The Art of Manliness - Feeling Depressed and Discombobulated？ Social Acceleration May Be to Blame

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.960 the social theorist charles taylor says that part of what characterizes a secular age

00:00:15.620 is that there are multiple competing options for what constitutes the good life

00:00:19.040 the sociologist hartmut rosa argues that modern citizens most often locate that good in

00:00:24.340 optionality speed and reach which creates a phenomenon he calls social acceleration

00:00:29.660 professor of theology andrew root explores the ideas of taylor rosa and social acceleration in

00:00:35.220 his work including in his book the congregation in a secular age while andy largely looks at

00:00:40.340 social acceleration through the lens of its effect on churches it has implications for every aspect

00:00:45.260 of our lives from work to family we explore those implications today on the show unpacking the way

00:00:51.340 that seeking stability through growth leads to feelings of depression exhaustion and

00:00:55.300 discombobulation how we collect possibilities while not knowing what we're aiming for and how we've

00:01:00.320 traded the burden of shoulds for the burden of coulds we discuss how social acceleration has

00:01:05.260 shifted the horizons and significance of time how time has to be hollowed out to be sped up and how

00:01:10.540 the solution to the ill effects of social acceleration isn't just slowing down but finding more resonance

00:01:16.460 after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash social acceleration

00:01:21.200 all right andy root welcome to the show hey it's uh great to be here thanks for having me so you

00:01:38.900 are a theologian who has written books about ministering in a secular age and i wanted to bring

00:01:44.440 you on the show because your approach to your work is guided by the lenses of two philosophers

00:01:51.180 sociologists who i've enjoyed reading and what they've done is they try to explain why we can

00:01:57.700 sometimes feel discombobulated in the modern world not only spiritually but just in our family life or

00:02:03.600 work life and these two thinkers are charles taylor and hartmut rosa for those who aren't familiar let's

00:02:09.820 talk about charles taylor first for those who aren't familiar with charles taylor what's his big idea

00:02:13.920 yeah it's a great question and it's a pretty hard one i mean in some sense he has like basic big

00:02:20.280 ideas but then he writes like you know six seven hundred page books just focusing on one of the big

00:02:26.300 ideas so his i guess you would say his later work though he's like 90 years old and he's still

00:02:31.440 publishing books so you know the ideas are still flowing out of this guy which is commendable in

00:02:37.000 its own right but the work that i've dealt a lot with is a book he has called a secular age which he's

00:02:42.300 really trying to explore well like you said setting this up what it feels like to live in a secular age

00:02:48.100 and his big question that he's he's really trying to explore which takes up 770 pages just one

00:02:53.460 question is why if you just with a big round number say 1500 in the year 1500 in the west was it nearly

00:03:01.660 impossible not to believe in god i mean to live in any of the kind of western civilizations western

00:03:06.720 societies you had to believe in god to function in this society and then a short 500 years later it's

00:03:12.800 completely flipped and particularly outside america you know if you live in france or one of the

00:03:18.700 scandinavian countries it's much easier to not believe in god than to believe in god so he really

00:03:23.660 wants to kind of explore that that big idea and i've picked that up and dealt with it quite a bit is

00:03:29.520 how do we get to this kind of society where this thing flips on its head well for taylor what does it

00:03:35.780 feel like what does it mean to live in a secular age because i think we everyone hears that idea and they

00:03:39.960 might have their idea it's like well you believe in science and not god yeah taylor had a bigger idea

00:03:44.520 of what it meant to be secular yeah i mean he thinks i guess this is what philosophers do and maybe this

00:03:49.700 is why i'm addicted to these these folks is that they think that it's very easy to think to have our

00:03:55.100 thinking be misconstrued on what's actually going on and that that may make situations worse or may you

00:04:00.600 know lead us to want solutions that actually aren't much of solutions at all and he thinks when it comes

00:04:05.720 to secular that we usually define it as fewer and fewer people going to church i mean just to be

00:04:11.140 its most base you know like there are just fewer people going to religious communities

00:04:15.480 religious institutions are are weaker that's usually how we think of it you know like i i teach at a

00:04:21.940 seminary seminaries are closing all over the place there's open pulpits everywhere my gosh congregations

00:04:27.760 are being turned into micro breweries like these seem to be the signs of what it means to live

00:04:32.820 in a secular age and taylor thinks that's not quite right that that is an issue obviously that

00:04:38.680 that has happened the the statistics bear that out but really inside the kind of dna of what it

00:04:45.220 means to be a late modern person or live in a late modern society isn't that people are just less

00:04:50.440 affiliated what it really means is that belief itself becomes contested or another phrase he uses

00:04:56.500 that i find quite provocative and interesting is he says belief becomes fragilized that we all live

00:05:01.540 with this sense of a fragilization of belief and that's what it feels like like that's what it

00:05:05.700 feels like to live in a secular age is that you're very aware that there are people living with

00:05:10.160 different stories or different belief systems that are functioning okay or you're very aware that you

00:05:17.280 can go a long way without really even thinking about which one you believe and one of the ways i

00:05:21.760 explain this is you can even hear you know pastors and others say things like well i'm taking a break

00:05:26.820 from god for a while and the fact that you can say that and that when you do say it people don't find

00:05:32.640 it completely incoherent or you know like saying two plus two equals you know 11 banana like it that it

00:05:40.780 has some coherence to it that that you could say i'm taking a break from god and people go oh yeah okay

00:05:45.740 that makes sense that's what this kind of secular age is that that god becomes a kind of option that

00:05:50.920 belief becomes individualized and even when we hold on to to certain beliefs they're fragile and

00:05:57.300 they're until further notice right so all beliefs not just belief in god all beliefs are contested

00:06:03.640 and contestable that's right yeah so even if your belief system is you don't believe in god you know

00:06:08.740 that you that you do completely believe in a scientific universe or you're a kind of artist who just

00:06:14.980 simply doesn't think that there needs to be any theistic center to the world or anything like that

00:06:19.960 his point is whatever your belief system is you'll find that fragilized too so even if your belief

00:06:24.840 system is that you don't believe anything that you'll have he says this very prerogative thing

00:06:29.040 that you'll have these moments where you find that unbelief fragilized and you'll have these moments of

00:06:33.760 believing there are these moments where people are yearning for meaning and even when they don't

