Social Acceleration and the Psalms:  A Pathway to the Good Life

We inhabit an ailing society. Like a diseased body, with vital organs and processes working faster and harder just to maintain normal function, our society requires more in order to maintain the status quo. When this happens to a living organism, symptoms abound. Likewise, it would be difficult to ignore the increase in societal symptoms: anxiety, depression, outrage, and exhaustion, just to name the most acute. German philosopher and sociologist Hartmut Rosa traces these societal symptoms to their root cause: what he calls social acceleration. 

Social Acceleration

In his 2013 book by that title, Rosa expands on his central claim that the machine of our society is spinning faster than ever, and this spinning requires more energy — resources, time, labor, expertise — to simply sustain our current way of operating in the world. While the concept of social acceleration is somewhat fluid, Rosa identifies three dimensions:

1. Technical Acceleration

This is the speeding up of goal-directed processes. The paradigmatic examples of these, Rosa says, are the processes of transportation, communication, and production. These are the gears of society. Together, they shrink the world, making movement — of products, messages, and people — within it faster. This technical acceleration is only propelled by the ongoing digitization of information, production, and services.

And we are not innocent bystanders; our consumption is like a lead foot on the gas. We consume faster and, as a result, more is produced more quickly. Rosa says such consumption drives material structures to reproduce and alter in ever-shorter periods of time. As this reproduction ramps up we have to consume, whether we want to or not, just to keep up.

2. Acceleration of Social Change

For Rosa “social change” results when a society implements and adapts to technological acceleration. As technological advancements accelerate, we are forced to implement and adapt more quickly. The rate of change is tempo — think of this in the musical sense. The more notes crammed into a unit of time, the more accelerated the tempo. Our society is cramming in more “notes” of technological advancements and thus the music of society is becoming more frantic.

We see this frantic tempo playing out with Gen Z. Trends for clothes, modes of communication, even water bottles (!) switch so rapidly that Gen Z implements and adapts to “micro-trends” — a greater quantity of trends in less amount of time.

3. Acceleration of Pace of Life

This is, perhaps, where most of us feel society’s acceleration. Because the tempo of social change has increased, society itself forces its members to keep in step with the music. Our only options for achieving such speed are: 1) faster action, or 2) less downtime between action. Rosa’s examples hit a little too close to home — increased speed of mealtimes, shorter conversations with loved ones, and less rest.

A tempo-chasing mindset has embedded itself in our productivity literature. Consider the wildly popular 2018 productivity book Atomic Habits. In it, James Clear offers many compelling principles of self-help and personal productivity, along with some genuinely helpful practices toward forming habits. One of those practices is what Clear calls “habit stacking”: introducing a habit we want to start alongside one we are already committed to, thus encouraging habit formation via multitasking. Such efficiency-aimed techniques are why books like Clear’s are so popular. They give us tools to keep in step with the accelerated tempo of our world.

Symptoms: Signs of Burnout

The result — or symptom — Rosa says, is that modernity is essentially unlivable! He is not the only one to notice. There is no shortage of material — both academic and anecdotal — reflecting on the bleakness of life in an accelerated world. Even atheist Matt Healy of English pop rock band The 1975 sings “Jesus save us, modernity has failed us.”

Rosa says that acceleration situates our relationships in a default “mode of aggression” toward others. This makes sense considering that in an accelerating society, the assumed atmosphere is one of competition. We are, quite frankly, in a race — to be the first, the best, the smartest, the prettiest. As Andrew Root has said, we have become performing selves. And our outward competitive performance has deeply internal affects. Constant and tremendous guilt is the order of the day. Guilt over the time we’ve wasted, the steps we didn’t take; guilt over what Root calls the “coulds” — the things we could be doing to keep in step. And this guilt has twin children: anxiety and depression.

It’s no surprise then that books like Clear’s Atomic Habits rose alongside the literature on burnout culture. Burnout is the unavoidable end of acceleration. Gen Z is burning out in the form of trend fatigue!

It’s telling that for the ancient Israelites, acceleration was the Egyptian’s torture of choice: increase the effort required (by halting the supply of straw) to make the same number of bricks (Ex. 5:7–8). The goal was to induce burnout as a means of stifling Israelites’ ambition to worship God. The reminder of confinement within an oppressive system was implied.

As a result of our own self-inflicted acceleration-torture, our productivity literature is being eclipsed with self-care literature. We are going too fast and we know it. The machine isn’t stopping and its cogs (humans) are showing significant signs of wear.

Solution: Resonance

Rosa’s proposed solution came in his 2019 work titled Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. If we are to move forward (and away from burnout), Rosa says we must adopt a different mode of being-in-the-world. This alternate way he calls resonance: “the momentary appearance, the flash of a connection to a source of strong evaluations in a predominantly silent and often repulsive world.” In other words, resonance is experienced when we come into contact with what have been called “thin places” — those places and experiences where transcendence breaks through the thin film of silent repulsiveness that wraps our world ever more tightly as we spin.

These experiences of resonance, Rosa outlines, follows a typical formula:

1. Affection: This is the “thin place” proper — the encounter with transcendence. This is not something we conjure on our own, but rather something outside of us that acts upon us.

2. Emotion: This is the emotional, mental, physical, or spiritual response to the affective experience. These first two comprise a double movement of a) passively being affected and then b) actively relating to.

3. Transformation: As a result of 1 and 2, we do not— indeed, cannot — remain the same. We are awakened to the possibility of a good life.

4. Unpredictability: This entire process, Rosa says, is always characterized by a certain elusiveness. We can’t guarantee a resonant encounter! This is why extravagant vacations or laboriously planned events are often intensely disappointing. We go into them with the expectation of a resonant experience, but we are confronted with the reality that we cannot find them; they find us.

