Survival Is Not Enough

I don't believe we can make survival the sole purpose of our lives. And I don't believe that living as long as possible can be the ultimate goal either.

If that had been my purpose, I probably would have lived very differently. I would have focused primarily on security, protection, and comfort. I would have avoided many difficult questions, and perhaps I would never have studied as much as I did. Above all, I would not have spent so many years trying to answer the most uncomfortable question of all:

Why are we here?

Because survival is necessary, but it is not enough.

There are millions of people in the world for whom survival is already an achievement. People who do not have enough to eat, who live through war, who have been forced from their homes, who struggle every day to give their children what others take for granted. They do not necessarily have the luxury of constantly asking what life means. Under those circumstances, survival is already a tremendous goal.

But once survival itself is no longer in question, the question comes back.

Now that I'm alive, what am I supposed to do with my life?

Because wanting to keep living is one thing. Knowing why you want to live is another.

Survival Is a Condition, Not a Direction

Making survival your only project means, in a sense, navigating by sight alone. You react to whatever happens, chase whatever demands your attention, avoid danger, look for the next small gratification, and keep postponing the fundamental question.

You can live that way for years without ever seriously asking where you are going.

And this is where I think we make a fundamental mistake: we confuse goals with purpose.

We can have a house to buy, a salary to increase, a promotion to earn, a trip to take, a body to improve, a bank account to build, a relationship to find, or a social position to achieve. All of these are legitimate goals.

But how much of what we pursue actually represents our direction in life, and how much is simply the desire of the moment?

We can spend our entire lives achieving goals without ever having had a real purpose.

Because a desire is not necessarily a purpose.

And even when we finally get what we wanted, we may discover that it was never what we were truly looking for.

The Difference Between a Goal and a Purpose

Perhaps purpose is something deeper than a destination.

A goal says: I want to get there.

Purpose says: I want to move in this direction.

The difference is not trivial. A goal can be reached and immediately lose its meaning. A purpose, on the other hand, can accompany us throughout our lives without ever being reduced to a final achievement.

I believe there is something deeper than the goals we consciously set for ourselves: a kind of underlying matrix, a fundamental premise upon which we build our existence, often without even realizing it.

It is the direction we give our lives before we formulate specific goals. It is what guides our choices even when we cannot fully explain why we make them.

We can change jobs, cities, relationships, projects, and desires. We can even change our minds about what we once thought we wanted. Yet beneath all of this, there may remain a deeper direction.

The question, then, is not simply:

“What do I want to achieve?”

It is:

“What direction am I giving my life?”

What Thinkers Have Tried to Tell Us

It is a question human beings have been asking forever.

Viktor Frankl took it to its most extreme consequences. His experience in the Nazi concentration camps led him to reflect on the relationship between suffering, inner freedom, and meaning. His fundamental insight was that human beings do not live merely by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. We need a meaning toward which we can orient ourselves.

That does not mean that having a purpose makes life easy.

It means something more radical: even in the midst of suffering, a person can have a reason to keep moving forward.

Albert Camus, too, began with one of the most uncomfortable questions of all: what does it mean to live in a universe that does not necessarily provide us with a ready-made meaning?

His reflection on the absurd does not simply lead to resignation. On the contrary, it places human beings before the responsibility of living even when the world does not necessarily hand us an answer.

Perhaps the meaning of life is not something we discover, already packaged and waiting for us.

Perhaps, at least in part, it is something we create through the direction we choose to give our existence.

These are precisely the kinds of ideas that have always interested me—not because they can give us a definitive formula, but because they prevent us from settling for the easiest answer.

You are alive because you are still alive.

But that is not an answer.

It is merely a fact.

The False Goals I Gave Myself

I can see this when I look back at my own life.

For years, I gave myself goals that I now recognize as false goals—or at least as goals that belonged more to the image I had constructed of myself than to who I actually was.

The first was to become some kind of new Paulo Coelho of world literature.

I imagined myself as a writer, a thinker, an author capable of reaching millions of people through books. It was an appealing image, but today I have to be honest with myself: I did not have the drive necessary for it, and more importantly, I did not have the genuine literary inspiration that allows a writer to devote an entire life to writing.

Perhaps I wanted the image of what I could become more than I wanted the work required to become it.

My own blog has helped me see that.

I write a great deal, but what I produce no longer feels like a literary vocation in the traditional sense. I no longer feel the need to become a great writer, publish the book that conquers the world, or turn myself into a figure in literature.

Literature simply doesn't attract me that much anymore.

And admitting that does not necessarily mean I failed.

Perhaps it means I finally stopped pursuing an image of myself that never truly belonged to me.

The Political Dream

The second false goal was completely different: politics.

For a while, I imagined that a political career could allow me to escape what I call the swamp of local government and take me somewhere else—perhaps all the way to Parliament.

I had the example of Luigi Di Maio in front of me: a young man from an ordinary background, catapulted from the anonymity of an apartment building in Pomigliano d'Arco to the seats of the Italian Parliament.

The idea was powerful: escape the narrow dimensions of everyday administrative life, skip several rungs of the ladder, and arrive where, at least apparently, the great decisions are made.

But today, looking at it with greater clarity, that goal feels less and less like mine.

Italian politics no longer excites me.

Part of the reason is that I find it difficult to regard Italy as fully sovereign in the way the word sovereignty might suggest. Italy is deeply embedded in the Western alliance system and in its relationship with the United States, and that makes it difficult for me to see national politics as the place where all of the country's fundamental choices can truly be decided.

But even here, the real issue is not whether my political interpretation is right or wrong.

The real issue is that I no longer want that career the way I once did.

The Paradox of Power

Of course, there is also a very practical side of politics that can be attractive: parliamentary salaries, benefits, privileges, and above all the possibility of building a financially comfortable life that is far removed from the circumstances of many ordinary citizens.

I once knew a former member of Parliament who seemed to regard his political career almost as an investment: five years in Parliament, followed by the opportunity to enjoy his pension benefits for the rest of his life.

From that perspective, it might seem like a remarkably convenient way to live.

But there is one thing that separates me profoundly from that idea.

I am not a parasite.

I don't say that to claim moral superiority. I say it because, to me, the real issue with politics is not simply how much a politician earns.

The real issue is what he or she can actually decide.

A politician who does not truly make decisions, who does not genuinely exercise the power entrusted to him, who simply occupies a position, collects a salary, and waits for the benefits to accumulate may be acting entirely within the rules.

But from my perspective, that person is still a parasite.

Because power without the ability—or the willingness—to change reality is nothing more than a rent.

When False Goals Fall Away

Perhaps this is what I am learning.

A goal can seem enormously important for years and then suddenly lose its appeal. Not because we have become incapable of achieving it, but because we finally realize that it was never really our goal.

Sometimes what we call failure is actually liberation.

I pursued the idea of becoming a famous writer. I imagined a political career that would take me far beyond the administrative world in which I found myself.

Today, both of those images have lost much of their power over me.

And perhaps that is a good thing.

Because when false goals fall away, there is finally room to search for the real one.

But that leaves me with a question I can no longer escape.

If I take politics away and take literature away, who am I?

So Who Am I?

That question puts me face-to-face with something much more difficult than choosing a career.

I can tell myself that my purpose is to provide for my family. And that is certainly a noble purpose. I can be a good husband, a good father, care for the people I love, work, pay my bills, and try to build a peaceful old age.

But something inside me tells me that this cannot be everything.

Because even that, if reduced to its purely material dimension, could become another form of survival.

I work to support my family. I support my family to protect the well-being of the people I love. I keep working so I can eventually retire. I retire so that I can finally have time to live.

And then what?

I do not want to spend my life waiting for the moment when life will finally begin.

Perhaps the real problem is that I have spent too much time looking for a destination.

A successful book. Parliament. A position. Recognition.

Perhaps I kept asking myself where I wanted to arrive, when I should have been asking what I want to leave behind along the way.

The Blog and the Desire Not to Speak Into a Void

My blog is helping me see something I could not see before.

It has not become what I once imagined. It has not turned its author into a famous writer. It has not created the large community of readers I may have unconsciously wanted.

And yet I keep writing.

Why?

Perhaps because writing allows me to do something very simple:

to keep someone company.

A friend. Someone I know. But also a stranger who happens to come across one of my articles.

And if that person finishes reading and feels a little less alone, discovers a question they had never put into words, or simply spends ten minutes in the company of a thought that does them some good, then perhaps what I have done was not pointless.

It is not literature in the way I once imagined it.

It is not politics.

It is not power.

It is presence.

And perhaps this also explains my long-standing, often frustrated desire to have people around me.

Maybe I do not simply want followers.

Maybe I want to reach someone.

Real People on the Other Side

Of course, I mean real people.

Not the numbers in the statistics. Not automated traffic coming from China, Singapore, or anywhere else in the world.

A bot can inflate a counter, but it cannot listen to me.

I am looking for the human being on the other side.

The person who actually reads. The person who may never leave a comment, never click “like,” never write to me, and simply return to his or her life.

I will never know who that person is.

But that person will know that, for a few minutes, somewhere, someone put into words a thought that perhaps belonged to them as well.

And then perhaps I am not simply surviving.

Perhaps I am creating a small space where two lives that will never meet can still come into contact.

Is that enough?

Maybe not.

But perhaps the problem is that we have learned to consider only what is large, visible, profitable, or recognized to be meaningful.

A person in Parliament seems to have a purpose.

A bestselling writer seems to have a purpose.

A successful entrepreneur seems to have a purpose.

But why should there be less value in someone who manages simply to leave a thought in another person's mind?

What I Wish for Others

Whatever I wish for other people, I have to wish for myself first.

I cannot tell others that they need to find a purpose while I am content merely to survive.

I cannot point toward a direction if I am unwilling to search for it in my own life.

That is why this reflection is not meant to be a lesson for anyone else.

It is, first and foremost, a question I am asking myself.

What is the underlying matrix of my existence?

What fundamental premise, consciously or unconsciously, is guiding my choices?

What direction remains when I strip away all the temporary goals, the passing desires, and all the little things that seem essential today but may mean nothing tomorrow?

Perhaps that is where true purpose begins.

I Haven't Found the Answer Yet

The truth is, I still do not know what my purpose is.

And perhaps that is the most honest thing I can write.

I do not want to invent one simply because I need to feel important.

I want to find something that is true.

Something that remains after all the false images I have built of myself have fallen away.

Perhaps my purpose will not be to become somebody.

Perhaps it will be to be somebody for someone.

Perhaps I do not need to build an audience. Perhaps I simply need to reach a real person every once in a while.

Perhaps I do not need to change the world.

Perhaps I need only to leave some trace of my passing through it.

And perhaps even keeping someone company—a friend, a lonely person, a stranger who opens an article on an ordinary evening—can be a form of purpose, if we do it not to fill the emptiness inside ourselves, but because we have something authentic to share.

I still do not know whether that will be enough for me.

But I know it is far more real than the false goals I pursued in the past.

Because in the end, the question is not simply:

“How long will I manage to stay alive?”

Nor is it:

“What will I manage to achieve?”

The question is much harder:

“What makes life worth living?”

Perhaps I will never find a definitive answer.

But as long as I keep searching for one—as long as I keep questioning, writing, thinking, and perhaps keeping someone company on the other side of a screen—then maybe, at least for now, I am doing more than simply surviving.

Serendipity, Antifragility, and Destiny: The Art of Living with Uncertainty

The Three Princes of Serendip

For centuries, human beings have nurtured a comforting yet ultimately misleading belief: that the course of life can be planned, managed, and controlled. We study to earn qualifications, work to build successful careers, save money to secure the future, and carefully organize each stage of our lives as though existence were a project that could be engineered with sufficient foresight.

This mindset has undoubtedly fueled remarkable scientific, technological, and economic achievements. Yet it has also encouraged a dangerous illusion—the belief that the future is fundamentally predictable.

Reality tells a different story.

The greatest scientific discoveries, technological revolutions, professional breakthroughs, and even the relationships that shape our lives frequently emerge from events that no one anticipated. Careers change because of unexpected encounters. New ideas arise from failures. Entire lives are redirected by accidents, crises, or seemingly insignificant decisions whose importance becomes clear only years later.

This is the realm of serendipity.

The word was coined in the eighteenth century by the English writer Horace Walpole, who drew inspiration from the Persian tale The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes repeatedly made remarkable discoveries not because they were unusually fortunate, but because they possessed exceptional powers of observation. They noticed details that others ignored and connected seemingly unrelated clues into meaningful insights.

Serendipity, therefore, is often misunderstood.

It is not simply luck.

Luck distributes random events indiscriminately.

Serendipity is what happens when a prepared mind recognizes the hidden value of those events.

Louis Pasteur captured this idea perfectly when he famously observed that "chance favors the prepared mind."

Chance presents opportunities.

Preparation determines who is capable of recognizing them.

This distinction is far more profound than it may first appear.

Every day countless people encounter similar opportunities. Most pass unnoticed. A few become turning points that reshape entire lives.

When Alexander Fleming noticed that mold had contaminated one of his bacterial cultures, he could easily have discarded it as a laboratory mistake. Instead, curiosity led him to ask why bacteria failed to grow around the mold. That question eventually opened the way to the discovery of penicillin.

Similarly, engineer Percy Spencer was not attempting to invent the microwave oven when he observed that a chocolate bar had melted while he was working near a magnetron. What might have seemed an insignificant accident became the foundation of an entirely new technology.

Spencer Silver experienced something similar when he developed an adhesive that appeared too weak to be commercially useful. Years later, that apparent failure became the basis for one of the world's most recognizable office products: the Post-it Note.

History repeatedly demonstrates the same lesson.

Progress rarely follows a straight line.

Unexpected discoveries are not exceptions to human advancement.

They are often its driving force.

This insight extends well beyond science.

Professional life follows the same pattern.

Many careers that now appear coherent and carefully planned were, in reality, shaped by unexpected detours: temporary positions that became permanent, unsuccessful projects that revealed new opportunities, economic crises that forced reinvention, or chance encounters that transformed professional trajectories.

Looking backward, everything appears logical.

Living through those moments, however, almost nothing feels predictable.

This tendency to reconstruct the past as though it had always made sense was explored extensively by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Human beings naturally create coherent narratives that explain previous events, convincing themselves that outcomes were foreseeable all along. In reality, those same events were often characterized by profound uncertainty while they unfolded.

Steve Jobs expressed this idea with remarkable clarity during his famous commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."

Perhaps no modern sentence captures the essence of serendipity more effectively.

Yet this observation raises a deeper question.

If uncertainty is unavoidable, how should we live?

Should we simply surrender ourselves to chance?

Or is there a way to transform uncertainty from a threat into an advantage?

It is precisely here that another powerful concept enters the conversation—antifragility.

Antifragility and the Wisdom of Uncertainty

The question of how human beings should respond to uncertainty has occupied philosophers for more than two thousand years. Long before modern economics, psychology, or complexity science attempted to understand risk, ancient thinkers had already recognized that unpredictability is not an exception to life—it is its defining condition.

Perhaps no philosopher expressed this more succinctly than Heraclitus.

His famous observation, panta rhei—"everything flows"—remains one of the most profound descriptions of reality ever formulated. Nothing remains fixed. Every individual, every institution, every civilization exists within an endless process of transformation. Stability, from this perspective, is never permanent; it is only a temporary balance within continuous change.

The desire for absolute certainty therefore places us in conflict with the very nature of existence.

Centuries later, the Stoic philosophers reached a remarkably similar conclusion.

Seneca and Epictetus argued that genuine freedom begins when we distinguish between what lies within our control and what does not. External events belong largely to fortune. Our judgments, choices, and responses remain our own responsibility.

This insight continues to resonate because it shifts attention away from prediction and toward character.

The future cannot be mastered.

Our response to it can.

Friedrich Nietzsche carried this idea even further through his concept of amor fati—the love of one's fate. Rather than merely accepting whatever happens, Nietzsche challenged us to embrace every event, including hardship and failure, as an indispensable part of who we become.

Misfortune is not simply something to endure.

It can become something that shapes us.

Modern psychology echoes this perspective in unexpected ways. Viktor Frankl, reflecting on his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, concluded that human beings can survive extraordinary suffering when they are able to discover meaning within it. Circumstances alone do not determine our lives; interpretation does.

A crisis is never automatically an opportunity.

It becomes one only if we are capable of transforming it into growth.

This philosophical tradition finds a striking contemporary expression in the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

In The Black Swan, Taleb argues that history is shaped less by predictable trends than by rare, unexpected events whose consequences are enormous. Financial collapses, technological revolutions, pandemics, political upheavals, and scientific breakthroughs all share a common characteristic: before they occurred, almost nobody expected them.

Human beings nevertheless possess a remarkable tendency to rewrite history afterward, convincing themselves that such events had always been obvious.

This illusion of predictability is one of our greatest cognitive weaknesses.

Taleb's response, however, is not pessimism.

Instead, he asks a more practical question.

If uncertainty is inevitable, how should individuals, organizations, and societies prepare for it?

His answer appears in Antifragile, where he introduces one of the most original concepts in contemporary philosophy.

Taleb distinguishes between three different conditions.

The fragile is damaged by volatility.

The robust resists volatility without changing.

The antifragile improves because of volatility.

This distinction fundamentally changes the way we think about success.

For centuries, resilience has been considered the ideal. We admire people and institutions that survive adversity without collapsing.

Taleb argues that survival alone is not enough.

The most successful systems are those that learn, adapt, and emerge stronger precisely because they have been exposed to stress, randomness, and disorder.

Nature offers countless examples.

Human muscles become stronger through physical stress.

The immune system develops through exposure to pathogens.

Evolution itself progresses through variation, selection, and countless failures.

Order often emerges from instability rather than despite it.

Professional life follows the same principle.

A career built upon a single skill, a single employer, or a single economic environment may appear secure, yet it is often surprisingly fragile. One unexpected technological change, one recession, or one organizational restructuring may be enough to undermine years of apparent stability.

By contrast, individuals who continuously learn, cultivate diverse relationships, acquire complementary skills, and remain intellectually curious gradually build something far more valuable than certainty.

They build optionality.

Optionality—the existence of multiple possible paths forward—is one of Taleb's central ideas. The more options we possess, the greater our ability to benefit from unexpected events instead of becoming their victims.

This is precisely where antifragility meets serendipity.

Serendipity creates the unexpected opportunity.

Antifragility enables us to recognize it, adapt to it, and ultimately transform it into lasting value.

Together, these ideas suggest a radically different philosophy of success.

Rather than attempting to eliminate uncertainty, we should cultivate the qualities that allow uncertainty to work in our favor.

Curiosity.

Humility.

Continuous learning.

Adaptability.

The courage to revise our assumptions.

In an unpredictable world, these may prove more valuable than certainty itself.

Chance, Freedom, and the Making of Destiny

If serendipity teaches us how to recognize opportunity, and antifragility teaches us how to grow through uncertainty, a deeper philosophical question still remains.

What, ultimately, is the relationship between chance and destiny?

For centuries, Western thought has oscillated between two opposing visions. On one side lies determinism—the belief that every event is governed by an unbreakable chain of causes. On the other stands the conviction that human beings possess genuine freedom and therefore participate in shaping their own future.

Modern science has done little to settle this debate.

Instead, it has made reality appear even more complex.

The philosopher Karl Popper argued that scientific knowledge advances not through certainty but through error. Every theory remains provisional, constantly exposed to criticism and revision. Progress is therefore not the accumulation of unquestionable truths but an endless process of correction.

Ignorance, paradoxically, is not the enemy of knowledge.

It is its starting point.

This insight extends beyond science.

Every important decision in life is made with incomplete information.

We choose careers without knowing how industries will evolve.

We form relationships without knowing where they will lead.

We make investments without certainty.

We raise children without guarantees.

The future is always partially hidden.

Herbert Simon, one of the founders of modern decision theory, described this condition through the concept of bounded rationality. Human beings never possess unlimited knowledge, unlimited time, or unlimited cognitive capacity. Rather than optimizing every decision, we usually settle for solutions that are sufficiently good under conditions of uncertainty.

Perfection is rarely available.

Adaptation is.

James G. March expanded this idea by distinguishing between exploitation and exploration.

Exploitation means refining what we already know.

Exploration means searching for what we do not yet know.

Successful individuals, organizations, and even civilizations depend on maintaining a dynamic balance between these two forces. Too much exploitation leads to rigidity. Too much exploration leads to instability.

Wisdom lies in knowing when to preserve and when to change.

Edgar Morin reached a similar conclusion through his philosophy of complexity. Reality cannot be reduced to simple chains of cause and effect because every phenomenon emerges from countless interactions operating simultaneously. Complexity is not disorder waiting to be simplified; it is the normal condition of the world.

The Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine arrived at an analogous insight from an entirely different discipline. His theory of dissipative structures demonstrated that systems far from equilibrium often generate new forms of order precisely because they experience instability.

Chaos, under the right conditions, becomes creative.

Order does not always precede change.

Sometimes it is born from it.

Seen from this perspective, uncertainty ceases to be merely a source of anxiety.

It becomes the very space within which innovation, freedom, and personal development become possible.

This realization also changes the meaning of destiny.

Destiny is often imagined as a predetermined script, a future that exists independently of our choices. Yet another interpretation is possible.

Perhaps destiny is not something waiting to be discovered.

Perhaps it is something continuously created.

Chance presents possibilities.

Freedom transforms possibilities into decisions.

Time turns those decisions into a life.

In this sense, chance and freedom are not opposites.

They are partners.

Chance opens doors.

Freedom decides which ones we walk through.

Looking backward, those choices gradually form the coherent narrative we call a life.

Looking forward, however, they remain profoundly uncertain.

This is why Steve Jobs' famous observation continues to resonate so deeply:

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."

The dots are not connected because the future is predetermined.

They become connected because human beings constantly create meaning from experience.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman demonstrated how naturally we construct narratives that make the past appear more predictable than it truly was. Our minds seek coherence even where history was filled with ambiguity.

Yet this tendency also reveals something beautiful.

Human life is not merely a sequence of events.

It is a continuous act of interpretation.

Every setback may become a lesson.

Every unexpected encounter may become a turning point.

Every apparent failure may become the foundation of future success.

Not because fate demanded it.

But because we chose to assign it meaning.

Ultimately, serendipity, antifragility, and philosophy converge toward the same conclusion.

The goal of life is not to eliminate uncertainty.

Such a goal is impossible.

Nor is it to surrender passively to randomness.

Instead, wisdom consists in cultivating the qualities that allow uncertainty to become fertile.

To remain intellectually curious.

To continue learning.

To welcome change without losing one's principles.

To develop the courage to revise long-held assumptions.

To recognize opportunity where others see only disruption.

The future does not belong to those who believe they can predict everything.

It belongs to those who remain prepared for what no one can predict.

Serendipity teaches us to notice what others overlook.

Antifragility teaches us to grow through what others fear.

Philosophy teaches us to understand why both are essential to a meaningful life.

Perhaps this is the deepest lesson uncertainty has to offer.

Life is not a straight road leading toward a destination already marked on the map.

It is a journey whose direction emerges gradually, shaped by the encounter between chance, freedom, and responsibility.

We cannot choose every event that enters our lives.

But we can choose, every single day, what kind of person we become because of them.

And perhaps that is the closest thing we have to destiny.

Happiness Comes from Within, Not from What We Own

We live in an age where happiness is often confused with financial success, material possessions, or social recognition. Advertising, social media, and consumer culture constantly send us the same message: we are always missing something. A bigger house, a better car, an exclusive vacation, the latest smartphone, the perfect relationship. The promise never changes: once you have these things, you'll finally be happy.

Reality, however, tells a very different story.

Happiness is, above all, an inner state of being. It is a daily choice rooted in the way we decide to experience life, not in the circumstances that surround us. The people in our lives can enrich our journey or make it more challenging, but they cannot be the foundation of our inner peace. Likewise, the things we own may make life more comfortable, but they can never fill an emotional or spiritual void.

This is not to dismiss the importance of money. That would be unrealistic.

Money undeniably improves quality of life. In countries where public healthcare is inefficient or burdened by long waiting lists, being able to afford private medical treatment can make a tremendous difference. The same is true for buying healthier, higher-quality food, living in a larger home, enjoying more free time thanks to financial security, wearing better clothes, traveling, discovering new cultures, and experiencing opportunities that many people simply cannot afford.

Wealth creates opportunities.

But opportunities are not the same as happiness.

History is filled with extraordinarily wealthy individuals who lived with anxiety, depression, loneliness, or despair. At the same time, countless people with modest means wake up each morning with gratitude, peace of mind, and the remarkable ability to appreciate life's simplest pleasures.

The ancient philosophers understood this long ago. The Stoics, from Seneca to Epictetus, argued that true serenity depends only on what lies within our control: our judgments, our choices, and our character. Everything else is external, uncertain, and ultimately temporary.

Epicurus, often misunderstood as a philosopher of indulgence, taught something very different. Genuine happiness comes from simplicity, friendship, freedom from fear, and the ability to limit unnecessary desires. The more desires we accumulate, the more opportunities we create for dissatisfaction.

In the twentieth century, Erich Fromm drew a distinction between having and being. A society built primarily around possession inevitably turns people into dissatisfied consumers. Every new purchase offers only temporary satisfaction before giving way to the next desire. It is an endless cycle.

Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, observed that even under the most horrific circumstances, human beings retain one essential freedom: the freedom to choose their attitude toward life's events. It remains one of the most profound lessons of modern philosophy and psychology. If happiness depended solely on external conditions, no one could have preserved hope, dignity, or meaning in such unimaginable suffering.

Of course, we should avoid swinging to the opposite extreme. Poverty is not a virtue, nor does hardship automatically make people wiser or better. Financial insecurity creates stress, limits opportunities, and can seriously affect emotional well-being. It is perfectly reasonable to seek greater financial stability and a better quality of life.

Yet there comes a point where additional wealth contributes less and less to genuine happiness. Beyond that threshold, what truly matters is how we choose to live, the meaning we give to our days, the quality of our relationships, our capacity for gratitude, and the inner balance we cultivate.

Happiness is not a destination we reach after accumulating enough money, enough success, or enough possessions.

It is a way of living.

Those who place their happiness in what they own will inevitably live in fear of losing it. Those who build their peace upon inner values, self-awareness, personal growth, and freedom from endless desires discover that happiness is not something to acquire, but something to nurture every single day.

True wealth is not measured by what we possess, but by our ability to live fully even when life does not unfold according to our plans. That kind of inner freedom is something no financial crisis, broken relationship, or material loss can ever take away.

Does Consumerism Really Make Us Happy? The True Meaning of Success Is Not Having, but Being

A bigger house. A bigger car. The latest smartphone. Closets overflowing with clothes. Garages packed with things we use once a year—if ever. We live in the age of accumulation. Owning things is no longer enough; we are expected to own more and more. Consumerism is no longer merely an American phenomenon. It has become the dominant cultural model across much of the world, a universal language that promises happiness through consumption.

But does it really deliver on that promise?

If we look closely at the wealthiest societies, we encounter a striking paradox. Never before in human history have people enjoyed such an abundance of material goods, yet never have anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout, and existential emptiness been discussed so openly. Clearly, financial prosperity and genuine happiness are not the same thing.

Consumerism operates on a remarkably simple principle: it transforms every desire into a perceived necessity. It does not merely persuade us to buy a product; it convinces us that without it we will somehow be less complete, less attractive, less successful. Objects cease to serve practical purposes alone; they become symbols of our identity.

This is precisely the insight of Erich Fromm, who, in To Have or To Be?, distinguished between two fundamentally different ways of living. In the mode of having, people define themselves by what they own. In the mode of being, they discover their value through love, creativity, understanding, and authentic existence. Fromm argued that a society built exclusively around possession inevitably produces insecure individuals, because no material object can satisfy the profoundly human need for meaning.

Slowly but surely, we stop being people who own things and become people who are owned by them.

A car is no longer simply a means of transportation; it becomes a status symbol. A house is no longer just a place to live, but a measure of social success. A smartphone is no longer merely a communication device; it becomes an extension of our public image. Even leisure time is increasingly transformed into an opportunity to consume.

Zygmunt Bauman described this condition as liquid modernity. In a world where everything is temporary, objects are designed to be quickly replaced. Nothing is supposed to last. Products become obsolete, but so do relationships, ideas, and even identities. The ideal consumer is not someone who buys once, but someone who remains permanently dissatisfied. The market depends on dissatisfaction because satisfaction would bring consumption to an end.

Whenever we finally obtain what we wanted, the pleasure is short-lived. Almost immediately another object appears, another upgrade, another experience that promises fulfillment. It is a perfect system because it never allows us to feel complete.

In many ways, we resemble livestock in an industrial farm, continuously fed so that the system can continue operating. Or perhaps we are more like hamsters running endlessly inside a wheel, convinced we are moving forward while remaining exactly where we started.

Our lives risk becoming painfully predictable: study, work, consume, sleep, repeat. From birth to death we often follow a path designed by others, believing we are making independent choices while many of our decisions have already been shaped by advertising, social expectations, algorithms, and the culture in which we were raised.

Does this mean free will does not exist?

Not necessarily. It simply means that genuine freedom is far more difficult to achieve than we usually imagine. Freedom is not having one hundred brands to choose from in a supermarket. Freedom is the ability to distinguish between what we truly desire and what others have taught us to desire.

Here Martin Heidegger remains surprisingly relevant. He argued that human beings often live within the anonymous world of Das Man—"the They." We think what everyone thinks, desire what everyone desires, and live as everyone else lives. We believe we are making our own choices, while in reality we are unconsciously following collective expectations. Only by confronting our own existence—and ultimately our mortality—can we begin to live authentically.

Thinking independently is demanding. It requires silence, study, intellectual honesty, and the courage to question our deepest assumptions. It is far easier simply to follow the crowd.

Arthur Schopenhauer observed that human life constantly oscillates between desire and boredom. While we lack something, we suffer because we want it. Once we obtain it, excitement fades, boredom returns, and a new desire inevitably emerges. Consumerism is nothing more than the modern expression of this endless cycle of human willing—a cycle in which satisfaction is always temporary and desire endlessly renews itself.

Perhaps true freedom begins when we learn to need less.

The ancient philosophers understood this long before the modern marketplace existed. Epicurus, often misunderstood as a philosopher of indulgence, taught almost the exact opposite of consumerism. He distinguished between natural and necessary desires and those that are vain and unlimited. The first are easy to satisfy and lead to tranquility. The second—wealth without limits, luxury, prestige, and endless acquisition—condemn people to permanent dissatisfaction. According to Epicurus, the person who knows how to be content is infinitely richer than the one who never stops accumulating.

Seneca, one of the greatest Stoic philosophers, expressed a remarkably similar idea. Poverty, he argued, is not having little; it is endlessly craving more. True wealth lies in inner self-sufficiency. Whoever depends on possessions for happiness inevitably becomes a slave to external circumstances. The wise person carries within themselves something that cannot be taken away.

This reflection naturally raises another question: how should success be measured?

Modern society almost always gives the same answer: wealth, income, career, fame, followers, property, investments.

Yet this standard ignores the most important variable of all: where a person began.

Two individuals may reach the same destination by traveling entirely different roads. Someone born into privilege begins life with enormous advantages over someone raised in poverty, neglect, or social exclusion. Judging both solely by their achievements ignores the most significant part of their story.

Perhaps success should be measured not by the finish line alone, but by the distance each person has traveled.

There is, however, an even deeper measure.

The neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, reached an extraordinary conclusion: human beings can endure almost any suffering if they find meaning within it. Happiness, he argued, cannot be pursued directly. It emerges as the by-product of a life devoted to purpose. If our identity depends exclusively on consumption, then an economic crisis, illness, or old age may be enough to bring our entire sense of self crashing down.

Authentic success, therefore, is not measured by what we accumulate but by the degree to which we become masters of ourselves.

A person may own millions, luxury homes, expensive cars, and successful businesses while remaining enslaved by ambition, fear of loss, and an endless need for approval. Another individual may live modestly while possessing something infinitely more valuable: inner peace, intellectual independence, the ability to love, the pursuit of knowledge, and the freedom to live according to deeply held values.

Ultimately, true wealth is not found in accumulating more, but in needing less.

Consumerism teaches us to fill our homes. Philosophy teaches us to cultivate our minds.

Perhaps success is not about impressing other people, but about being able to look into the mirror without feeling like a stranger to ourselves.

The essential question is not how much we own.

The essential question is how much of our life truly belongs to us.

If the answer is "very little," then even the largest house, the most expensive car, and the biggest bank account may be nothing more than the furnishings of a prison we have built with our own hands.

Perhaps freedom does not begin when we can afford everything we desire.

Perhaps it begins the moment we stop desiring everything the marketplace has taught us to want.

Where Did Italy's Fascists Go After 1943?

One of the most uncomfortable questions in Italian history is also one of the least honestly addressed: what became of the millions of Italians who had joined, supported, or simply lived within the Fascist regime?

For decades, a reassuring narrative prevailed. On one side stood the Fascists; on the other, the anti-Fascists. Then Fascism collapsed, the Resistance prevailed, and Italy supposedly became, almost overnight, a democratic Republic.

Reality is far more complex.

Millions of Italians had built their lives during the twenty years of Fascist rule. They had worked within state institutions, advanced their careers, administered public bodies, and participated in the regime's organizations. When Mussolini fell, these people did not simply vanish.

Most adapted.

Some joined the Christian Democrats, others the Italian Communist Party, still others the Socialist Party or the liberal parties. Many remained in the public administration. Only those most deeply compromised by the regime were, in general, excluded from public life or prosecuted.

This phenomenon reveals a great deal about modern Italian history.

It does not prove that every anti-Fascist had once been a Fascist. That would be a historical absurdity. It does, however, demonstrate that part of Italy's political class was remarkably adept at changing its symbols, language and political allegiance almost overnight.

Historians refer to this phenomenon as trasformismo.

Italy’s eternal tradition of political transformation continued even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tangentopoli corruption scandals.

The uniforms changed.

The methods often did not.

Clientelism, careers built through personal loyalties rather than merit, opaque party structures, the dominance of internal factions, political conformism and loyalty to powerful leaders continued to characterize broad sectors of Italian public life long after 1945.

The Fascist regime itself undoubtedly came to an end.

The Italian Constitution prohibited both the re-establishment of the Fascist Party and the public advocacy of Fascism. Given the legacy of dictatorship and a devastating war, this was an understandable choice.

Yet outlawing an organization does not automatically transform the mentality of millions of people.

Ideas can change.

Symbols can change.

Human behaviour, however, changes much more slowly.

For this reason, perhaps the more meaningful question is not where the Fascists went, but what became of certain ways of exercising power.

Intolerance toward dissent.

The belief that those outside one's own political camp are morally inferior.

The tendency to reward loyalty instead of merit.

The desire to silence those who express inconvenient opinions.

These dynamics do not belong exclusively to Fascism.

They can emerge within any political system.

The colours of the flags may change, yet the temptation of cultural authoritarianism remains.

Pier Paolo Pasolini sensed this danger when he warned against the cultural homogenization produced by consumer society and the emerging power of the mass media. His concern was that conformity could become even more effective than overt censorship, precisely because it was capable of manufacturing consent without openly resorting to force.

Today, this issue has returned to public debate.

Some speak of a "single accepted narrative"; others reject the very idea. Regardless of the terminology, one legitimate question remains: how much room do modern democracies truly leave for those who express views that fundamentally diverge from prevailing opinion?

Media campaigns, public delegitimization, and social or professional ostracism can all become instruments of pressure even without the use of physical violence.

They are different from the methods of the twentieth century.

Yet they deserve careful reflection nonetheless.

In this respect, the insight of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, remains profoundly relevant.

Frankl argued that every human being always retains one essential freedom: the freedom to choose how to respond to circumstances.

People can become perpetrators of cruelty or examples of extraordinary humanity. Not because they are predestined to do so, but because they make choices.

Events shape our lives.

They do not determine who we are.

For this reason, it would be a mistake to regard Fascism merely as a historical phenomenon confined to the years between 1922 and 1945.

It would be equally mistaken to claim that it has survived unchanged.

The more interesting question is another.

Can democratic societies truly free themselves from authoritarian political cultures, or do such cultures inevitably re-emerge over time under different languages, symbols and political allegiances?

That is a question for Italy.

But it is equally a question for every contemporary democracy.