00:06:38.440 believe they find themselves encountered or or having at least open to the possibility that there's

00:06:43.460 something bigger reaching for them yeah taylor thinks people have that inherent desire for the

00:06:48.880 transcendent but today in a secular age there's all these different beliefs which he calls cross

00:06:54.680 pressures there's all these different things that you could believe in you can believe that you can

00:06:59.140 believe this you have to ask yourself well should i go to church should i not should i find meaning in

00:07:04.140 my career or maybe the self-help book and it can you know really leave you feeling discombobulated

00:07:10.040 you know and then before i mean if you go back to the 1500s people were just like well you just go to

00:07:14.840 church and believe in god and that's it yeah absolutely and those were unthought like you

00:07:18.980 couldn't really even think yourself into that you just this is the way you talk the way you dressed

00:07:23.440 it all kind of perpetuated this sense of belief and i think exactly what you're saying is it is really

00:07:29.620 embedded in even his bigger idea if you will which is that human beings are moral creatures that we all

00:07:36.400 live inside of some stories of what it means to be good of what it means to live a full life

00:07:42.300 and that we become a kind of evaluator of different ways of living and the point is in 1500 the options

00:07:49.980 of having what he calls a strong evaluation or the the kind of measure uh in the story of what makes

00:07:56.940 life full and good what there there was basically one i mean it was embedded within the church in some

00:08:01.780 ways or it was embedded within the crown or the church as it related to you but now when you enter into

00:08:07.600 a late modern world there seems to be all sorts of options that could deliver a good life

00:08:12.120 that could help you reach your your deepest desires and so that is the cross pressure like is it yoga

00:08:17.900 that does it or is it a catholic form of the eucharist or is it uh just the drive in the rituals of

00:08:26.940 getting your kid into an elite university or is it hiking in the mountains all these things are now

00:08:32.880 in some sense relativized and in similar and and you have to kind of negotiate them but you're

00:08:39.800 compelled to do so because you are a moral believing animal you have to have some larger

00:08:45.780 kind of moral vision that you're engaging and so he thinks this just becomes a different kind of way

00:08:51.560 we do this now that we don't do it inside of just one or two stories that are given to us there's there's

00:08:58.540 just a buffet table of spiritualities that we can pick from to try to live our our most full life

00:09:04.380 yeah choose your own adventure yeah okay so let's talk about hartmont rosa where does he pick up

00:09:08.660 where taylor left off well he picks up exactly where we just left off um in many ways the secularization

00:09:15.180 project hartmont rosa who is uh this german social theorist so we should say like charles taylor's

00:09:21.780 quebecois he's taught at mcgill his his whole career for the most part educated at oxford but as a

00:09:27.460 canadian you know as a is a a quebec canadian and that's part of his story is looking at how

00:09:34.380 quebec used to be really the most churched environment in the west in the middle of the

00:09:39.100 century and then became one of the most secular in a very very fast time you know so that's charles

00:09:44.300 taylor but hartmont rosa is a german and he he wrote his dissertation on taylor and he really picked

00:09:49.800 up this idea of what it means to be a moral creature that all human action is based in these

00:09:55.800 moral visions so that we're always kind of searching for the good life and we we are never

00:10:01.440 kind of i mean we could be passive in certain ways but in other ways we're always active our

00:10:06.220 actions are always directed towards some vision some horizon we have of what it means to live a

00:10:12.320 good life and so that's where really rosa picks up taylor is trying to make this argument that the 1.00

00:10:18.640 ways we act in the world are embedded in implicit sometimes explicit senses of what we think the good

00:10:25.460 life is well in his book rosa's book social acceleration he makes the case that one of the

00:10:31.920 defining features of modern life is that life has sped up what does he mean by life speeding up

00:10:37.660 yeah he thinks this is the the most common condition of late modernity or really the whole

00:10:43.360 modern project from the beginning is to try to go faster i mean that seems somewhat simplistic but

00:10:49.680 the more you the more he talks about it the more it becomes really quite convincing so he says it's

00:10:55.080 just this continued speeding up this continued accelerating process so somehow within our own

00:11:01.300 imaginations we get this sense that what it means to live well what it means to live a good life is to

00:11:08.320 live a fast life if you will this happens at the individual level but also at the whole societal level

00:11:13.800 so that there is this sense of acceleration and in all these forms when you hear his argument

00:11:19.480 initially you're like oh yeah that completely makes sense i mean just look at our technology i

00:11:23.440 have to get a new phone you know every year every two years because the technology keeps you know

00:11:28.180 going faster and faster or we just think of the morse processing law works where you know the

00:11:32.780 microprocessing doubles or triples or whatever it is every 15 months and we're like oh yeah that makes

00:11:37.940 sense but rose's point is it's not just technology that accelerates but it's also our social lives

00:11:43.520 accelerate in the sense of our norms and our moral visions and then just the pace of our lives so

00:11:49.000 it's just this constant demand um to go faster and faster and he thinks this is the inherent good

00:11:56.080 that modern society keeps lifting up that we have to go faster and faster we have to do more and more

00:12:02.720 and this really frames our imaginations of what a good life is and even what a good society is

00:12:07.680 well yeah this idea that not only technology is getting faster technology is allowing us to do things a

00:12:13.320 lot faster so like you said new technology is coming out all the time with ai you're seeing

00:12:18.800 that you know every day you're seeing some sort of new app that's you know using ai but then the

00:12:24.620 technology drives social change the technology allows us to do more in a single unit of time so

00:12:30.800 that's why i can feel like it's time speeding up because you're doing a lot more within an hour

00:12:35.380 because you can communicate with a whole bunch of people email do group me chat you can shop

00:12:41.000 for clothes and for groceries all within an hour and that you know 20 years ago that would have

00:12:46.080 been that's a day right there yeah absolutely and that's what he thinks you know like we keep getting

00:12:51.780 told by silicon valley or you know other kind of innovation hubs that these breakthroughs will give

00:12:58.080 us more time and they're time-saving breakthroughs and it never really works that way you know like

00:13:03.620 the more time-saving breakthroughs we have the more even our refrigerators are on wi-fi the more

00:13:09.360 hurried our lives feel and his point is what they give us is not actually more time they give us

00:13:15.440 the capacity to do more actions inside our units of time so just like you're saying it allows us to

