I think we live in unique times. A sentence that may have been spoken at least once by every generation in human history. It is factually correct, of course. Time does not move backwards. What may be unique now is our awareness that past generations have said it too.
The dawn of the internet has allowed humans to access more information more rapidly than previously possible. How much of that information is internalized is another debate. But being exposed to such a variety of different perspectives and ideas surfaces patterns in years or even days that previously required lifetimes to observe.
Consider the lifecycle of social networks. They start with an incentive to connect people. In the beginning users love them and share their stories and photos with friends and family. At some point however, the company behind that network, needs to make money. Ads are introduced. Recommendation algorithms are deployed. Incentives change. Consequently, the user experience changes fundamentally. This pattern has been repeated so many times over the past 20 years, that it does not require a historical perspective to observe. Instead, it surfaces while its happening.
A similar structural pattern occurs in relationships. Before the internet, people were exposed to a few relationships and their patterns in the immediate environment over the span of a lifetime. Today, through psychology podcasts, stories being shared on social media and cultural exchanges, it’s possible to observe exponentially more relationship patterns in a single day.
Of course, there are also unteachable lessons. Lessons, that are learned intellectually, but still have to be experienced and embodied to truly be understood. However, having knowledge of a lesson while it is experienced is much different, than experiencing it without having any awareness of it.
This is what I mean by compression of human patterns. Like a sponge being squeezed, the timescales for recognizing patterns, whether they need to be embodied or not, has been drastically reduced. What once took a lifetime to understand now takes years, weeks or just mere days.
I suspect, this is a reason for times feeling so fast and still accelerating.