About this project

It was the first weekend of July 2023. I had just moved from Geneva to Frankfurt, was sitting at the desk of my new flat and realized that a new chapter of my life was beginning.
I did not know one single person in the city. Given I was working for the same employer as in Geneva, I just knew quite well what to expect from my new job, nothing else.

It wasn’t an easy period, psychologically. In the last 6-12 months in Geneva I had lost passion in life and felt that nobody around was able or willing to listen to me. The move to Frankfurt became then a possibility for new life routes.
Hence, sitting at that desk in my room, I realised that if I wanted to find a path to more happiness, relying only on me, my psychologist and those few people I could count on was not enough. And here came the crucial thought: “there is an entire history of humanity, made of 105 billions people that lived on Earth, that likely struggled with my same question and found a bunch of very different answers. What if I studied them to learn from the past Ezios that populated this world?”.

I started with Pirandello and his stories about relationships and humans authenticity. Then his contemporaries. And after few months of doing so, I realised the picture was bigger. I had to put their stories in a context, a context that was result of the historical period they lived in, the past authors they had met or read, the artistic movements contemporary to them.

There, the idea of a timeline of the entire history of humanity was born.

Everything is interconnected. Each box in the timeline is the result of what happened before and during his time. I expected to find some interesting trends; happiness probably changed his meaning because of wars, or technological developments, or humans cognitive development in philosophical thinking.
Linking person to other persons, events to other events, the list of themes that emerged got longer and longer. Each deserved a “thematic journey across humanity”, that you can follow via the filters in the timeline.

The project is still getting bigger and bigger, making my vision (dream?) now gigantic but very clear: I want this timeline to become the modern Encyclopédie. Not anymore a list of terms, but a visual map of the history of humanity, that links areas that too often (especially in schools) are taught in silos. Religions challenge the philosophers, who stimulate the political leaders, who fund artists and fuel economy, enough to need technology to sustain it, that requires scientific inventions, that in turn undermine the positions of the religions, and so on. In all this, there is one common key, a fil rouge - it is the human being. It is the chain of billions of persons, of which today we are the result of.

Given this premise, it’s obvious that this timeline won’t ever be complete; the scope is too vast.
But I have defined few next steps that move forward my vision:
- by myself, I’ll keep adding content to the timeline and also include regions outside Europe, starting from China and India, which will represent totally different worlds and histories.
- I’ll soon include an option in the website for people to contribute with content to add, adjust or remove. These contributions together with my ongoing additions will make the timeline more and more comprehensive.
- once the project is solid enough, I’ll try to make this timeline the new approach of teaching in the schools and universities. As much Diderot’s Encyclopédie was the reference in the 18th century, so I’d love that any discipline will refer to its position in the big scheme of things, in the big timeline of us humans.

So am I happier now? Good question :)
The dark period is definitely over, partially thanks to this project, in different ways.
Ironically, what i studied helped the least. Yes, there are interesting trends emerging - were we happier in Europe when religion didn’t make us think? Is the modern dissatisfaction the result of the disproportionate expectations generated by the Industrial Revolution?
But what helped me the most are the conversations that I triggered when discussing this project with relatives, colleagues, friends. It made very clear to me how happiness is obviously an important topic for each person, but even more it is rare to be discussed openly and genuinely, at least in the social context I live and work in. And after each of these conversations I felt I was myself adding some value to the history of humanity. I had got now a call, which made me stop wishing to die soon, and instead live long and with a purpose. I have found a story to write, or at least to tell. It’s a history made by each of us, as big as it can get.
Ready to read it together?

If you’d like to stay updated on this project, you can subscribe to the newsletter here.


About me
I am an Italian engineer, currently working as Finance Senior Manager in a multinational company in Geneva (Switzerland) and I am enrolled in a Master’s degree in Applied Philosophical Sciences.
You can reach out to me at comettoezio@gmail.com.