Fostering Global Francophobia

Fostering Global Francophobia
by Sam Pierson

(Address delivered at SOLO Conference #2, Auckland, February 16, 2003)

Bonjour, Tout le Monde.

I will start with a confession. Confessions are a piece of baggage from my Protestant upbringing I just can't seem to shake. I am a recovering Francophile. My analyst says I've made a lot of progress & that the pills are working. I put it down to watching 'World Cinema' as a teenager. A TV slot that showed foreign films with subtitles, late on Saturday nights. They always had the scene where the french woman rose casually from her bed half naked, and drifted over to the window sill of her cottage, lighting a cigarette. These were moments of great conflict for me. Do I take my eyes off the subtitles?

I can put it down to more. Time spent in Paris - that city upholstered in 1500 years of experimentation with all the variations of the human mind & imagination. And reading 'Asterix the Gaul.'

In the last year I had a serious relapse. I formed a relationship with www.discount-marlboro-cigarrettes.com. They say their business is to send international clients cigarettes in the mail, at 40% of the local price. Thinking a hundred dollars a fair risk to test out the system, I worked my way through the brands. Cigarette brands really do have the best of names, names that conjure up the flavour of civilisation. Pity they kill. Anyway, there was 'Parliament' - but I don't have the blood of a bureaucrat. 'Davidoff' - no, that's Glenn Lamont. And there was 'Vogue' - 'Vogue Slims.' Perfect for my half naked french actress - but not between the fingers of this armour plated heterosexual male.

Only one choice lit up. 'Gauloises.' 'Gauloises Blondes.' Stamped with the winged helmet of a gallic warrior, and underlined with the phrase 'Liberte, toujours' - 'Liberty, always.' Packaged in liberty blue - like the colours of the National Party.

After some delay, during which I thought I'd been suckered, they arrived courtesy of some superior customer service by one 'Liz Gamble.' 20 packs, in 10 separate envelopes. Two to an envelope. So ten 'letters' were couriered to my door. That's the loophole I believe. You can't post cartons to NZ. But you can post cigarettes - two packs at a time. But the cream of all this was that they were postmarked, St Petersburg - the birthplace of Ayn Rand of course. Lady Ayn, the Russian entrepreneurial spirit is alive!

So now that I've confessed all, and am probably going to prison let me speak for global francophobia. I know there's some here who I don't have to convince. For them, it's clearly self-evident. But for you others, hear me out.

One's life has its ongoing spiritual battles - to defy the forces of darkness, and to keep the kingdom of light. No less so, in this, the postmodern world.

Many people are fighting forces of darkness. They're the anti's. Anti-globalisation, anti-American, anti-big business, anti-genetic modification. It seems that any movement worth its salt needs to be anti-someone. So if everyone's doing it, so should SOLO. I don't think I need convince any here of that logic.

For being anti, adds that something to your spirit. It fuels your passion. So my thesis is simple: a touch of francophobia in your soul will perk you up in the battle against the forces of darkness. It's a tonic. Making it global just seems to be in keeping with the times.

But - I hear you ask - why not be anti-Guatemala? Or Malawi? Or Iceland? What's the principle here? The principle is simple. When you're anti, size matters.

And France is big. With some big ideas. While Britain has held onto the concrete embodiment of her highest values in her monarch, the French long ago lopped off his head & replaced him with abstractions: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. Good abstractions too. Especially when kept in the right order. Liberte first. Egalite, to protect Liberte by shunning government favouritism to particular persons. And Fraternite as the social result of the former two.

But it cost them about 80 years of regime change & revolution, just sorting out the problems most people have dealing with abstractions. Most people seem to prefer being able to see a king, even if he's wildly indulgent at their expense. Most people seem to like that sort of treatment.

And then they exported this treatment. As a colonial power, they brought the sons of the wealthy Vietnamese families to the Sorbonne, where those young men learned all they needed to know about communism & took it back to teach their countrymen. And as the ideological temperature started to rise in the North, the French quit the place, and left Vietnam for America to sort out.

