In other words, a lack of meaning in modern life is met with a mentality of demands that leads, inevitably, to an over-accumulation of supposedly 'transforming' objects, exactly because the life one lives in modern society 'is empty,' Marquard says... [T]he disappearance of meaning in modern life is covered up by a preoccupation with essentially superficial 'things' that are fetishized (endowed with a mystical transforming power) and become the true carrier of radically subjective meaning, but rather than substantially replacing the apparent loss of meaning they only add bulk or clutter to life. This, once again, represents an aspect of the uncanny, as the imaginary world of the subjective is confronted by the reality of the possible material disorder of life.
John Scanlan, On Garbage