00:13:20.340 multitask at a at an incredible speed it's really interesting because i think one of the things he wants

00:13:25.260 to say is that what really draws us into this acceleration why we why we can cede our wills to it

00:13:31.780 in many ways is because we think ultimately though it may be burning us out we think it's good and

00:13:37.480 one of the things that it delivers to us is a sense of reach that we can reach the world more

00:13:42.540 that that we feel like you know and i think social media is a good example of this like it'll be very

00:13:47.180 interesting right now as we're discovering and some states are looking at suing meta um because they

00:13:53.320 know or they hid that it was pretty destructive to adolescent girls particularly and yet it will be

00:13:59.660 really hard to wean our society off of it because it does give you a sense of being able to reach

00:14:05.480 the world to have your tweet or your post get out there and and connect with all all of these people

00:14:12.400 and we still feel like that's good so he has this kind of sense that what the modern world does is

00:14:17.320 speed us up but it also has this desire to give us more reach to make the world reachable and that

00:14:22.840 is a good and that's very appealing to us but it turns on us and it uh it it kind of promises us

00:14:29.280 something and then bites us pretty hard okay so rosa would argue that in modern life the good that

00:14:34.980 we're looking for so anciently you know 1500 years ago the good would be whatever god ordains as good

00:14:41.480 now rosa would say well no actually we've replaced that one of the things that we've replaced god with

00:14:47.520 is reach is that what you're saying yeah i mean that yeah in roses it's interesting i mean he i think

00:14:54.680 he's been very uh well i mean i've used his work to try to make theological assertions and he's kind

00:15:00.920 of surprised at how many other theologians are interested in his work so unlike taylor who's just

00:15:06.100 a very explicit catholic believer rosa who is a a kind of german believer and churchgoer doesn't

00:15:14.320 really talk about it much so he doesn't really get into these what's what we've replaced god with but

00:15:20.180 he would say that our good life isn't framed around a kind of transcendent quality as much as it's framed

00:15:26.460 around the way we can kind of optimize ourselves to be able to embrace and reach the world so there

00:15:32.920 is a kind of sense of a god quality to being able to reach the world in a way that uh that we hope

00:15:39.000 will bring the world alive but he thinks it actually deadens the world okay so by reach we're talking like

00:15:44.520 we call it worldly success you have a career you have money you could have reach or influence on social

00:15:50.860 media with the instagram followers and that that's what a lot of people are looking for

00:15:56.580 yeah i mean like he'll say you know like one of the reasons we want money so bad isn't just even for

00:16:02.500 money or even for status but there also is this appeal like if you have enough money then like tokyo

00:16:10.400 is within reach all you have you just can book a ticket i mean if you have enough money you could fly

00:16:14.620 private it allows the world to become within it to make it haveable and that is really appealing

00:16:20.640 and you know what you're saying earlier is that no medieval person would ever think that that was

00:16:24.980 even possible that you could somehow have the world you know that you could reach it and cross

00:16:29.700 time and space so quickly to be able to i don't know like kind of suck the marrow of its goodness out

00:16:35.800 but rose's point again is that if we're not really careful this becomes a deep temptation that boomerangs

00:16:41.440 on us yeah and then the way we achieve reach you know like we call imminent reach here in this life

00:16:48.540 is by doing lots of things really fast getting as much done as possible that's the social

00:16:53.040 acceleration part yeah absolutely yeah the winners will be the fastest in many ways is what the kind

00:16:59.160 of modern assertion says and rose is trying to show us how deep this is in our consciousness how deep

00:17:04.340 it isn't even our structures in our society well in your book the congregation in a secular age you

00:17:09.660 explore how this social acceleration that we're experiencing and in modern life what it's doing to church

00:17:17.180 congregations and in individuals i think it's interesting you're looking at this at a church

00:17:22.260 congregation because you can really see the effects on groups not just church groups but i think churches

00:17:29.780 are like the canary in the coal mine for a lot of other social groups and one thing you talk about in

00:17:34.860 the book is that when you talk to pastors about their church and how their church is doing they often

00:17:40.460 say that their congregation is depressed what do they mean by their congregation is depressed

00:17:46.460 yeah it's an interesting phenomenon because this is the boomerang effect that rosa wants to get to 1.00

00:17:52.940 is he thinks and it's a very interesting perspective that i think he's really right on about

00:17:57.660 is that all modern institutions stabilize themselves by growth or what he calls dynamic stabilization

00:18:04.600 so you know he says a company i mean in our conversation right now a church a denomination

00:18:11.240 a nation state for goodness gracious that it stabilize itself by continuing to grow and so you know a

00:18:17.060 company only is stable if it's growing by you know 15 percent or 20 percent it's only investable if it's

00:18:23.600 growing by 30 percent and even every politician runs on i can grow the economy you know vote for me i know

00:18:29.960 how to grow the economy so his point is that this dynamic stabilization is what holds us what makes an

00:18:36.060 institution feel like it's it's alive but he says it's insidious and i think he's really right about

00:18:41.500 that so if your company if we just stay at that level your company grows by 30 percent this year you

00:18:48.300 cannot the structures will not allow you to say oh we've grown 30 percent this year how about next year

00:18:53.660 we only focus on growing five percent and then after two years we'll be up 25 percent that'll be good

00:18:59.180 no if you grow 30 percent this year the next year you have to grow 31 percent or 32 percent so it never

00:19:05.960 stops the need to continue to grow and then grow more can never stop and if you get two years of

00:19:12.540 plateaued growth or only one or two percent growth then you're dying you're you're dead and if your

00:19:18.160 company isn't only growing at three four percent you should just sell your company for parts like it has

00:19:23.140 no value and his point is is that this just frames even our own individual imaginations and so first

00:19:29.980 of all i mean that that kind of dynamic stabilization finds its way into how we evaluate a good church

00:19:35.020 a church is a place that should be beyond the kind of corporatized dynamic stabilization kind of model

00:19:42.540 and yet we also are tempted that the only ones that have a future will take on this very shape and be

00:19:48.940 able to grow grow grow some more and keep pushing to optimize growth but rose's point is that there's

00:19:55.820 got to be a speed limit to that you know like it's that dynamic stabilization that demands that we have

00:20:00.460 to keep going faster and faster and his point is how insidious this is is that not only do you have