And did they thank America? I don't think so. Even in the last week evidence comes to light that the French are stalling NATO on Iraq because they have a quite reasonable business going selling the Iraqis components for their weapons program. This really is no surprise. Even during the Falklands War the French were selling Exocet missiles to Argentina. I guess it's really about Liberte, Egalite & Fraternite - for Frenchmen only.

But it's their philosophers who have been so influential. And the French take their philosophers seriously. Perhaps they just like having home grown philosophers around more than their actual ideas, given a recent comment from Jaques Chirac who said "The time for ideology is over. Government just needs to get on with the job."

Uh, what job is that, Mr Chirac?

We know that the time for ideology will never be over, and that philosophers play more of a role than just a decorating the street cafes.

Philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre was born the same year as Rand, and like Rand he was a novelist/philosopher. He was also a Nobel Laureate for Literature, in 1964. In his Nobel bio it says;

"Sartre is one of those writers for whom a determined philosophical position is the centre of their artistic being."

A 'determined philosophical position.' Doesn't that sound rather grim & arbitrary?

There's a reason for this. In Sartre's view Man is "condemned to freedom." By this he means that Man is condemned to having to make his own judgements, without appeal, or access, to any higher authority in the universe - for there is no higher authority. He was confronting head on the "loss of God" theme in European intellectual history. The "loss of God" meant the loss of a higher knowing power, a personal reference point - some final arbiter of truth, and thus of meaning & significance. He was determined that Man must 'get over it & get real.'

So, as Sartre has it, Man is "condemned" to making his own judgement calls. To having to think for himself. To having to make up his own mind.

The obvious question is, condemned by whom? If there is no God, then who condemns Man? Who is responsible?

Truth is, there is none responsible. It is simply a matter of fact that we live by the judgement of our own minds. It is simply a matter of fact that none can do this for us. And as a matter of fact, it is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It is not a matter for moral judgement. It is simply the case. To say that one is condemned to this condition is like saying one is condemned to having to eat. It's nonsense. French nonsense.

What really condemns or honours a man is not that he need think for himself - not his natural condition. But rather how he chooses to use himself. What he chooses to do. That he chooses to think and how he chooses to act.

Sartre has not really 'got real.' Nor does he seem to have got over the "loss of God." He has simply replaced the condemnation of God with an ineffable condemnation of Man for being what he is. This looks like a variant on the idea of original sin - yet much worse. At least when there was God, there was someone to judge you, and possibly someone to praise you. In Sartre's view, there is nothing. Nothing there, but a metaphysical condemnation, and thus a metaphysical anxiety.

There's nothing wrong with anxiety, per se. Life is not easy, and knowledge & understanding aren't automatic. Sometimes one has to make choices for which the outcome is uncertain, though the facts stand up. But anxiety is properly related to matters of choice, not matters of fact. Sartre would have us anxious over the fact that we must choose in order to live. There is nothing we can do about that. His anxiety is misplaced.

Bottom line, Sartre seems a little ticked off that the answers to the demands of life don't present themselves pre-packaged, in liberty blue. That thinking is required & choices don't come with a money back guarantee.

In his Nobel bio it also says:

"[his] theoretical writings as well as his novels and plays constitute one of the main inspirational sources of modern literature."

If you've ever felt inspired by modern novels with their sense of anxiety & impotence, here's a clue as to why.

Not only has Sartre's outlook influenced modern literature, but it has also provided more intellectual support to that force of darkness within civilisation: petty resentment.

When writing the FAQ for Solo HQ's War Room, I had to think seriously about what I thought wrong about the present times. For we in the West enjoy a range & style of life that is really quite incredible, especially if you know some history. It's easy to get the pip with what's around you, and portray the wider world through your own personal grievances. It's easier to criticise than it is to build. But there is no joy in living at odds with your times, without good reason.

