me, if you lie to me, if you violate the trust I have in you, not only is it painful, but it becomes traumatic and cataclysmic. This is the continuity in terms of thinking about why betrayal hurts today, in a different way than it did before. And this level of need is also similar at work. You can all ask yourself:
Were you raised to be loyal, or were you raised to be autonomous?
Have you been raised to think about others, when you are thinking about your own needs,
or were you raised by people who told you how to achieve your needs?
How to depend on yourself?
How to not depend on others?
Did you think in a collective framework, or did you think in an individualistic framework?
And when that happens, what happens if you stay?
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73clMTUAf4I&t=757s