Someone who reflects this concept of resonance is Kentucky essayist and poet Wendell Berry. Berry is beloved for his slow, agrarian novels and his tech-free lifestyle, and his poem The Peace of Wild Things showcases his sensitivity to “thin places”:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Berry is no stranger to the silent, repulsive, despair-inducing world. When it all becomes too much, he seeks out “the peace of wild things.” The presence of the wood drake, the great heron, the still water, and the day-blind stars affects him. The grace of these then affects in him a posture of rest and he is transformed — set free.

Order of Salvation as Resonance

In a lecture discussing the various axes of resonance in an accelerated world, Rosa said that “love is the prototype of a resonant relationship.” This is a profoundly Christo-centric statement. God is love, and love is manifest in sending his own Son that we may be reconciled to a loving relationship with him. We love because he proto-loved us (1 Jn. 4:8–10). Viewing resonance as a gospel-shaped concept, we can easily map Rosa’s aspects of resonance onto the Ordo Salutis — the order of salvation.

1. Affection → Calling and Regeneration

Calling: As Rosa said, this is not something we do, but something done to us. We are acted upon. Before this we are alienated, to use Rosa’s (and the apostle Paul’s) term, until we are acted upon by the external “call” of transcendence sounding in Jesus, the Son of God (Rom. 1:1–4).

Regeneration: Something is stirred within us. We neither initiate this, nor can we suppress it (Jn. 6:37). Theologically, this “stirring” is our soul being “born again”; the rattling of our bones as they hear and respond to the call to “live!” (Ezk. 37).

2. Emotion → Conversion

The soul, having been implanted with a new “habit of spiritual affection and action” through regeneration, immediately acts out of this new habit with the free response of faith and repentance (i.e. conversion) in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

3. Transformation → Justification, Adoption, Sanctification

As we encounter grace through this effectual call and, with regenerate hearts, respond with faith and repentance, we are transformed. We become new creations. Our status changes from guilty to innocent, from orphan to beloved child. Here, we grow into a new way of relating to the world. Indeed, a new way of relating to everything.

4. Unpredictability → Election

However, this entire process is mysterious and elusive, having its origin in the hidden mind of the Triune God (Eph. 1:4). When Nicodemus asked Jesus how someone could conjure up an encounter with the kingdom of God, Jesus responded: the wind blows wherever it wishes (Jn. 3:8). Rosa says you can’t show up to the theatre hoping to purchase a resonant experience. C. S. Lewis believed the same when he said you can’t get into Narnia the same way twice.

Psalms: A Pathway to a Resonant Life

Rosa is quick to say we can’t view resonance as merely another technique — “Just live resonantly!” Even if we could, Rosa’s work in Social Acceleration shows that our world is making it increasingly difficult to do so. The faster our world becomes, the more “muted” it becomes. The more we conquer the world, the less it speaks to us — the more likely we are to lose “the very pathways to the world, the spheres of resonance.” The faster the carousel spins, the blurrier the world around us becomes. Simply put, we are moving too fast to spot the “thin places.”

What are we to do?

We must place ourselves along these “pathways to the world,” where our chances of resonant encounters are increased. The Psalms are a uniquely well-worn path toward this end. There is a reason they have played such a central role in the Christian experience throughout history. What’s more, Jesus — the resonant Lord — was steeped in the Psalms, quoting from them more than all the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus, the Psalms are a guide to resonance. Consider their speed, shape, and subject.

1. Speed

The musical aspect of the Psalms makes it a natural antidote to an ever-increasing tempo. Many of the Psalms were composed as songs; they quite literally keep time. This is why music is so effective at centering us, calming down our bodies and minds in stressful seasons. Our favorite songs do not increase in tempo each time we hear them. They continue on at a familiar, friend-like pace. The Psalms move at the tempo of grace, breaking against an accelerated society.

2. Shape

We have seen the shape — the formula — of resonance. The Psalms as an organized whole share this same shape:

• encounter with the LORD and the promise of his Messiah (Affection);
• responses from God’s people of lament, joy, thanksgiving, remembering (Emotion);
• deep transformation through praise (Ps. 30) and confession (Ps. 51) (Transformation);
• patient anticipation on the LORD’s promise of deliverance (Unpredictability).

The Psalms are songs and prayers in response to an encounter that leads to transformation. Each Psalm is by nature a chronicle of a resonant experience.

3. Subject

Not only are the Psalms marked by a resonant speed and shape, the very subject matter of the Psalms keep our “feet on the ground” (a phrase often used by Rosa). Rosa describes our relationship to the world with chapter titles like “Breathing,” “Eating and Drinking,” “Gaze,” “Countenance,” “Sleeping,” “Laughing,” “Crying.” These earth-bound, human realities are ones the Psalms are deeply concerned with — realities that push against our evolution toward machine.

Not only do the Psalms guide us in becoming more human and less machine, they also move us along the axes of resonance. Rosa lays out various vertical axes of resonance — plotlines where encounters with resonance are most likely to occur. These axes are religion, nature, art, and history — subjects which saturate the Psalms: They are the religious affections of Israel. They declare the grit and grandeur of nature. They are, as poetry and song, art of the highest degree. And, chronicling the story of Israel as God’s covenant people, they are history. As such, the Psalms put us directly in the path — on the axes, if you will — of a resonant encounter with God.

Society is accelerating and we’re paying the price. But the solution isn’t to stop the machine; there is no getting off the carousel. The solution is resonance — a different way of relating to our accelerated world with the promise of a good life. But only a resonant encounter with the living God through his promised Messiah can give us this good life — a life of flourishing in this world. The Psalms guide us toward this encounter. Not only through their speed and shape, but through their capital “S” Subject (Lk. 24:44).

Illustrations courtesy Getillustrations via Unsplash.