The servitude of feelings at the time of the cool
The notion of emotional intelligence became popular in the 1990s as a way of effectively managing feelings in all facets of life. However, capitalism has managed to appropriate this paradigm shift. What in the art of loving, by Erich Fromm, was running as a search for meaning and a study of the nature of love, in the emotional marketing society becomes a tool to enhance the personal brand.

In the art of getting excited, an intelligent and rigorous approximation to the complex relationship between emotion and reason, Lluís Soler describes the paradox that entails the growing symbiosis between the two: emotions, genuine expressions of our affective and impulsive life, have become merchandise whose exchange we are all victims and participants. The feelings, the intimate, the personal, sneak into the once reserved sphere; Work, couples and ideal friendships are reserved for those who know better to sell before others; wishes and impulses are subjected to the dictation of algorithms; People become entrepreneurs of themselves; Spontaneity is transmuted into strategy to gain adherents on social networks.

Deepening the logic of a speech that converts our existence into a merchandise, and where impulses, beliefs, ideas and values are sold as objects of consumption, the author reveals the keys to a reality that covers very different areas - psychology, the psychology, the Neuroscience, education, economy, culture. And he does not do it to plug us in a pessimism without remedy, but as an invitation to build a reality where we put the reason and emotions at the service of a better world.