First we had people who raised their own sheep or grew or scavenged their own plant fibers, spun their own thread, made their own cloth, sewed all their own clothing together by hand, etc., and spent a significant proportion of their lifetimes on clothing production.
Next we moved to industrial production of cloth and mass adoption of sewing machines, so people could make their own clothing from purchased cloth, or hire someone local to sew the clothing.
Next we moved to industrial production of clothing, but most people could still alter and repair clothing or hire someone local to alter or repair it.
Now we are at the stage where clothing is so cheap that most people have no idea about any of the process, and buy masses of disposable clothing which they mostly never wear, donating it in bulk or throwing it out when they notice it’s been sitting in a closet for a decade.
And the same is true for housing, agricultural products, food, transportation, furniture, containers, toys, books, artificial lighting, music, storytelling, financial record-keeping, electrical gadgets, ...
But those final stages of transition to pure consumerism are I think the most alienating, involving not just lack of personal skill but lack of even the most basic concept of what goes into the products we use every day, or any understanding of the supply chains and production processes involved, or even a comprehension of how the products themselves work.
Heidegger himself is too dense and has alternate interpretations ("Tool-being" by Graham Harman has this whole emphasis on the tool-analysis that reminds me of the vibrations in Buddhist dharma), but Herbert Dreyfus' "Being in the world" emphasizes this side of "Being in time".
After "Being in time" and his brief flirtation with Nazism, Heidegger actually made his project to write a metaphysical history of Being in stages much like those you described. That too is dense and somewhat requires an acute sensibility for German lyrical poetry...
Anyway, "stockpiles of Being" is a good google keyword I venture...
First we had people who raised their own sheep or grew or scavenged their own plant fibers, spun their own thread, made their own cloth, sewed all their own clothing together by hand, etc., and spent a significant proportion of their lifetimes on clothing production.
Next we moved to industrial production of cloth and mass adoption of sewing machines, so people could make their own clothing from purchased cloth, or hire someone local to sew the clothing.
Next we moved to industrial production of clothing, but most people could still alter and repair clothing or hire someone local to alter or repair it.
Now we are at the stage where clothing is so cheap that most people have no idea about any of the process, and buy masses of disposable clothing which they mostly never wear, donating it in bulk or throwing it out when they notice it’s been sitting in a closet for a decade.
And the same is true for housing, agricultural products, food, transportation, furniture, containers, toys, books, artificial lighting, music, storytelling, financial record-keeping, electrical gadgets, ...
But those final stages of transition to pure consumerism are I think the most alienating, involving not just lack of personal skill but lack of even the most basic concept of what goes into the products we use every day, or any understanding of the supply chains and production processes involved, or even a comprehension of how the products themselves work.