Fuzzy Signals

Vive La France... mais juste les meilleures pièces

What makes living in France so confusing and frustrating is that there is so much to despise and criticize and yet also so much to love, inspire, and emulate. These contradictions would create serious cognitive dissonance, if living here weren't made so easy, if the quality of life wasn't so darn good, which is exactly what the postwar Gaullist bargain had intended to achieve: social stability and lassitude in return for the fruits of the leisure society.

These contradictions make it easy, on the surface, to dismiss the country as irrelevant and in decline, and indeed aspects of this Gaullist bargain may be unravelling. But dig deeper down and it becomes clear that France has got much right -- both in theory and practice. Life expectancy, in France, for instance, has now topped 80 years, the second highest in the world after Japan. So something is working. It's thus worth understanding what and why. Focusing on the parts that aren't working -- which is what outsiders with a grudge love to do -- only makes this harder to see, hence all of these so-called "French paradoxes." Nationalistic mud-slinging clearly gets in the way of understanding; and admittedly, it's only natural to not openly admire someone who is also arrogant and self-deceptive. Add to this language and cultural barriers and it's amazing we learn anything at all: as I've found the hard way, an Anglo Saxon mindset won't get you very far in seeing le systême for all its strengths and weaknesses.

This mix of the best-and-the-worst also pervades the sustainability and environmental scene in France. With the triumphs come the travesties. Yet rising above these contradictions an amazing path-breaking development just happened in France: an environmental charter, championed by Jacques Chirac, was enshrined in France's constitution last month. As The Economist reports,, "This puts the right to live in a healthy environment on the same legal footing in France as human rights, setting the country up as a pioneer in environmental protection -- and Mr Chirac as potential saviour of the planet." (Said, of course, oh-so-British-tongue-in-cheek.) Like any good French person, one needs to reflexively distrust any top down action by politicians. So we'll see if this is just a paper tiger. But the French, like the Americans, view their constitution as sacred, so I doubt this is just a symbolic gesture.

Contrasting Chirac with Bush is interesting sport as well: while arguably both venial and double-dealing in their own ways, the French president is now an indisputable green president -- a proud écolo to compete with the likes of his eco-European peers -- whereas Bush seems to be going in the opposite direction, with a dismal record showing a systematic dismantlement of America's institutions and laws protecting the environment. (By the way, Bill Moyers lists some of these in a must read polemic, however dishearting, "Welcome to Doomsday", that explains the inverse correlation between evangelicals and environmentalism. Hot stuff.)

This development transcends the desires of the politicians as well. The French people do have a deep emotional and intellectual attachment to their land that goes well beyond the self-serving impulse for upholding agricultural subsidies and protectionism, which is how most outsiders interpret their actions in this area. Much much more is going on. Connecting to the countryside, la campagne profonde, has an almost existential drive behind it. And when French people talk about le terrior [teh-RWAHR] -- the name for the special "soil" that creates the uniqueness of a wine or regional food speciality -- they get a misty, transcendent look in their eyes.

Indeed, in our history-free society we quickly forget just how much France has contributed to the world. I confess to this myopia, something that changed only after moving here. But I soon rediscovered that many of our prevailing ideas and driving assumptions come from France, for better or worse. Despite what Bush reputedly said, the word for "entrepreneur" actually originated in France when it was still a hotbed of innovation, sometime after the Middle Ages, as the feudal and guild systems collapsed. In more recent times France has gestated and unleashed countless sea-changing things, everything from germ theory, to Picasso’s cubist breakthough, to the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, to the Enlightenment Thinkers, to the concept of "restaurants", and the idea for the first shopping mall (Mr. Bon Marche), to the many denizens of art, fashion and design too many to list.

Similarly, while France may not be as green as Germany or its Scandinavian neighbours, we also shouldn't forget that this is the country of the late Jacques Cousteau (image left), the charismatic inventor and activist who did more than most to create the global environmental movement. So at this moment I say "Vive La France!" Let's hope as globalization drives further economic convergence and cultural homogenization, France continues to build on its past history and values, and pioneer different approaches to how we should to live, work and play on this planet. The best thing for the world is for France to continue being France, to maintain her distinctiveness, however tempestuous that makes for our interactions with her. Even if France is in decline -- impressively, the topic of much intellectual debate here (did the British do the same during their denouement I wonder?) -- this doesn't mean we can learn from her, appropriating the best of her social model, ideas, and contributions and then repurposing them in our own contexts. Changing our constitutions to acknowledge the rights of the environment, while daunting politically, is a good place to start. Indeed, if France can do it, many other countries can too.

Posted by nicole at March 30, 2005 06:01 PM