Unfulfilled Hopes

A Circus Life Between Work and Consumerism from the Agrarian 20th Century to Global Millennials

von Maurizio Graffei

392 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Human beings believe they work in order to live, yet they ultimately organize their entire existence around the need to keep earning and consuming.

*Unfulfilled Hopes* reconstructs the path that led from the agrarian society of the twentieth century to contemporary consumerist civilization. It is the story of a radical transformation: human beings, initially required by production for the strength of their arms, gradually become indispensable to the system through the availability of their minds.

Consumerism does not impose itself by force, nor does it arise from a conspiracy. It establishes itself through a collectively accepted promise: possessing more means living better. Well-being is thus separated from sufficiency, desire takes the place of need, and work ceases to be an instrument of life, becoming instead the condition required for the continuity of consumption.

The result is a circus life: an incessant movement in which there is never enough time, money is never sufficient, and every achievement immediately generates a new necessity. Human beings move from being to having, from having to appearing, and finally to no longer belonging to themselves.

This book does not seek an external culprit. The tragedy was not imposed upon us: we built it, sustained it, and made it normal. The powers that now appear to dominate us did not create the mechanism; they were produced by our collective obedience to a model we chose to call progress.

Through an anthropological, economic, and philosophical reconstruction, Maurizio Graffei puts consumerist civilization on trial without mitigating circumstances. It is a condemnation of the historical phase in which humanity, while multiplying the means at its disposal, progressively loses the ability to determine the purpose for which it should live.

No one led us here. We call it progress-the road on which we are losing ourselves.

• ISBN: 9798193912668
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 24.08.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp