Where is Europe going?

"For two thousand years or more man has been subject to a systematic effort to transform him in an unselfish animal.
Parental discipline, religious denunciation of selfish behaviour and philosophic exaltation of the life of reason have all left man overtly docile, but secretly in his unconscious unconvinced.
In spite of two thousand years of higher education, based on the notion that man is essentially a soul for misterious accidental reasons, man still thinks of himself as first and foremost a body and looks for the fullfillment of his own pleasures."

"A new class emerged during the Middle Ages; the merchant. The growth
of trade and the merchant middle class went hand in hand with the
growth in towns. Town populations swelled during this period,
particularly after the Black Death. Trade routes grew, though roads
remained poor and dangerous, so most goods were transported by water."

The richness was slowly more distributed among the people, the new middle class meant also the growth of the "mass market" of "mass services" like TV or Telephone or printed media and lately the Internet.
We lived dreaming of a new society where the pleasures of the "mind" (culture, knowledge) were superior to the pleasures of the "body".
Where a growing number of people could have access to a superior culture and wisdom.

The creation of a new wealth gave birth to a society based on the need of consuming more and more in order to be able to produce more and more.
The creation of the society of "having" instead of "being".
And in order to have more and more it is not important anymore the "way", but "what", no more "how" but "how much".

Where is Europe going?

Exactly in the same direction where the rest of the World is going.
May be at a faster speed.

To sell more portable phones they have to create the need of a different model, the need to create a sick population in order to have a healthy economy.

There will never be the ideal society, because man is not idealistically ideal.
But what they could create could be a society with ideals, with goals that are not a faster car or a new phone.
Also if that means a slower economical growth, which anyway makes richer the rich and poorer the poor...