"'Consciousness of life' - can those words be right? Are we conscious of our own lives? The words which spring to our lips, the ideas and images at our disposal, are they kind to allow us a true consciousness of our lives? ... No! Our lives are still unrealized, and our consciousness is false. It is not only our consciousness which is false: it is only false because our lives are still alienated. False representations bring with them a false consciousness of what an unrealized life is; in other words they do not bring an awareness of the non-realization (of the degree of non-realization) of human life: they present it as either realized (which leads to vulgar or moral satisfaction) or unrealizable (which leads to anguish or the desire for a different life).
More precisely, nowadays, we do not know how we live. And at the end of our lives, we scarcely know how we have lived them. And how bitter this unhappy consciousness is..."
From Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 1, by Henri Lefebvre, 2008 [1947]
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