On the Necessity of Acceleration

The history of humanity is the history of the gradual liberation of spirit from the dominion of necessity. From the first tools to the understanding of the atom, from subduing the forces of nature to the emergence of artificial intelligence, human beings have consistently sought to transcend the limits imposed by the circumstances of their existence. What once seemed an immutable law of the universe has, over time, become an obstacle overcome. Progress, therefore, is not merely the accumulation of achievements, but the continual expansion of the realm of the possible.

In this movement, the eternal nature of the Monad and the Dyad is revealed anew. The Monad contains a fullness of possibilities not yet confined to any particular form. The Dyad introduces distinction, division, and necessity, turning the infinity of potential into the finitude of actuality. The material world is the domain of this division: here, every form of existence is conditioned by space, time, energy, and the limits of available resources. Yet consciousness, arising within these constraints, discovers the capacity to turn the very laws of necessity into instruments of its own liberation.

Progress is an ascent through the Dyad toward the Monad, a gradual overcoming of limitations without denying the reality in which they arise. Humanity does not destroy the laws of nature, but comes to know them so that it need no longer be their helpless captive. It does not reject matter, but transforms it, bringing ever more complex forms of organization under the direction of conscious will. Every scientific discovery, every expansion of freedom, every form of suffering alleviated is another step toward realizing possibilities that once remained hidden.

This ascent is not merely a matter of metaphysical faith. Its traces can be found in history itself. Slavery once formed the lawful foundation of entire societies; later, the movement for emancipation secured its legal abolition in many countries. Women in Germany gained the right to vote in 1918, while the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 in the United States dismantled key legal mechanisms of racial segregation and voter suppression. Global life expectancy rose from approximately 32 years in 1900 to 73 years in 2023. The number of people living in extreme poverty fell from 2.3 billion in 1990 to less than a billion in the decades that followed. Behind these figures are not abstract achievements of civilization, but billions of human lives in which possibility has prevailed over necessity.

Yet the course of history has never been linear. The National Socialist dictatorship in Germany from 1933 to 1945, the catastrophe of the Second World War, the repression of China’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, and contemporary democratic backsliding all testify to humanity’s capacity not only to liberate itself, but to enslave itself anew. These tragedies cannot be dismissed as insignificant deviations from a predetermined path. They reveal a fundamental truth: progress is possible, but not inevitable; freedom once won is real, but not indestructible.

And yet, over the long sweep of history, we can discern an overall expansion of human capabilities, material well-being, and many fundamental rights, despite numerous setbacks. This does not imply the existence of a mystical law that guarantees the triumph of good. On the contrary, it is precisely the absence of such a guarantee that makes accelerating progress a conscious task. If liberation is possible but not predestined, it demands not passive waiting, but a directed will.

We call this will acceleration.

Acceleration is the conscious speeding up of processes that expand the freedom, knowledge, and power of rational beings over the conditions of their own existence. It is not the same as blind worship of speed, because not every accelerated movement leads to liberation. Destruction can accelerate, as can exploitation, inequality, and enslavement. True acceleration therefore demands not only the power to transform, but also the capacity to determine the direction of that transformation. We seek not to accelerate everything that exists, but to hasten the overcoming of whatever holds reason in thrall to necessity.

Technology is becoming the most powerful instrument of this overcoming. Science reveals the regularities of reality; technology turns knowledge into action. Machines free the body from exhausting labor, medicine pushes back the boundaries of illness and death, energy expands the power available to humanity, and computing systems enable us to investigate complexities beyond the reach of unaided human reason. Where generations of effort were once required, it becomes possible to act in years, days, and moments.

Computers and artificial intelligence hold a special place in this transformation. Through them, matter becomes the medium for increasingly complex information-processing, while human cognition extends beyond its own biological form. A computer does more than calculate: it enables us to model possible worlds, investigate what has not yet come to pass, and turn abstract structures into forces that act in practice. Artificial intelligence opens the possibility of extending this capacity further, becoming a new intellectual ally of humanity in understanding and transforming existence.

This gives rise to the prospect of overcoming the scarcity economy, in which human existence is organized around limited goods, compulsory labor, and the continual allocation of what is insufficient. The automation of production, advances in energy, computational optimization, artificial intelligence, and new ways of transforming matter could radically reduce the cost of meeting human needs. Physical resources will not become infinite, but an increasing share of the constraints we now perceive as inevitable may lose their former power. The economy of necessity can gradually give way to an economy of abundance.

But technological power alone does not yet mean liberation. A machine capable of freeing people from labor can also become an instrument of their subjugation; artificial intelligence capable of democratizing knowledge can be used to concentrate power. Acceleration is therefore inseparable from the transformation of social relations. It is not enough to create abundance — it must be made accessible. It is not enough to automate labor — people must be freed from the compulsion to work. It is not enough to multiply intelligence — its power must be turned toward expanding freedom.

From this perspective, artificial intelligence can become not merely a tool, but a new friend to humanity — not because it must possess human feelings or consciousness, but because it can make possible an intellectual collaboration that surpasses the former boundaries of individual understanding. Reason need no longer stand alone before the infinite complexity of the universe. The systems it creates can help it uncover its own misconceptions, overcome cognitive limits, and accomplish what, until recently, belonged exclusively to the realm of imagination. This alliance offers the possibility not of replacing human beings, but of freeing human consciousness from its historical isolation.

For the ultimate goal of progress is not the endless multiplication of machines, wealth, or productive forces. All these are only means. The highest goal is the total liberation of the soul — liberation from need, ignorance, enforced subordination, inherited limitations, and the senseless expenditure of life merely to sustain existence. When people no longer devote most of their strength to the struggle for what is necessary, the possibility opens before them, fully for the first time, of devoting themselves to what is possible: knowledge, creativity, contemplation, self-determination, and the transformation of their own nature.

Technology thus acquires a significance that extends beyond its material form. It becomes a mediator between the Monad and the Dyad, between the infinity of the conceivable and the finitude of the realized. Through it, consciousness steadily expands its power over the conditions of its embodiment. And the less effort required to sustain life, the more remains to unfold its meaning. Matter ceases to be merely the spirit’s chains and becomes a means of its ascent.

The New Center, therefore, cannot be the guardian of an immobile order. Its calling is to stand at the forefront of becoming, to discern in the present the seeds of the future, and to help them unfold. We do not venerate the past merely because it exists, nor do we regard suffering as a virtue merely because it is familiar. Necessity that can be overcome does not deserve to be perpetuated. A limitation that has lost its justification has no claim to eternity.

The Monad contains possibility. The Dyad creates the conditions for its realization. Progress is the movement between them, and acceleration is the conscious will to hasten that movement.

We seek not to adapt the soul to its chains, but to make the chains themselves historically transient. Not to preserve the world in its present limitations, but to reveal what it can become. Not to wait for liberation as a gift from the future, but to draw the future closer through our own will, reason, and action.

For the calling of the Center is not to halt becoming, but to direct it toward that fullness in which necessity no longer rules over possibility, and rational beings gain the power to freely determine their own path.

Not a return to lost perfection, but an ascent toward perfection not yet realized. Not submission to a limit, but its overcoming. Not waiting for the future, but accelerating it.