00:20:05.940 need to grow more but you feel like you have to expend just as much energy if not more energy to just stay

00:20:11.960 in the same place to if you don't do that you're going to lose and i think even at the family level

00:20:16.860 parents feel that like we have to keep our kids involved in like 10 different things and driving

00:20:21.960 them all around the state for different activities and if we don't it's not even that we think our

00:20:27.180 kid's going to be a first-round draft pick on it in some sport they just won't be able to play

00:20:33.160 middle school baseball with their friends like just to keep some of the goods you have to go faster and

00:20:38.640 faster and rose's point is and he really is building off this parisian scholar named alan earnberg who's

00:20:44.920 written this really provocative book called the weariness of the self which is a kind of genealogy

00:20:50.360 of depression and his point is is that inside this kind of push for continued acceleration when you

00:20:57.200 run out of energy to continue to try to optimize to get more to keep to keep at where you are at now

00:21:04.600 that you have to do more just to stay in the same place that eventually when you run out of energy you

00:21:08.680 find yourself sliding into a state of of kind of despondency and depression so he has this provocative

00:21:14.280 quote earnberg does where he says he thinks depression is not a ailment of unhappiness but

00:21:19.300 an ailment of change in other words the need to continue to change and change more and optimize

00:21:24.200 that change sucks the energy out of us and when we can't get enough energy to keep optimizing we slide

00:21:30.700 into the state of despondency and that is where i see a lot of protestant churches is that they all feel

00:21:35.900 like we need to change we're falling behind we're losing resources our reach is less and less

00:21:41.080 and uh yet that means they have to do more with less and they have to really accelerate and it leads

00:21:47.900 to a deep kind of existential fatigue i think people have experienced on an individual level

00:21:54.360 where you just think man in order for me to to thrive in this world i got to not only i have to

00:21:59.980 keep doing the things i have been doing but i have to do even more and you start feeling like

00:22:04.000 was it alice in wonderland with the red queen where you just like run faster and faster you just stay in

00:22:09.360 place and then it gets to the point where like well is it even worth the effort if i'm not going

00:22:13.980 to make any progress if i have to expend so much energy i just might as well just give up yeah

00:22:18.940 absolutely and i think we see that broadly across society in many ways yeah and so in these churches

00:22:25.280 that you visit like one church you talk about it looked like a vibrant church they were you know

00:22:29.720 adding wings to the building uh they had all these great programs in place but the pastor said like

00:22:34.820 the members just aren't engaged they're kind of just checked out and going through the motions

00:22:38.640 yeah i mean and and it was it was that pastor who said this the first time he's like if i had one

00:22:44.900 word to describe my church i would just say we're depressed and this was a church in in one of the

00:22:49.480 dakotas and he's like you know we're still in the upper midwest here people still show up on sunday

00:22:53.980 mornings but they're just they're just tired and if there's any kind of sense of pulling together to

00:23:00.560 be community and kind of living together there just becomes this utter kind of blank lack of energy

00:23:08.520 they're willing to go through some of the kind of civic religion footsteps and and just follow some

00:23:14.040 of those patterns but when it comes to anything more than that he's like there's just no energy

00:23:19.220 left and i think he was really pointing out how we feel as at our individual and familial and just

00:23:24.480 societal levels of just feeling like we don't have energy to keep up to stay in the same place as you

00:23:28.980 said yeah and he also talked about the members of the church no one feels like they have the energy

00:23:33.940 to actually affect the change they feel needs to be done to keep the to keep the church growing that

00:23:38.420 dynamic stable stabilization going on part of the problem is is a lot of these people at these

00:23:44.260 churches they're involved in other stuff because again we're in a secular age where church life isn't

00:23:49.840 the only thing that you look at for a good life you know your kids are playing basketball there's clubs

00:23:54.140 you could belong to crossfit you could do etc and so some you talk about some of these parents

00:24:00.280 they they expect that the church they go to have this really vibrant and active youth program youth

00:24:06.540 ministry but their kids don't even go to it because their kids are playing basketball but they demand

00:24:11.360 that they they just want to they want to know that their church has that there for them if they ever

00:24:17.200 can make it to church and pastors just feel overwhelmed because it's like well parents expect this

00:24:23.120 but we don't have the resources to provide that for them because the parents aren't there because

00:24:27.080 they're off doing other stuff yeah absolutely and this takes us back to kind of rose's point about

00:24:32.980 the good life where he says that inside this kind of accelerating mode the good life gets framed as

00:24:38.580 what he calls the triple a which is availability accessibility and attainability so there's a sense

00:24:44.300 where all that you're saying in the context of a family it will be really hard to convince a parent

00:24:49.960 in a kind of an unthought way like not in a reflective way but as a kind of reflex it'll be very strange

00:24:56.280 for a parent to have a reflex where church is more important than say a basketball or being part of

00:25:02.080 the drama troupe or learning a musical instrument because those things have some kind of resource

00:25:09.940 value that can give your kid more availability accessibility and attainability to the resources

00:25:15.760 that they can cash in to live their dream where you know being part of a youth group or you know

00:25:21.760 learning luther's small catechism or going through confirmation class or whatever those are good

00:25:27.560 i mean that'd be great if we could add that to our child's life like you know there's value added there

00:25:32.180 but it doesn't seem in a kind of tacit way doesn't seem to deliver these resources towards a good life

00:25:39.300 it doesn't seem to to really play the tune of availability accessibility attainability of these kind

00:25:46.100 resources that will help my kid live a good life and what roses says which i think is really

00:25:51.220 informative for us broadly is like you know we're weird us late modern people we're like painters

00:25:56.260 who um keep getting our easel set up the right way and going back to the store and buying new paint

00:26:02.740 brushes and then mixing colors and then mixing them again and then oh and then going and hearing there's

00:26:07.900 a new kind of paint brush out so go buying that and and then kind of moving our easel again and

00:26:12.680 we're very into all the accoutrements of painting but what we never do is paint so we're we want to

00:26:18.700 give our kids all these resources all this access to a good life but we almost never tell them what

00:26:23.980 it means to live a good life and so living a good life takes on the most content it takes on is you

00:26:29.120 know live your dream whatever your dream is you know go for it and we're driving all around the state

00:26:34.080 for all these activities so that you could live whatever dream you want to in the future and so there's a

