Exploring Everyday Life Throughout Contemporary American...

In 1999, James Gleick, exploring everyday life in contemporary American soci-ety, noted the â€Å"acceleration of just about everything†: love, life, speech, politics, work, TV, leisure, etc. With this observation he certainly is not alone. In popular as well as scientific discourse about the current evolution of Western societies, acceleration figures as the single most striking and important feature. But although there is a noticeable increase in the discourse about acceleration and the shortage of time in recent years, the feeling that history, culture, society, or even ‘time itself’ in some strange way acceleratesis not new at all; it rather seems to be a constitutive trait of modernity as such. As historians like Reinhart Koselleck have persuasively argued, the general sense of a â€Å"speed-up† has accompanied modern society at least since the middle of the eighteenth century. And indeed, as many have observed and empirical evidence clearly suggests, the history of modernity seems to be characterized by a wide-ranging speed-up of all kinds of technological, economic, social, and cultural processes and by a picking up of the general pace of life. In terms of its structural and cultural impact on modern soci-ety, this change in the temporal structures and patterns of modernity appears to be just as pervasive as the impact of comparable processes of individualization or rationalization. Just as with the latter, it seems, social acceleration is not a steady process but evolves inShow MoreRelatedA Basic Overview of Paganism Essay examples1716 Words   |  7 Pagescultures. But behind each face is a brain, with spirit and personal beliefs, like religion. When many Americans believe that everyone is Christian or Catholic, some people practice an ancient religion. 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