Summary

Nowadays prosperity is not a matter of new technology and expanding markets. The emerging crises have displayed how unlikely any further advancement is in its popular sense. Under Consumerism we have lost our individuality to the identities offered by the market the same way others lost theirs to the one granted by the Party under Communism. Consumerism has modified our aspirations and set our goals, but the improvement of well-being cannot be achieved within the meaning put forward by our age of brands and false identities. To really progress without the bountiful resources our predecessors had at their disposal, we need to reinvent the concept of well-being itself.