Five years ago, we experienced our first lockdown, a strange and unexpected period. It wasn’t all bad: the weather was nice and we were able to try out a different way of life. At the end of lockdown, some parents noticed that their children were calmer; they had had fewer activities but more time to rest. I remember a little girl telling me that she had baked a chocolate cake with her father, her eyes still sparkling with excitement. It took society going into lockdown for this father and daughter to be able to bake together.
Hartmut Rosa, a German sociologist and philosopher born in 1965, tackles this question: why has it become so complicated for a father and his daughter to bake a chocolate cake? Why is there such a gap between what we would like to experience and what we actually experience? One of his concepts is social acceleration. We will attempt to summarize it.
What is acceleration according to Hartmut Rosa?
Three things have accelerated in the modern era. First, technology: it takes much less time to do laundry, travel between Paris and Marseille, or send a message to the other side of the world.
Second, society: the pace of change between what is no longer relevant and what is not yet relevant in society is intensifying. We have moved from intergenerational changes to generational changes and then to intragenerational changes. For example, in the past, sons did the same job as their fathers, then they did a different job, and today they do different jobs throughout their careers.
Finally, life: there is an increase in the number of experiences and actions per unit of time. This is paradoxical, because technological acceleration should free up our time, but in reality, the number of tasks we have to do is increasing. We used to write one letter a week, but today we write dozens of messages a day.
Where does this acceleration come from?
Technology is only one condition for this acceleration, it is not the source. Hartmut Rosa identifies a social driver: economic competition. Capitalism must accelerate. To quote Benjamin Franklin, “time is money” (speed reduces production costs, it is better to reinvest capital quickly, and the fastest on the market is the most competitive). Capitalism is structured dynamically; it is impossible to stop. This logic of infinite competition extends to all dimensions of human life: education, healthcare, romantic relationships, etc.
On the other hand, there is a cultural driver: in a secularized society, acceleration serves as a functional equivalent to the promise of eternity. Society no longer believes in heaven; all that remains is life on earth. We must realize the maximum of possibilities during this life, so that life keeps its promises.
From a Catholic perspective, we can note that these two driving forces have been widely denounced by the Magisterium.
What are the consequences of social acceleration?
Social acceleration produces problems of desynchronization, because not everything accelerates and accelerations occur at different rates. It still takes about 60 million years for oil to form, human gestation still takes nine months, and it takes time to grieve. This can create disturbances in our relationships with nature, with others, and with our subjectivity.
Modern society considers itself free, but the pressure to meet social demands for efficiency has never been stronger. People can never do enough; there is always something more urgent than baking a chocolate cake. Those who cannot keep up are rejected.
The world is becoming cold. Space, objects, our actions, time, and our relationships no longer speak to us. For example, time spent on a screen passes quickly and leaves no memories (unlike baking a chocolate cake).
Hartmut Rosa proposes resonance, a living relationship with the world, as a way out. This alternative relationship with the world can be found in prayer, art, and chocolate cakes.
