About the French

 

(Extrait d'un billet écrit il y a quelques années à l'attention de visiteurs étrangers en France...)

 

My experience with “The French”, whether professional or private, open or intimate, friendly or hostile, cultural or gastronomic, stretches over several decades with variable intensity and about six years of semi-permanent stay in the City of Light. I-don't-remember-who once stated that “an experienced person is someone who committed many mistakes but never the same.” Hopefully my own large experience will be helpful to newcomers in France…

 

France is a permanent paradox: “black & white”, “inspiring & conspiring”, “moralizing & cheating”, “left & right”, “visionary & deceitful”, “republican and corrupt”, “Monogamous & permanently two-timing”, “grandeur & decadence”.

 

Since I am far from being a masochist, I clearly like France and even love (most of) its people. But it took me some time to find out some rules and guidelines to survive the French and eventually live “like a King in France” - without losing my head... If you’re well off and living in the nicer part of Paris or countryside, France really is a paradise. But of course, there are the French…

 

To the non-French, my opinion might sound frightening because the French are really peculiar and full of contrast. Don’t be afraid and don’t be surprised. I went through some roller-cast experiences in business and private matters. The French are a strange and unpredictable mix of rational thinking and emotional behaviour. The clue is to find out which part prevails. Once you got that, try to use it to your own advantage. In saying so, I clearly demonstrate I already picked up something about them…

 

Some basic rules to survival in France:

 

Never trust a Frenchy whether it is your business or bed partner. I mean NEVER. Once you stick to that attitude, Frenchies really become enjoyable. Most foreigners might find this a real obstacle in linking up with them. That shouldn’t be the case. If Frenchies cannot be trusted, this has to do with various enrooted cultural, historical, educational, chauvinistic and individualistic bias.

 

A Frenchy always acts or reacts out of self-interest. As long as this basic attitude can be satisfied, they are just wonderful. But be aware that they can suddenly put a dagger in your back while the day before they celebrated your lifetime partnership.

 

How come? First, their public educational system: it privileges the “concours”, a way of filtering out the best students by competition. Teamwork and sporting efforts as catalyst of personal developments are not part of the scheme.

 

The best or ‘elite’ is intended to serve the State or state-owned corporations. Since state and politics are interwoven, a Frenchy, if he wants to make it, clearly has to look after his own personal interests and be very suspicious about his competing colleagues’ career moves. So, a Frenchy will always act ‘politically’ meaning he will put the effort where his own self will be mostly rewarded. That is for the “professional side”.

 

The Frenchy also looks after his “allure” and ability to seduce. The French, and here Napoleon definitely had an impact, are historically conceived to conquer. If not countries or businesses, then at least female hearts. Being a conqueror or seducer is encoded in their genetic material talking about males. Being seduced, pampered, spoiled by a gallery of lovers, is the female’s existential meaning of life.  

 

Within France itself, it is the contest for acquiring power and women that prevails. And most Frenchies play the game without being victimised. As long as nobody looses his/her face, the French are totally committed to seduce, secret love affairs, cheating, … Very seldom this shocks. “C’est normal”. If, as a foreigner, you get caught by a French love affair, don’t be surprised if in overnight she or he is suddenly gone whatever you believed in until that very moment.

 

This could sound demoralizing to the non-French. In fact, it shouldn’t once you are aware of it.

 

An example.

 

If you are with a female partner, permanently ask her whether she is still satisfied and “not yet looking outside” your partnership. In other terms, check on her personal interest and self satisfaction. Even if her answer will be different from her thoughts, you might have a good chance in stopping her tendency to leave the partnership. Questioning her on her intentions always triggers some unspoken reaction such as “My God, how did he know I had sex two hours ago with his best friend?”

 

To hide that reaction, French charm will overwhelm you in all its neutralizing and convincing power. Since that forces you also to an extra-effort (“dîner aux chandelles, bijou de Cartier, sac de Hermès, parfum de Chanel, bouquet de roses …”), you just saved your partnership.

