The French Paradox

No I am not talking about the one that says French people eat all this saturated fat but don’t get fat. I am talking about the one that divides them on issues such as central management, culture and history.

As it is all too clear from Asterix the Gaul books, this is a people conquered by the Romans. And Romans, as is known by everyone were a brutal bunch. Their exploits, conquest resulted in millions of deaths. Romans liked to label outsiders as “barbarians” but they themselves deserved that label, and much, much worse.

Now take a moment and think what would happen to a people conquered by these cocksuckers. Here comes an outside force, invades Gaul; some need to make piece with it, some don’t, but as in the case of the Conquest of Gaul, almost everyone does, eventually. French language is a derivative of vulgar Latin derived from the dialect of Roman soldiers deployed in Gaul [1]. It sounds disgusting to say the least, and I have no idea why people find it so romantic – no pun intended. Anyway, here we have, Gauls, invaded by barbarians (Romans), let’s think what would happen to the culture codes of these people.

First off, the ruler would be associated with a Roman general living in his garrison. Alas, current French system is centralized, the cultural fault line in the country is between freedom (as in equality) and privilege. Privileged would naturally be associated with the conquerer. Privileged is that person / soldier living in his palace. Check. Current French president lives in a “palace”, and yes people have a difficult time with this arrangement (they were conquered by that man after all). That “central” person should not show off too much, case in point, Sarkozy wants to celebrate his election win with bunch of rich friends, boom. His numbers go way down.

At the same time, “people” want a piece of that privilege too, so they push for more social services offered by the government. When they dont get it, they demonstrate, fill the streets. Revolution. French style.

And on, and on it goes..

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[1] Ironically, French are very nationalistic about their language, culture, but they already lost it once. It is as if they do not want a repeat of that experience, and/or at the same time, want to keep the language of the “privileged”.

This is a weird mix of cultural bullshit indeed.

[2] I would argue, along with the Catholic Church, the inheritance of Rome is strongest in modern France. The schism between laïcité and Catholicism could well be related to this psychological tug-of-war between the so-called conqueror and the conquered. Obviously modernity plays a big role here, which is a relatively recent event, but is somewhat tied with centralized Rome. See here.