Apparent slowdowns are not counterforces but products of acceleration itself

Evidence

The phenomena listed under categories (a) and (b) describe the (retreating) limits of social acceleration; they do not at all represent a contrary force. The slowdowns of the third category are side effects of acceleration, and as such they derive from it and hence are secondary in status. The processes classified under category (d2), on the other hand, are of more fundamental importance for the acceleration process itself in that they either appear as elements of it or at least must be counted among its conditions of possibility and/or preservation. In either case, they also fail to represent any countertendency. … Furthermore, the efforts of intentional resistance to social acceleration and the deceleration ideology listed under (d1) are without a doubt reactions to the pressure to accelerate and its side effects. They appear anew with each wave of acceleration in modernity, and even though there is no guarantee that it will also be this way in future, so far they have always been rather short-lived and in the end very unsuccessful. … In both cases, nevertheless, it remains true that these deceleratory forces are neither structurally nor culturally on a par with the acceleration dynamic. Instead they seem to behave in an almost parasitical fashion toward it. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 294

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is this really historically robust — could an ecological or energy-constrained deceleration not be parasitic but structural opposition?
• XREF: connects to: Acceleration persists out of fear of falling, not by choice — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 653; The stretched or simultaneous present is an effect of acceleration, not its successor — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 124; Acceleration reaches a point where it abandons autonomy and produces rigidified time despite dynamization — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 121 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Acceleration generates institutions that then block further speed and get destroyed #expands (0.82) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 299
• Perceived stress tracks the rate of acceleration, not absolute pace of life. #corroborates (0.78) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 378