Modernity’s constitutive acceleration reaches a threshold beyond which societal integration fails

Evidence

Therefore in what follows I argue that the assumption of a temporal perspective makes it possible to bring together the manifold observations of a “break” in the development of Western societies in such a way as to allow for an account of this break that is theoretical in substance, empirically verifiable, and capable of giving a selective, and hence normatively useful, diagnosis of the times. My guiding heuristic hypothesis here is that the acceleration that is a constitutive part of modernity crosses a critical threshold in “late modernity” beyond which the demand for societal synchronization and social integration can no longer be met. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 120

Categorization

• XREF: This is Rosa’s core thesis; echoes of the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason and Habermasian colonization of lifeworld. — connects to: Social acceleration first enabled then collapsed modernity’s promise of autonomy — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 23; Modernity’s acceleration corrodes the very institutional stability it depends on — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 297; Social acceleration is the irreducible master principle of modernization — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 762

Broader Connections

• Social acceleration first enabled then collapsed modernity’s promise of autonomy #qualifies (0.92) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 23
• Modernity’s acceleration corrodes the very institutional stability it depends on #contradicts (0.78) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 297
• Social acceleration is the irreducible master principle of modernization #corroborates (0.72) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 762