groundless

Seen as originary, disorientation is always constituted by identifiable, characteristic orientation-markers (cardinalité( designating its borders, in- dicating North and South, Orient and Occident. In disorientation, how- ever, Orient and Occident are not simply geographic givens; Orient and Occident designate particular experiences of disorientation. Such cardi- nal directional markers, insofar as they open (to) the horizon of meaning and configure the motif for all motivation, can be reified only through experience of and in the world. Observed over significant lengths of time, establishment of such cardinal points is what “adjusts” both techno-gen- esis and socio-genesis. Through this positing of directions and their ad- justments, disorientation opens a space of difference, between here and there, public and private, profane and sacred, strange and familiar, and so on. Adjustments (re-)orient, and originary disorientation is converted, if not occluded. If such adjustments are the engine of all motivation, and if they must be oriented, it is because the orient (the other) is missing. From this missing other, cardinal designation produces a figure (a motive that is a goal) in which what is being oriented is reflected—the Orient is this mirage.3
This cardinal orientation is not successfully occurring today; thus we are suffering from disorientation as such.

stiegler / t&t 2 / Intro