The hallmark that best defines today's world is uncertainty and precariousness. We are finding ourselves increasingly fragile and unprepared for a rapidly changing reality where the rules of the game are different from those most of us have become accustomed to over the course of the 20th century.
A number of factors have primarily disrupted the situation. First, the world's complexity has increased because of the increased interrelationships between events, even those geographically distant from one another. Indeed, modern telecommunications, the Internet, and the speed with which these media enable the exchange of information mean that a problem arising on the other side of the world can quickly trigger panic in our own backyard. The second factor driving this transformation is the rapid pace of change today, especially in the technological sphere. This impressive acceleration is difficult to keep up with.
There is another factor to consider: we are, in one way or another, children of the era of globalization. The period from 1989 to 2008 represented a unique historical period, one that experienced a powerful phase of economic expansion, fostered by Anglo-Saxon countries at the international level through a policy of deregulation. It was a cycle of expansion not only economic, but also financial, technological, and geographical. And, in a certain sense, also of expansion of subjectivity: in the advanced West, the idea took hold that each individual has the right to many more opportunities, experiences, and opportunities than ever before. What Zygmunt Bauman aptly called "liquid modernity" was born.
But what actually remains of this liquidity predicted by Bauman now that the development model that dominated the turn of the century has faded? How, then, can we hold together an increasingly large and fragmented society, one that is casting aside the traditional moral order in the name of personal freedom? These are epochal questions addressed by sociologists Chiara Giaccardi and Mauro Magatti in their book Macchine celibi (Il Mulino, 2025, pp. 180, also available as an e-book), starting from a premise: the era of globalization has expressed its own vision of the world , that of the expansion of the self, the constant shift of opinion, and the so-called "regime of equivalence."
We lived through an almost adolescent period in which mass freedom was discovered and in which people thought that being free simply meant doing what they wanted. The result was a sort of constant disintegration of reference points.
Digital technology, which presents itself as an antidote to the disintegrating forces of our era, is at the same time a powerful catalyst for new problems. The result is paradoxical: maximum efficiency and maximum communication chaos coexist. And as intelligent machines become increasingly human-like, humans risk regressing to the status of "celibate machines": an isolated, high-performing, unconnected "I," incapable of recognizing others.
Magatti and Giaccardi call for the urgent need for new thinking, starting with the rediscovery of a "politics of the spirit" capable of restoring meaning, connections, and a future to our societies. We can do this first and foremost by reaffirming the positive value of individualism when it leads us to choose freely, to fully employ our faculties. Conforming our thinking to that of the majority leads to inertia and passivity. However, giving free rein to the exaltation of our own ego puts our humanity at risk, exposing us to the most unbridled narcissism. A narcissism that thrives on the love and passion of others but gives nothing back, that borders on selfishness because it consumes everything around it. The result of this attitude is profound suffering for individuals themselves but also for society as a whole. It is therefore worth trying to change the rules of the contemporary game, avoiding being overly swept away by the spirit of our times that pushes us toward self-referentiality—a self-referentiality that isolates us and does not help us in today's complex world. The way out lies in recovering what modernity has marginalized: dialogue, thought, spirit. Because happiness isn't celibate... and neither is freedom.