00:26:39.420 kind of contentlessness of this but there's this accelerated mode of just try to accrue as many

00:26:45.640 resources as you can and cash those in and my big perspective when it comes to products and

00:26:50.380 congregational life is that we tend to feel ourselves in a kind of resource desert and we often play the

00:26:57.660 game of resources and then we'll lose every time and yet both rosa and taylor want to remind us that

00:27:04.720 trying to play this resource game will well will give us more and more of an imminent frame and it

00:27:11.160 will eventually burn us out and push us into a sense of despondency where it will perpetuate the

00:27:17.740 imminent frame because it will feel like the world isn't alive we're gonna take a quick break for your

00:27:23.040 word from our sponsors and now back to the show and a related point you make in the book is that

00:27:30.800 the speeding up of time and the pressure to always be growing it not only makes you depressed it just

00:27:36.360 you just feel tired and overwhelmed so maybe you want to go to church or you want to take part you

00:27:41.280 know some other organization or interest but you just you feel like you don't have the time for it

00:27:46.200 people just feel like they're busy that there's too many other things going on in their life but you

00:27:51.600 point out that you know if you look at time studies that people have done people today have more free

00:27:57.100 time than previous generations did so people do have enough hours in the day but it's more like

00:28:03.060 it's a bandwidth problem right there's so many options we're thinking about doing we just we feel

00:28:09.280 really tired even when we're not doing them yeah and and you carry the burden of of really articulating

00:28:17.700 i mean this takes us back to taylor a little bit you carry the burden of living an authentic life that

00:28:22.540 is measured by you yourself so there's this kind of transition that other social theorists that rosa

00:28:28.360 draws on particularly have talked about this shift that we used to live in a should-based society like

00:28:33.900 you should follow the 10 commandments you should obey the laws of your society you should do what your

00:28:40.360 parents told you you should follow your ancestors but that really we don't live under shoulds as much

00:28:45.560 anymore i mean obviously in some ways they're still there but we don't feel the burden of those

00:28:49.860 shoulds anymore but we do live under a burden and the burden has shifted into could and people feel

00:28:55.780 quite guilty not because they've broken some should but because they didn't optimize their could

00:29:00.460 oh i could have i could have been the one that started that business oh i could have i could have

00:29:05.340 uh started that podcast i could have finished the degree and look where i would be i could have

00:29:09.960 started the restaurant i you know i could have i could have i could have and they live under that

00:29:14.120 kind of burden of the could and yeah and i think that's really kind of where people feel just

00:29:19.940 absolutely exhausted and really quite guilty inside of the fact that they weren't able to optimize

00:29:26.220 their could so there is more time in some sense but you feel more exhausted because what used to be kind

00:29:34.120 of offloaded onto the should and in the inside the rituals and the practices of living in a should-based

00:29:40.140 society now all lands on your shoulders and you have to figure this out and you have to figure out

00:29:45.380 who you're going to be and what your identity is and what how you're going to live your own life

00:29:49.500 authentically inside of all the coulds that are are before you and how are you going to take more w's

00:29:55.800 than l's on all of these coulds that uh you could make out of your life yeah kicker guard would call

00:30:01.540 that the despair of possibilities all that coulding absolutely yeah and then rosa caused this feeling of

00:30:07.860 you know this sort of guilt that you could be doing more with your life he calls it time sickness

00:30:12.380 is that right yeah yeah yeah zach kronkite um i don't know if that's original to him but he

00:30:18.360 yeah he draws on this concept of that we have a kind of sick a time sickness another thing you talk

00:30:23.720 about in the book is that uh with social acceleration it has been shrinking the way we think it's been

00:30:32.160 shrinking our time horizons and you talk about there's been these three shifts you can see

00:30:36.160 throughout history which shrunk from intergenerational to generational to intra-generational

00:30:43.060 walk us through that that sequence yeah and as i understand that is original to rosa and it's a

00:30:48.260 sense that you know in being a theologian and putting this in a kind of historical sense of the

00:30:53.360 church makes it i think sing in a in a certain way but that we used to live in a deep kind of

00:30:58.120 perspective of intergenerational and now we say intergenerational we think oh in a church there

00:31:03.240 should be six-year-olds and 60-year-olds sharing space together and you know reading the bible or

00:31:09.160 something like that and that's not what he means he means we used to live with this deep sense

00:31:13.080 that even the dead were not dead but that they had given us these practices so even a church that

00:31:19.680 where we buried our saints were right next to the place we worship because they were still

00:31:25.240 worshiping too as we at cross generations were waiting for the return of jesus christ or whatever

00:31:30.840 there's a deep sense that you were living in footsteps with your fathers and your mothers

00:31:37.100 and your ancestors there's a sense that time was intergenerational and if you were going to marry

00:31:41.880 someone it was an intergenerational reality that way but he says once the modern era comes that gets

00:31:47.640 shifted so time is not kind of thought in the horizon of intergenerational but becomes thought of

00:31:52.740 as generational in the example i use in the book is you know kennedy's speeches in the 1960s you know

00:31:58.200 are like you know ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country

00:32:01.660 essentially saying in your generation in your generation in your lifetime what can you do for

00:32:06.200 your country or when he says we're going to put a man on the moon he means we're going to do this

00:32:10.540 in this generation you know where someone in intergenerational time there would be a kind of

00:32:15.380 apocalyptic eschatological longing for what will be but no now it needs to happen now and that makes sense

00:32:21.480 because we're now citizens you know we're citizens who will vote and it will be important what we do

00:32:26.980 with our lifetime and part of my point is like the institutional structures we have particularly

00:32:33.080 within protestantism but i think within all kind of christian life is really built for generational

00:32:38.680 time like particularly the mainline denomination presbyterians methodists lutherans all their structures

00:32:45.140 are built for generational time that you will get married fairly young that you will have

00:32:50.080 basically one job that you will have one partner and that your kids will grow up go to high school

00:32:58.000 and you know go you know that that kind of basic 1950s 1960s life that you'll have that that's a

00:33:04.060 generational experience but rose's point is we now enter into a time towards the very end of the

00:33:09.640 20th century into the 21st century where we do kind of think you can live more lifetimes than one

00:33:15.540 you know that people do i mean it's rare now for people to to stay with one partner their whole life

