The Other TUGANA PERK Anxiety is a feeling without an object; there is no cure nor hope for anxiety. Anxiety leaves people with soul wrenching questions such as; How do I exist? Why do I exist? Do I exist? These questions remain unanswered for now. These are the questions and feelings that create the metaphysical world and the desire for it. For now, it seems as if these questions are impossible to answer but we are still in search for answers, which is metaphysical desire. I believe that one of the many reasons that such a world has come to exist is because people needed somewhere to channel all their unanswered questions so that it would not drive them crazy. However alien the Other remains, it is also familiar and comforting. Some people may acknowledge it consciously and some unconsciously, just as some people can experience it and some cannot. The event of appropriation allows one to take a leap into the metaphysical, more like jumping high enough to see past the wall of what we call ‘reality’. The event is like a great moment of high, like the crest of a wave, which can be experienced once or more times and in some cases never. Just like the wave, the event of appropriation also crashes at one point, the point where we start shaking off the uncomfortable feeling of anxiety. In some
cases, the crash is final but in others the wave retracts and keeps building up again and again. This is the anxiety building up. I believe that the more we build up anxiety and are lucky enough to experience the event of appropriation, we feel it more intensely every time. The intensity increases because the level of anxiety built up increases every time to trigger the event of appropriation. People start building up a tolerance which is why the feeling has to be intensified every time to experience the event. People grow numb towards the everyday experience of anxiety and find many ways to distract themselves from the feeling. Technology for example, according to Heidegger, is a soothing drug to escape anxiety. We think of technology as something infinite, like God, and continuously growing and improving. The improvement part of the perspective is not very God-like because God is already perfect and does not need any improvements but the infinity is alike. Heidegger does not support technology because he believes it is bad to have such a drug to escape anxiety, tragedy must be experienced. Technology constantly takes people back and forth between being and Being. Through it we are, in a verbal sense, left with nothing but not the true nothing, not the good nothing that Heidegger wants people to experience.
PHOTO BY BRANDON MARASHI
PHOTO BY TYLER SPANGLER
PHOTO BY MARIANO PECCINETTI
PHOTO BY JAMES ORMISTON
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