Choice-based identities require a lifetime-scale time horizon to constitute identity

Evidence

The shift in the tempo of cultural and social change corresponds on the level of personality to a shift from what Rosa calls “a priori substantial identities,” the content or substance of which is determined by one’s place in long-enduring social structures, to a posteriori chosen identities, the content of which is determined by selection from a set of structurally available options. Yet choice-based identities (or enduring personality structures) definitely depend upon the maintenance of the structural prerequisites of a certain time horizon, roughly the span of a lifetime or at least of its adult portion, since decisions to be this or do that for two weeks don’t rise to the level of identity-constituting factors, while a time horizon longer than an average human lifetime can hardly be the object of a rational choice of identity (one can only decide how to spend the time one actually has). — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 32

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Faster-than-lifetime social change erodes stable identity forms into situational ones — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 32; Personal identity depends on language’s temporal unification of past, present, and future — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 98; The appearance of abundant identity options masks structural pressure toward situational selves — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 37 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Faster-than-lifetime social change erodes stable identity forms into situational ones #qualifies (0.78) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 32
• Personal identity depends on language’s temporal unification of past, present, and future #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 98
• The appearance of abundant identity options masks structural pressure toward situational selves #complicates (0.72) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 37
• Identity is now a matter of choice rather than inherited absolute truth #corroborates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 112