“You see, “human being” was here before you even showed up. “Human being” was here before you were even thought of. Maybe, just maybe, “human being,” because it was already here, already had a direction, already had a thrust, already had a scope of possibility. Maybe, just maybe, “human being” is using you. See, I know that you and I live as if we’re using “[human] being,” but I’m asking you to consider the possibility that you showed up in “human being” and it uses you—in its direction and its thrust. You don’t use it. It already was when you showed up. And it already had a thrust, a scope, a definition. It already was a certain set of options, and those options are using you. You see, you say, in everyday language, “I think.” I say you don’t think. And I want you to consider the possibility that you don’t think. I am inviting you to stand in the possibility that it isn’t you thinking. Certainly, there are thoughts. That’s obvious. ... I’m asking you to stand in the possibility that it thinks, and you have the thought. ... You live the superstition that you think. But you don’t think. It thinks. And one of the things it thought up is you.”
being
No Ownership of the Future /
“If I ask myself whether I would rather be alive than dead tomorrow morning, and put aside the fact that some people would be unhappy if I were dead, I find, after reflection, in any normal, nondepressed period of life, that I have no preference either way. The fact that I’m trying to finish a book, or about to go on holiday, or happy, or in love, or looking forward to something, makes no difference. When I put this question to myself and suppose that my death is going to be a matter of instant, painless annihilation, completely unexperienced, completely unforeseen, it seems plain to me that I lose nothing. I, the human being that I am, lose nothing. My future life and experience (the life and experience I will have if I don’t die now) don’t belong to me in such a way that they’re something that can be taken away from me. I am, ploddingly, simply not a thing of such a kind that the life and experience it will have if it doesn’t now die can be rightly thought of as a possession of which it can be deprived. One might as well think that life could be deprived of life, or that something is taken away from an existing piece of string by the fact that it isn’t longer than it is. It’s simply a mistake, like thinking that Paris is the capital of Uzbekistan.”
The Anxious Outsider /
“Anxiety brings Dasein face to face with its ownmost Being-thrown and reveals the uncanniness of everyday familiar Being-in-the-world.”
“What can be said to characterize the Outsider is a sense of strangeness, of unreality.”
What I was always intended to do /
“Now I recognize it for what it was: the realization that I had at last settled down to the serious business of living: that after the long-drawn-out and messy years of childhood, and the teenage agonies of self-consciousness, I had at last ceased to waste my time; I was starting to do what I was always intended to do. There was a feeling like leaving harbour.”