Media pressure already notoriously ends up exposing the private lives of select individuals, poli ticians, celebri ties, 'top- tier' sportsmen, even of that avant-garde of progressivism, the presenters of nightly newscasts. Here, we might note, the doping of television audiences is no longer chemical but electro-optical and it has reached the point where the usual simulation of the virtual world of screens is enhanced by the rhythmical excess of a stimulation that mentally and emotionally shakes people once so attentive to the hours of the day and the months of the civil year that successfully replaced the new year of the historical calendar system and the holy year of the j ubilees of yore.
One particular presenter, a woman, put it this way: 'My obj ective is to feel that I ' m always alive, to not become mummified. But I don't know if I can keep up the pace for much longer. I know that if I ' d worked less, I 'd have had a second child. That will always be my great regret. But current afairs are forever wearing us down.'1
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
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