00:33:22.580 particularly even rare to stay at one job their whole life in intergenerational time like you work

00:33:28.180 the same land that your father and his father and his father worked now you quit a job and take another

00:33:35.060 job start one business and and so you can live multiple lives and and my point is it's kind of

00:33:42.260 structurally our religious lives are just not really shaped for this intra-generational the the fact that

00:33:49.940 you can live multiple lives that you uh you know that you can be living one life and then go through

00:33:55.700 a divorce and move to miami and have a very different kind of life and and that does really change

00:34:01.940 our imagination of what it means to kind of faithfully be part of a church a congregation what

00:34:07.300 religion is for yeah i saw that intergenerational thinking i went to a there's a monastery here in

00:34:13.320 oklahoma clear creek abbey and went there spend the night with some friends read thomas aquinas but while

00:34:18.740 we were there the the abbot took us on a tour of the grounds and he's showing us the cathedral and it's

00:34:24.780 like halfway done the outside's done but nothing else has been inside and they're still working on other

00:34:28.820 parts of the monastery and we asked him well how long is this going to take and he's looked he's like oh

00:34:33.000 about 500 years and i was like and i he just said it's a matter of fact but he had that

00:34:38.740 intergenerational thinking and that was really profound like man it left me thinking like what's

00:34:43.660 my 500 do i have a 500 year project and i said i probably don't i probably should get a 500 year

00:34:48.720 project and to your point about how things have shifted from generational to intra-generational this

00:34:53.380 idea of living more than one life this again this is social acceleration not only trying to cram more

00:34:58.420 into our hours we're trying to cram more into a single life that we have it is interesting to

00:35:03.200 think about you know even even our building projects you know that uh yeah i mean we we really

00:35:09.120 forget this and this kind of connects us to taylor too is that notre dame and sean chapelle and that

00:35:14.400 island in in uh in paris they're both built as reliquies i mean they're built because king louis

00:35:21.000 has uh jesus crown of thorns one of the crusaders brings jesus crown of thorns back and so they build

00:35:27.200 these incredibly beautiful massive articulate intricate buildings all to house this holy thing

00:35:35.320 and we tend to build buildings for their function you know not and that's how we justify the spending

00:35:40.260 not because uh they're going to house some kind of holy thing or it's going to take we don't even you

00:35:46.160 know we're going to start building it not knowing like in florence how we're going to how we're going

00:35:49.940 to we don't even know how to build a dome that could actually cover this but that's that's okay

00:35:54.220 because it's going to take us 500 years we're now at a point where we think like well if this doesn't

00:35:59.540 have payoff in 10 years if it doesn't have payoff in five years then this is a waste of time you

00:36:03.780 know why would i wait that long it's a very different kind of mode of what the good is and

00:36:07.920 what a good life is about and to your point that protestant churches maybe just all churches in

00:36:12.920 general aren't set up for this new time frame of intra-generational time horizon some of them have

00:36:18.840 tried to accommodate that so i think i've seen some of these mega churches where they'll have

00:36:23.540 small life groups that are based on affinities so it's like you know here's you know mountain

00:36:28.540 bikers who love jesus or here's you know crossfitters who do this so you're able to capture someone at a

00:36:35.100 moment in their life and then if they move on to something else you'll still be able to get them but

00:36:39.620 it's not working out for them because i guess the wider business world is more effective at that

00:36:44.400 yeah i think that's right and it had you know even kind of in classic kind of frameworks evangelicals

00:36:50.920 have done far better than mainline at being able to address those realities and i particularly think

00:36:56.840 mainline christianity just isn't set up for that but we do we we have seen and as you point to at the

00:37:02.560 end there is that even evangelical congregations there's a certain theological problem that comes

00:37:07.820 to bear when we do that when we kind of turn things into small groups that are based on affinities

00:37:12.600 there's a certain sense a certain logic that we can see to that the gospel itself is an idea amongst

00:37:18.820 other ideas so to take us back to charles taylor the problem with it is there's a certain cultural

00:37:23.900 sensitivity there's a certain missional impulse that's right on but it tends to say that well

00:37:29.460 you're searching for purpose and whether it's jesus or whether it's hiking or mountain biking or you

00:37:37.940 know whatever it might be fantasy football they're all essentially the same but we just think um they're

00:37:43.820 all on the table of the buffet we just think that jesus will really you know fill you jesus will really

00:37:49.580 be the right one but you have to start by relativizing the gospel to just one other kind of uh spirituality

00:37:56.920 amongst other spiritualities and really have it play in the kind of cadence of one idea amongst other

00:38:02.060 ideas and that has its own kind of theological problems that have unfortunately come home to

00:38:07.340 roost in a lot of those communities connected to this intergenerational generational intragenerational

00:38:12.940 time horizon you talk about we've had three big shifts of concepts of our time and the first

00:38:18.780 idea of time that we had up until about 1500 was this idea of sacred time what did sacred time look and

00:38:25.880 feel like yeah well i mean at its most sacred time just felt like it was full of of something significant

00:38:34.180 you know that there was this deep sense that that first of all was ordered by god that god was the one

00:38:40.920 who set sacred time and order it divided our work between those who prayed those who killed and and then

00:38:47.980 those who worked the land really so you either could be a peasant you could be a knight or you could be a

00:38:52.900 monk you know in its broadest form but there was this sense within the sacred that time became full

00:38:59.560 that it couldn't be accelerated it was too heavy to be accelerated it was full of significance it was

00:39:04.480 full of purpose and it was ultimately full of very reflections of of divine being and divine act

00:39:11.500 and what came after sacred time well i think what ultimately happens and i guess this is kind of rose's

00:39:17.940 point is that the modern project really wants to hollow out time from being from being sacred and

00:39:24.660 this is where i would put where taylor's secularization project and roses start to to really mutually feed

00:39:31.860 each other is that there's this sense that time has to be hollowed out so it can be sped up and what it

00:39:38.480 needs to be hollowed out from is any divine significance you know god becomes a private reality that maybe you

00:39:44.280 hold but in a larger societal form that isn't there anymore so there is a sense where instead of the

00:39:50.220 church keeping time that it becomes uh something like the state keeps time and time really becomes

00:39:56.160 about the kind of acceleration of of having a society where we the people decide the shape of it

