"Trying to root or weed out 'bad' or 'unhealthy' desires only scatters the seeds into darker corners, in which they grow unseen but certainly not unfelt. Conversely, trying to cultivate wholesome desires that we don't organically feel - or which we don't provide a proper context for - is simply a waste of time. In being more conscious of libidinal ecology, I am trying to advocate for a radical reframing of that constellation - desire, lust, love, intimacy - which gets us up in the morning (and at other times keeps us in bed long after we should have gone to work). This is not just a fancy way of promoting 'sex-positivity,' which is trapped in the mirror image of a general cultural 'sex negativity'. Rather, it is a call for us to realize that most of us already, in fact, need and desire an entirely different type of desire: one that does not unfold according to the speeds and rhythms of cybernetic time; one that does not treat people in transactional ways; one that sees outside the shared, fleecy blanket of the dyad; and one that pays homage to the environmental matrix that gave birth to it (the sounds, smells, textures, flavors, and so on). Such a desire - simultaneously centrifugal (in dispersing the ego throughout the world) and centripetal (in bringing the world inside the sensorium) - is not forever smiling, twirling and sighing [...] We will always be bumping our heads and bruising our hearts in the emotional contact sport of libidinal relations. This will never be a safe space. But if we want desire to keep existing in any humanoid form at all, a great reckoning has to take place, at every level; from the self, to the couple, to the family, to the workplace, to the electronic agora, and the international polis, stretched across the globe. We need to relearn desire both for ourselves (rather than be simply instructed what and how to feel, by branding experts) and for others (within a wider conspiracy of compassion, that refuses both narcissism and the bitter jouissance of self-sacrifice).
Dominic Pettman, Peak Libido - Sex, Ecology and the Collapse of Desire (2021)