Runaway acceleration can paradoxically end in a frenetic standstill that immobilizes society.

Evidence

The consequences of this development are still hardly foreseeable. They could paradoxically immobilize the acceleration dynamic in two different ways: on the one hand (in a limited sense), through the appearance of a “frenetic standstill,” a situation brought about by the abandonment of a perspective and “path” of progress and characterized by the absence of any direction of development and, on the other, through the unsettling of the very foundations of the previously “ultrastable” cultural and structural societal framework of modernity by “postmodern” processes of erosion. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 298

Categorization

• XREF: “Frenetic standstill” recalls radical ’60s/fin-de-siecle motifs of motion-without-direction found in cultural theory; a useful contrast to linear-progress readings. — connects to: Rapid change can itself be the mechanism producing deep social standstill. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 109

Broader Connections

• Rapid change can itself be the mechanism producing deep social standstill. #corroborates (0.95) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 109