00:40:03.100 not that we have to feel like we have to mirror the divine reality now in our human society okay so the

00:40:10.100 nation state takes over from the church but then you are in hartman argues that another entity has

00:40:17.160 taken over our time that's silicon valley how did silicon valley become the timekeeper for us yeah

00:40:22.620 yeah and i actually don't know if rosa would agree with this or not this is probably more me than him i

00:40:27.080 mean the the progressive move i think um is him but uh i i do see you know that there is the sense that

00:40:34.040 someone has to keep time for us and where the church used to keep time and then the state keeps time

00:40:38.040 but really the post 1960s really the post 1968 was a critique that you couldn't trust the state you

00:40:46.160 know that you couldn't trust the state essentially to keep time to hold the order for you and that just

00:40:51.920 means that you start to get a conglomerate of time keepers and it becomes you know kind of certain

00:40:58.080 capitalist forms of life the corporation keeps time or the media keeps time or madison avenue keeps time

00:41:05.340 and that pretty much goes for a few decades after the 1960s you know the 70s the 80s the 90s are kind

00:41:11.180 of a conglomerate of different consumer entities that kind of keep time for us um hollywood keeps time

00:41:18.540 but eventually i think it's you know i'm trying to make an argument that by you know the 2010 maybe

00:41:25.100 earlier a little earlier than that you know by the by the 21st century silicon valley it becomes you

00:41:31.140 know the revenge of the nerds they take control and they really take control by taking everyone

00:41:36.220 else's business you know for the most part and now we do kind of have this sense that really glues on

00:41:43.880 perfectly with this acceleration that silicon valley is the place where one can accelerate their lives

00:41:49.460 and win at acceleration and so now time really becomes about optimization and innovation and drives

00:41:56.000 towards creativity and individually kind of based creativity and they keep time for us they they

00:42:02.580 keep a sense of what it means to live well and now everyone kind of has their eyes turned towards uh

00:42:07.640 big tech as the people who uh kind of dominate so even on the you know on the apple tv plus morning show

00:42:14.180 the legacy media is being bought up by big tech people by the the john ham character who's supposed to be

00:42:20.680 elon musk there's a sense that now the most powerful purveyors of our culture become the tech giant the

00:42:27.480 tech founder right so yeah silicon valley is there they've introduced one click shipping next day

00:42:32.500 shipping you can get all sorts of information with just a click you can do all sorts of things but it's

00:42:37.840 it's speeding up or it feels like we're just rushed and overwhelmed and so individuals they're stewing in

00:42:44.680 this silicon valley time they expect things to be fast frictionless and so they go to their

00:42:49.420 could be you know the church and be like hey we need to be doing this as well for the church it'd be

00:42:54.700 awesome if we innovated make things frictionless uh good experience for everybody and they try to

00:42:59.920 bring that to their church and then you argue it typically doesn't work out again because you bring

00:43:04.920 in like this time sickness like it's just so overwhelming to keep up the pace that people don't

00:43:09.520 feel like they can so they just feel depressed yeah and the the depth of the christian practices

00:43:14.540 can't be frictionless in many ways at the heart of the christian story is a deep friction you know it's

00:43:20.720 the the friction that what you need to save you is outside of you you can't optimize yourself into it

00:43:27.140 you know like the kind of frictionless smooth kind of dispositions that come out of the shape of

00:43:32.800 silicon valley time make the gospel incoherent in certain ways and the practices of silence and prayer

00:43:40.380 and you know confession and things like that seem antiquated and potentially problematic to the

00:43:48.360 drives of identity acceleration right so you know if you told a monk catholic monk hey you need to

00:43:54.900 innovate you need to do more whatever they're like what are you talking i'm on sacred time i don't

00:43:58.960 really care that's probably why they cloister themselves out of the world because they want to

00:44:02.700 stay on that sacred time but people out here in the lay world they might not think that's worth going

00:44:08.280 to church or even keep a church going if it gets below a certain amount of membership because

00:44:12.360 it's like well what's the point a monk would say well no the point is you just get together and you do

00:44:16.240 the ritual that's all that matters it doesn't matter how many people are here and how much we're

00:44:20.140 growing yeah and that's the complete opposite of dynamic stabilization that for a monk for a

00:44:25.740 medieval priest you do the mass the mass is what stabilizes you know that this sacred mass is what does

00:44:31.160 that not how many people show up you know they would be worried if no one was showing up maybe

00:44:35.320 the devil had gotten into the village you know but for the most part what they think makes something

00:44:39.760 worth doing isn't that it's won an audience that it's got reach and people are interested in it

00:44:45.380 it's the mass itself is what stabilizes that's a very different imagination so what do we do about

00:44:51.280 social acceleration did rose have any ideas so it's fascinating because we've been talking all

00:44:58.240 acceleration and rose became known in the german press as the slowdown guru because of this you know

00:45:04.180 his warnings that we're going too fast we're pushing for speed it's a problem he became known

00:45:09.820 as the slowdown guru and that at first he felt good about that and then i think he started to

00:45:15.220 realize something was unsettling about it and what became unsettling is he realized that we do need to

00:45:20.020 slow down i mean if you can slow down slow down but that won't be enough that you can't confront the

00:45:26.040 insidious nature of this acceleration by just slowing down and so the second half of his project has been

00:45:32.900 to look at a different a very different form of action than acceleration that we might need

00:45:38.040 and this is what he's called resonance that he he does think we still have these experiences

00:45:42.340 even in a modern world where everything is about speed and optimization where we still do have

00:45:47.820 experiences where we feel connected and drawn in and we just need to find those again and live with

00:45:53.880 those again he's like this is an experience of resonance when we see a painting or hear a song or have

00:45:58.760 a deep conversation that opens us up and that connects us and in those experiences time doesn't

00:46:04.160 feel accelerated it feels full and so he wants to move us into this kind of action he calls resonance

00:46:09.600 so what what are the factors of like what makes up and what makes an event have resonance well there he

00:46:16.900 has four of them and they do get a little obscure i mean they don't get obscure it's just it's such

00:46:21.880 an experience that we have that's sometimes even hard to describe because we we just have this

00:46:26.780 experience i mean he wants to say it's like a conversation a dialogue where we feel both spoken

00:46:31.720 to and we speak so he says there's this sense of of feeling um connected and a sense of feeling

