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121 CHAPTER FIVE Trash From the previous chapters a number of themes has surfaced: rationalization , disembodiment, convenience, the denial of mortality, dismissal of finitude, and, most recently, violence. Each one of these themes has arisen in some relation to waste and, when taken together, they combine to constitute the historically unique phenomenon of trash. With the elemental themes now gathered, their constitutive structure needs to be laid out in a way that will test the central hypothesis of this study. I have maintained that technological consumer trash signifies our failure at being human. Because I have construed this failure as ontological in nature, the hypothesis would seem to demand an ontological investigation of that which bears the failure’s foremost stamp. But what in fact justifies an ontology of trash? Why not leave the mountainous refuse of the consumer society to the more expert and efficacious fields of public planning, politics, waste management, and engineering? Not to wipe our philosophical hands clean of trash is to take Heidegger’s thinking seriously. For in the twilight of his life he declared solemnly that “the fundamental thought of my thinking is precisely that Being, or the manifestation of Being needs human beings and that, vice versa, human beings are only human beings if they are standing in the manifestation of Being.”1 This chapter will reveal how our everyday commerce and complicity in trash, by hurling us into the oblivion of Being, denigrates our humanity. Later, in chapter six, we will see how this also endangers our very existence. An ontology of trash must support itself on what Heidegger rather forbiddingly calls in Being and Time “the formal existential totality of the ontological structural whole of Dasein” (BT 179). The single word, but by no means simple concept, used to name this arcane piece of prolixity is “care” [Sorge]. If care in fact defines our being, then ex hypothesi, our failure to be truly human must involve a failure to care, to exist carefully. Yet how can we possibly fail in so essential a regard? Elaborating what has gone before, I will show that our metaphysical will to become superlatively human, that is, exclusively rational, actually forces us to neglect our being. In the name of convenience, we voluntarily, quite often voraciously, consume disposable commodities. We assume that the possibility for this is the positive actualization of the promise of technology. Technology promises to disburden us from the pressing concerns of the flesh so that we may maximally indulge our higher, rational, and creative faculties, those that distinguish us from purely animal beings. Technological progress has pursued this maximization through the unflagging development of increasingly “carefree” commodities. Thus, the technological value of a commodity resides in the extent to which it minimizes the care required of the consumer, a care grounded in physical engagement, as I have argued. Our convenience items, those commodified objects that not only do not demand physical maintenance and our careful attention, but even practically frustrate all attempts at taking care of them, most easily and absolutely become trash. Their ability to minimize physical care in consumption necessitates that they maximize disposability. The polystyrene cup is effortlessly discarded and the consumer spared the trouble of washing it. This relative freedom from taking care of the object supposedly saves the consumer time. In the metaphysical ledger, all time not wasted on matters of bodily necessity gets recorded in the positive, rational column, the sum of which is presumed to equal our true humanity. “Carefreeness ” is the real promise of technology, and its real fulfillment is trash. From here one might hasten to conclusions. If care is our “formal existential totality”; furthermore, if technology directs its prowess at eradicating care, then we should confront technology as our archenemy. Clearly, this is not the case. We eagerly and enthusiastically promote its development and expansion. Technology benefits us with immense material wealth. It creates possibilities of existing hitherto unknown. The transformative mechanisms of industrialisation, for example, have ground down many of the gender and class inequities that have oppressed less scientifically sophisticated ages. It is, in this respect, patently false to oppose technology to human being. Our technological discoveries can better be said to express our concern for our being than to deny them. Care for our being makes use of the technological devices available in the service of our projects, goals, and needs. On closer inspection, it would seem that the mitigation of the exigency of physically taking care of things...

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