The abundance and consumption of various "goods" that emerged after the inhumane devastations of World War II fed the pseudo-Epicurean perception that anyone could have relatively easy access to prosperity and thus become "happy." This easy access to the "goods of prosperity and happiness" gradually overturned the concept of need, as predicted by Marx.
Progressively, a current of consumerism developed, with an underground "consequence" leading to significant changes in human relationships that constitute the human environment. Thus, phenomena emerged that did not exist in previous societies: hunger strikes, eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia, dependencies on various substances (drugs, alcohol, etc.), as well as on screens and social networks, terrorist armed struggle groups such as the Red Brigades, 17 November here with us, and a plethora of violent social behaviors, hooliganism, etc.
This violence extended "carefreely" into the relationship between humans and their natural environment, contaminating it in various ways with the excessive and polluting products of consumerism. The environment thus became difficult to sustain in certain areas or even destructive for its own inhabitants, as if it were "retaliating" against them for the harm they inflicted upon it.
Surpassing existing sociological analyses of the development of a "narcissistic culture" and the "isolation of the Ego" within the "I lack nothing" mindset, this book examines these new phenomena (hunger strikes, etc.) and delves into the subterranean changes that generalized "commercialization" has brought to human relationships. Understanding and realizing these transformations may contribute to a relative liberation from consumerism and its consequences on the relationships between people and their environment.