00:46:39.280 efficacy where again where we feel called to but we also have a deep sense of being able to respond

00:46:45.080 and that's not always a good experience you know sometimes you go to a movie he uses this example

00:46:49.620 often and you come out of it just you know having cried through the whole movie it was the saddest

00:46:54.640 movie you ever saw and someone asked you did you like it you're like yes i loved it and you loved

00:46:59.940 it not because it was a a joyful experience necessarily a happy experience but because you

00:47:05.420 felt connected you felt like something called to you that was beautiful or or moving and you responded

00:47:11.300 in some way so it has that dynamic of a kind of conversation of a call and response but it also

00:47:16.500 then has a dynamic of of feeling transformed by it that we leave the experience changed in some way

00:47:21.660 maybe it's a just by degree but we see the world differently we recognize something in a new way

00:47:27.140 but then the fourth one's the most important one which he wrote a little book to just highlight this

00:47:31.480 because it gets lost is that the other reality of resonance and this is very hard for us late

00:47:36.740 moderns is that it's uncontrollable and if you try to control it it goes away you can have semi-controlled

00:47:43.440 experience like you go to that movie and you hope that it moves you but you can't guarantee it will

00:47:49.280 happen or like in church life a worship experience is a semi-controlled experience the liturgy is

00:47:55.260 semi-controlled but it's not a controlled experience there's no guarantee in any christian

00:47:59.880 theology that if you do the this liturgy god will show up you can't control it and the same happens in

00:48:05.740 a conversation with a friend like you can't if you go into it saying i'm going to get something out

00:48:11.280 of this i'm going to feel this way after this conversation there's a good bet it will not be that

00:48:16.620 that you know it will be it it becomes instrumentalized and that's what he really

00:48:21.160 wants to avoid is this sense that our interactions with the world and he worries that this happens in

00:48:27.180 acceleration they all become instrumentalized and resonance is an experience it is a relationship

00:48:33.840 with the world with a piece of art with another human being with god that is beyond instrumentalization

00:48:40.780 it's just becomes an encounter of a full relationship yeah with resonance it would be

00:48:47.620 like c.s lewis says you have to be surprised by joy right like you just suddenly you weren't expecting

00:48:52.360 it but it's like it's a grace again in the christian language it's a grace yeah absolutely absolutely

00:48:58.280 and i think yeah you're right the the us post-modern modern people whatever you want to call us we think

00:49:03.440 we can like oh you put this on a schedule i'm going to have this great moment with my kid

00:49:06.640 and with my spouse we're going to create the best christmas in the world and everyone's going to

00:49:11.060 feel great and then it ends up being like clark griswold like you tried so hard to make it happen

00:49:16.400 make the christmas magic happen but it ends up being miserable and then he experiences resonance at the

00:49:22.500 end where the santa claus is flying over the the house aflame and he he didn't plan that yeah it was

00:49:29.120 uncontrollable but this is like that silicon valley logic again it's like okay we could make an app

00:49:35.160 that could optimize and schedule your resonance experiences you know like it will be a resonance

00:49:41.880 app and then you'll get on it and then you'll get three hits of resonance a day and his point is it

00:49:47.140 just does not work that way you can't control it it is like you said with lewis you get surprised by

00:49:53.300 it it's an event of encounter again you can put yourself in a in a kind of disposition in a in a kind

00:49:59.660 of place to be open to it but even doing that doesn't guarantee it's going to happen and that's

00:50:04.740 hard for us uh kind of middle class consumers is that we we even want to go on our vacations and

00:50:09.780 we're like will you guarantee me that this will be a great experience well you know we went to hawaii

00:50:14.940 and it rained the whole time we should get a refund you know you well you can't you can't control it

00:50:19.540 it becomes uncontrollable okay so unless you're a monk it's probably impossible to completely escape

00:50:25.720 silicon valley time so we have to live our lives in a way that accommodates to it even your church life

00:50:32.000 you kind of have to accommodate there's a lot of people are doing all sorts of things outside of

00:50:36.000 church so you have to schedule things to sync things up with other people we have to be efficient

00:50:41.480 and productive and even i think rosa would even argue that you probably have to accommodate that to 0.89

00:50:45.100 an extent but how do you find a balance with that and finding moments of sacred time in your life

00:50:51.520 yeah i mean there is a way that rosa here is connecting back and kind of echoing martin buber's work

00:50:59.400 which i'm sure a lot of your listeners know from the kind of the i thou to the out the i it and i do

00:51:05.780 think he does think you know that you you are going to have some relationships that are relationless you

00:51:11.240 know like with a with an airline when you call an airline to change your flight there isn't a huge sense

00:51:17.460 that that has to be a resonant experience but we also do need to have the kind of relationships that

00:51:22.980 are full of relationship that aren't instrumentalized and i think his point is we just need to be in a

00:51:28.540 position and take on the practices and really reframe what we think a good life is that we

00:51:35.140 might be open to those kind of encounters that we might have the kind of eyes to see them and and be

00:51:41.080 drawn into them so i you rose is a good protestant that way unlike you know he's he doesn't have the

00:51:47.160 kind of catholic sensibilities of taylor so he's very much wants to affirm ordinary life he just thinks

00:51:53.140 that we lose the gift of ordinary life when our good life becomes framed by acceleration and he

00:51:58.920 wants he wants us to start framing the good life more around these experiences of resonance and

00:52:03.760 in discourse and dialogue that are are much deeper well andy this has been a great conversation where

00:52:10.120 can people go to learn more about your work yeah um you know with uh the risk of performative

00:52:16.080 contradiction i mean people can find me on the internet i have a website that's just andrew.org and

00:52:21.480 people can can find me there and uh yeah that's probably a good place to start fantastic well

00:52:26.240 andy root thanks for time it's been a pleasure hey it's been a great conversation my guest here is

00:52:31.040 andrew root he's a professor of theology and the author of the book the congregation in a secular age

00:52:35.180 it's available on amazon.com you can find more information about his work at his website andrewroot.org

00:52:40.020 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash social acceleration where we find links to resources

00:52:45.020 we delve deeper into this topic

00:52:46.360 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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00:53:21.180 until next time's brett mckay remind you to listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - January 08, 2024

Feeling Depressed and Discombobulated？ Social Acceleration May Be to Blame

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