Modern anxieties may signal genuine limits of acceleration rather than mere adaptation lag.

Evidence

In view of such phenomena and drawing on Sigmund Freud, Norbert Elias, and Walter Benjamin in a train of thought reminiscent of Simmel’s reflections on the metropolis, Schivelbusch conjectures that the civilizing acceleration of social life exposes moderns to an ever denser sequence of new and aggressive stimuli that have disturbing and irritating effects so long as the psyche of the affected does not respond with a (consciousnessand perception-altering) reinforcement of the “stimulus defense mechanism.” Therefore it is an empirically open question whether the rise in anxieties observed in the discourse of late modernity in the face of a further round of acceleration actually represents a reflexlike repetition of a well-known cultural reaction to a new surge of acceleration before the formation of appropriate new modes of perception and behavior or in fact signals the arrival at more massive social, ecological, and perhaps anthropological limits, the exceeding of which could cause the structural and cultural arrangements of modernity to collapse. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 273

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Rosa lays out two genuinely rival readings of late-modern anxiety: temporary perceptual lag versus running up against hard structural limits — a question that resists easy summary and frames his whole inquiry.
• XREF: connects to: Perceived stress tracks the rate of acceleration, not absolute pace of life. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 378; Technical acceleration contradicts rather than explains modern time scarcity and stress — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 236; Rising depression may be a reaction to unfulfillable acceleration expectations. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 110

Broader Connections

• Perceived stress tracks the rate of acceleration, not absolute pace of life. #qualifies (0.85) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 378
• Rising depression may be a reaction to unfulfillable acceleration expectations. #corroborates (0.85) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 110
• Technical acceleration contradicts rather than explains modern time scarcity and stress #corroborates (0.80) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 236