A recent anecdote might serve to illustrate this 'phase transition' in H istory: at the beginn ing of the Year 2010, Bernard Accoyer, then president of F rance'sAssemblee Nationale, p rotested against the excessive use, by the F rench government, of a speeded-up p rocess that limits both parliamentary chambers' examination of proposed new laws to a si ngle reading.
'We can't go on working this way - not if we want decent laws and decent democratic debate' , Accoyer declared, adding that he would not hesitate, i f the need arose, to resort to the possibility of opposing the emergency p rocess in question by siding with his opposi te number in the Senate, Gerard Larcher. 'A good law', Accoyer concluded, 'requires an incompressible period of time for reflection . ' 1
The current legislative frenzy actually introduces the inertia of real time, a paradoxical inertia that results from the sudden acceleration of common reality.
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
1 Le Monde, n february 2010.
2