Marginal Things (Man and his Things: Acceleration, Transformation and Migration)
The main purpose of the article is to inquire into the changes that occurs with things that surround people. The acceleration of production and consumption causes these changes in large part. It grounds in the global shift of existential focus from the eternal, vertical and the will to salvation to the temporal, horizontal and the will to success and self-realization. The logic of success and competition speeded up the turnover of things and resulted in the reduction of co-presence of men with the things in their single being. The article regards cause and effect of the reduction of duration of Dasein co-presence with the particular thing, the shift of people’s attitude to the “fast” things and the manner of the perception and experience of them. The acceleration and price reduction of things leads to the ontological destabilization of them. In the accelerating world the thing tends to be disposable, its substrate minimizes. As a result, the things that surround a man more and more lose the aura inseparable from their existence that makes them single things with their unique history. The reduction of time of co-presence with things makes the relation with them more existentially and emotionally cold. The analysis of interaction schemes allows us to draw conclusions that on the on hand, they simplify the access to the things and on the other hand, they reduce the personal component of relations with durable things. The impersonal contribution model is shown by the example of sharing scheme that turns the durable things into the one-touch-things. The article introduces the notions of dark, grey and white zones. A man is aware of the things from the dark zone but do not interact with them, the thing from the white zone have an aura and an existential value in addition to the utilitarian value while the things from the grey zone are taken into account but leaves us cold and indifferent. It is argued that the reduction of duration of co-presence leads to the migration of things from the white zone of Dasein to the grey (marginal) zone.