The Acceleration of History

At the outset, let me declare that I wouldn't qualify myself as overly nostalgic. My perception of life is that it is simply too short to spend fixated on what happened in years hence; one's past should be a springboard to richer futures. This of course doesn't mean that memories shouldn't be cherished, that special places and times no longer have resonance, that the boundless emotions in the tears and smiles of childhood shall never be revisited. It is merely to not attach undue weight to the past that it takes away from the drive to trail blaze one's own path.

Ideally, the opposite should apply on a societal level. Rather than wholly foregoing all of their traditions in the face of encroaching modernity, society should embrace their past and discover what defines them as a people. Too often in our pursuit of progress, we march forward to invisible goalposts and leave behind our essence. It's as if time has become our enemy, and we think we can outrace it.

The cumulative effect of this onward march is what many historians and sociologists call the 'acceleration of history'. I find it a fascinating phenomenon. Technological innovation, among many other factors, has resulted in massive rise in the pace of change for human societies. The change isn't subtle, the change is usually paradigmatic. Fashions and tastes no longer evolve, they now come with shell-lives. Social and political institutions often are slow to react and find it rather difficult to manage the consequences of these changes.

Our terminology reflects this new reality. We often refer to decades such as the 80s and 90s as 'eras', each with their own self-contained histories and narratives. Yet the changes compacted in those ten years would in the past have taken much longer to come to pass. How can ten years be considered an 'era'? Most of us are familiar with the law of exponential growth as reflected in the inclined curve. This has manifested itself in human behavior with a dizzying effect, as if we are all on steroids.

Our perception of time itself has been drastically altered. Elders tell often of how in their childhood, they could go with their friends in the afternoon, play and chat at length for seemingly hours and hours, and come home with still plenty of time left before sunset. That same sensation of prolonged time seems absent nowadays. The increasing rapidity and intensity of experience is also felt on a purely personal level. It calls to mind the hadith of the blessed Prophet (pbuh): "The hour shall not come until time will be considered short, and a year will appear like a month, a month like a week, a week like a day, a day like an hour and an hour like a flash of fire." (Tirmidhi)

It takes some effort to realise that what is happening is not normal or natural. Does the acceleration continue forever? The French intellectual Rene Guenon pointed out that acceleration, far from being uplifting, is usually associated with downward motion. With intuition, we can guess that at some point the motion will stop. What happens then is anyone's guess.