Acceleration generates slowdowns and stoppages as its own side effects
Evidence
Slowdown and stoppage are appearing in modern society ever more frequently and in increasingly severer forms as unintended consequences of acceleration processes. Dysfunctional deceleration phenomena and pathological forms of slowdown belong here. Without a doubt, the most well-known example of dysfunctional deceleration is the traffic jam: for instance, for several years the average speed of traffic in American urban centers has been sinking as a result of the continuous rise in traffic levels. With respect to pathological slowdowns, recent research yields increasing support for the notion that depression and related disorders may appear as a pathological reaction to and withdrawal from the social pressure to accelerate. In phases of depression it often seems to the sick person that time stands still or turns into a toughened mass. One can also include in this category the exclusion of employees from the labor force insofar as its structural ground lies in escalations of tempo (and hence productivity) in the production process, something that often results in the inability of those affected to keep up with the high speed of work and innovation demanded, leading to extreme deceleration in the form of undesired unemployment. Economic recessions, characterized in English-speaking regions precisely as “slowdowns,” can themselves also presumably be interpreted as dysfunctional side effects of the successful acceleration of the production process. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 276
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s material on loudness/silence projects and to general theory of unintended consequences; also to the chapter’s larger thesis that acceleration produces its own pathologies (depression, unemployment, recession as ‘slowdown’). — connects to: Acceleration persists out of fear of falling, not by choice — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 653; Apparent slowdowns are not counterforces but products of acceleration itself — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 294; Purposeful temporary slowdowns are prerequisites for broader acceleration — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 284 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Apparent slowdowns are not counterforces but products of acceleration itself
#expands(0.92) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 294 - Acceleration generates institutions that then block further speed and get destroyed
#exemplifies(0.88) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 299 - Acceleration reaches a point where it abandons autonomy and produces rigidified time despite dynamization
#complicates(0.80) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 121 - Purposeful temporary slowdowns are prerequisites for broader acceleration
#qualifies(0.78) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 284