When I boiled it down for myself, I found my finger pointing at the influence in the culture, of petty resentment & its meaningless, if not perverse, consequences. If it was not resisted, then freedom & liberty, and a worthy sense of life, were not possible. Or rather, they were destroyed.

What is petty resentment? Here's a parable I came across.

"A man was unhappy and prayed to God for relief. To his surprise, God spoke to him from the heavens asking, "What is wrong?" The man explained, "I had a cow, but it ran away. Now, my neighbor still has a cow, but I do not." God replied, "Tell me what you would have me do to end your discontent?" The man demanded, "Make my neighbor's cow run away also!"

Let's imagine that God - for once - did as he was told, and 'poof!' the neighbour's cow was trucked away to the divine meatworks in the sky. (God, of course, is not a vegetarian.)

The two neighbours meet at the fence.

"Hey," says the God botherer, "where's your cow?"

His neighbour looks up, grim but steady, and replies, "Don't know. The bugger's run off."

"Sheesh!" replies our friendly fellow. "Mine too. Life huh?" And he shrugs.

"Yeah, I guess." says his neighbour.

They both look away, silently, into nothing.

It's primitive. It's malevolent. But the bad news is that such like reponses have been given strong intellectual support. Like Sartre's. It's not hard for a person to feel hard done by. Sartre provides a nonsensical view that Man has been hard done by nature itself. The ultimate complaint. This is grounds for a metaphysical resentment, against the universe itself.

And there are others. In the Marxist view, the coming communist paradise was simply an automatic result of history - like a quadratic equation. And that paradise promised an age when Man would get all his goods fairly, and with little effort. It was like unto a Christian view of heaven - where you don't need do anything. One therefore had a right to be treated by nature, or by God, quite splendidly. A better lot was owed you by the mere nature of things. And if things did not go your way then somehow you were being punished. And so you'd feel better if everyone else was punished too.

Big mistake. But these ideas justify a misplaced resentment & deepen the destructive response. People end up thinking they have good reason for it.

It allows people like the syndicated US columnist Ellen Goodman to say things like:

"The Bush administration figures that the couple earning $40,000 who

get a $1,333 tax cut won't begrudge a $10,244 tax cut to the couple earning $500,000."

And she gets away with this kind of thing, as if from a higher moral ground. Goodman thinks she's fighting a moral case for justice. She feels that. Perhaps she feels noble. What she really does is foster & perpetuate resentment, and a way of coming at things that breed more of it.

Let's go back to our friendly neighbour. What if, in reply to God, he had said:

"Look God, on second thoughts, sorry for bothering you. Clearly my cow had its own plans, so I be best getting onto some of my own too. Thanks for listening though."

"Oh and by the way, when I've got this wee drama sorted there's a few peeves with your own policies I'd like a decent answer on. Ok? "

Here we have a different world. He doesn't meet his neighbour at the fence, but his neighbour spys him digging out in his back yard. So his neighbour calls out,

"Hey, what you doing?"

"Putting in a garden, my friend, so I can trade me for some milk." he replies.

"Good stuff, but are you out of milk?" asks his neighbour.

"My cow ran away." he replies.

"Oh." replies his neighbour. "Sad. Well if you need some in the mean time, just give us a yell."

"Thanks, I might just do that. But first I need dig over this damn clay. And stupidly I chose this spade. You know the type: Made in France."

Here is the spirit of life: independence, dignity and pride.

Ludwig Von Mises writes of the West that, " 'Rugged' individualism is the signature of our civilisation." This is rugged individualism. To rise above the call of the dark forces of petty resentment, and to make one's own way forward and into a better light.

We're not condemned to the errors of French philosophers. It is not a condemnation to have to use your own mind. It's just how things are. Don't resent it. Rise above the forces of darkness, and resent something that really adds to your sense of life: the French!

Merci et bon chance!

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