 

Please note that the French are probably the only species where both male and female are experts in seduction. It is part of life.

 

In politics, they are absolutely marvellous. Whether leftist or rightist, lying is seen as morally neutral. Everybody knows that Jaco is a crook, everybody knows that Mitterand forced public companies to pay bribes to his party. But it is accepted. That the successive Presidents – Monarchs without a crown – apart from de Gaulle who was an exception that confirmed the rule, were continuously fooling their spouses, didn’t offend anyone. It even gave them a positive image of “conquerors” towards the female voters.

 

France cultivated a kind of newthink – referring to Well’s newspeak, reality can be fairly different from the way the French perceive it. Since the French are one of the most “monoglot” people in the world, they seldom read or hear how the non-French media comment on them. When Jaco tried to convince the US that starting a war in Irak was immoral and illegal, how many French saw the foreign press commenting on the fact that “it is hard to accept lessons from a crook.” …?

 

“Grandeur & Décadence” are really omnipresent.

 

The non-French probably never have known Serge Gainsbourg – even if this musical genius created many soundtracks for the American movie industry. That guy represents most of the French strong and weak points: wonderful songwriter and composer, fantastic cultural background, incorrigible seducer despite his untidy appearance, sometimes incredibly arrogant and provocative, mostly plain drunken, mixing imagination and truth.

 

The guy was lucky when on national television he once declared to Witney Houston during a prime time show: “I want to f… you right now!”. The French found it absolutely hilarious. If this would have happened in New York, he would still be paying his lawyers…

 

Anyway, back to the initial advice by way of a conclusion on the first rule of survival: never trust the French. Don’t blame them for their lack of fairness. They ignore team play, they mix up facts and opinions, they think their perception of reality is the only right one. They have been dressed to self-fulfilment. Tant pis pour les autres. Un pour tous, tous pour moi.

 

So, dear fellow “in-patriate”, I warned you. What they tell you might be quite the opposite of what happened.

 

Not only to the female but to all the French, the mind sets the truth, not the naked fact. They will always ‘dress’ up the latter so that it suits the way reality should be and not as it is. Napoleon understood this perfectly well: "It is not the truth that but what people say."

 

You are in a “Cartesian” country where “reason” prevails. Unfortunately, whether this refers to rationality or to imagination isn’t clear. Descartes didn't survive in France (He died in Sweden...).

 

The French are masters in “abstraction” and deduction. They are capable of inventing general rules like no other and subsequently apply these to any situation – with of course the inevitable exceptions… to confirm the general rule.

 

The problem is that, depending on their self-interest, they are able to analyse the same situation to be black one day and white the next one. Absolutely mind boggling and destabilizing to a none-French. 

 

If for instance, in a management team, you adopt a decision based upon these and those elements, it could well be that next day, your fellow manager does exactly the opposite. If you ask him why, he’ll tell you that the situation has changed and requires a flexible change of response etc., etc. Don’t get fooled. This just means that he didn’t see his personal interest in yesterday’s decision and that he already decided at the time of the decision… To ignore it.

 

The French don’t like to work together because this exposes them too much towards the colleagues and dilutes the possibility of self-servicing personal interests. Most corporations are conducted by a PDG which translates as "next after God" or "keep talking guys, c'est moi qui décide!"

French love the concept of "elites" although the republique clearly states "liberté, égalité, fraternité". Beware if you dare to challenge an ENArque's or polytechnician's opinion… At that very moment, you are stigmatized as barbarian, a-cultural, stupid, badly-French speaking impolite imperialistic beefeater…

 

All this might sound a bit harsh. In fact, it isn’t.

 

If you adopt a gentle smile, it will help you through those circumstances that otherwise would culminate into conflict. French like people with charm. We, the none-French, haven’t got the French charm in our fingers, but a smile usually will do. The French are very sensitive to a well placed smile. It translates as “I am able to see through you, to ‘relativiser’ as they say, and to play your game without being sucked too much”.

 

That’s it for today.