In the world age of technology all that presences does so after the manner of the constancy of the pieces of inventory in the standing reserve. Even the human presences in this way, even if from time to time and in places he appears as though his essence and presence were not approached by the positioning of positionality.
The constancy of the piece of standing reserve is characterized by uniformity. In positionality, everything is imposed upon for the constant replaceability of the equivalent by the equivalent. Only in this way does positionality remain completely reaped into the constancy of its drive. Positionality reaps everything orderable in advance into the equivalence of the unrestricted orderability of the complete standing reserve. A constantly exchangeable equivalence holds equally in everything constant. The equivalence of value in everything constant secures for this its constancy through a replaceability that is orderable and in place. The standing reserve consists of the requisitioning of positionality. In the standing reserve everything stands in equal value. The standing reserve orders the distanceless.
Everything actual converges in the uniformly distanceless. The nearness and farness of what presences remain outstanding. Our meditation began from this point of reference. The airplane and all the apparatus of commerce continually increasing in speed serve to shorten distances. Everyone knows this today. Everything ensures that the earth becomes smaller. Everyone knows: this is effected by technology.
We possess this insight without needing to go down such roundabout paths as those we have now gone down, in that we considered the thing and its thinging, positionality and its positioning, the standing reserve and its pieces.
Why do we nevertheless follow this path of thinking in order to achieve insight into that which is? Because we by no means wish to ascertain only or even just for once an arbitrarily increasable number of observations that everyone is familiar with in the technological age. What is decisive is not that the distances are diminishing with the help of technology, but rather that nearness remains outstanding. We also do not merely ascertain this. We consider the essence of nearness and do so in order to experience to what extent it remains outstanding, in