The secular promise of eternal life now drives endless experiential acceleration.

Evidence

Then the crossing of the threshold to modernity, the rise of the idea of progress, and the related sense that society itself is in motion, in conjunction with the shattering of the cultural hegemony of religious ideas, opened up a terrifying gap between the seemingly infinite experiential possibilities that will develop in an ever more perfect future and the starkly limited span of one human life in a still unperfected society here and now. Therefore the prospect of accelerating our ability to have different experiences, and thus to exhaust the available possibilities, becomes extremely seductive. The more we can accelerate our ability to go to different places, see new things, try new foods, embrace various forms of spirituality, learn new activities, share sensual pleasures with others whether it be in dancing or sex, experience different forms of art, and so on, the less incongruence there is between the possibilities of experience we can realize in our own lifetimes and the total array of possibilities available to human beings now and in the future—that is, the closer we come to having a truly “fulfilled” life, in the literal sense of one that is as filled full of experiences as it can possibly be. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 31

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the claim that there is a self-contradiction — new technologies generate new possibilities that net-red reduce the actual-to-possible ratio — deserves scrutiny as a testable mechanism.
• XREF: connects to: The same acceleration that enabled modern autonomy now undermines it. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 23; Speed is modernity’s secular stand-in for eternal life — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 490; Intensified ephemerality drives a reactive craving for eternal truths and secure moorings. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1843 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Speed is modernity’s secular stand-in for eternal life #corroborates (0.95) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 490
• Intensified ephemerality drives a reactive craving for eternal truths and secure moorings. #complicates (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1843
• Discipline repurposed religious ascetic exercise toward indefinite worldly domination. #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 244
• Eternal rest sought by humans is self-coincidence, not endless duration #qualifies (0.75)
• Life’s present continuously stretches into the future rather than aiming at fixed goals #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 807