Entangled in the needs and concerns of the "Present" (Gegenwart), we mechanically drift through our days, never looking too far forward into the future or too far backward into the past. Consequently, we lose sight of a more primordial sense of our own temporal constitution. We forget that we are finite beings who have been arbitrarily "thrown" (geworfen) into an unfolding historical situation, as we ceaselessly "project" (entwerfen) forward into social possibilities that guide and define our identities, possibilities that culminate in death.

[...] To be inauthentic is to dwell in meaning, to be caught up in a public understanding of a familiar, meaningful world. It is "in untruth," however, precisely because it is a way of being that creates an illusion of security and permanence about our existence and is forgetful of the fundamental contingency and unsettledness that underlies it. This uniquely human kind of forgetfulness also results in a uniquely human kind of suffering, "anxiety" (Angst).

-- Kevin Aho, "Logos and the Poverty of Animals: Rethinking Heidegger's Humanism," explicating Heidegger's (I claim: anthropological) position (it also seems to me that our being thrown here is too much understood as a fact, instead of an ongoing process)

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