Globalization has left its mark, along with several crises—oil, financial, European. The digital revolution and environmental awareness are shaping a completely different landscape.
And France is crumbling: state power corroded, spirits disillusioned, permanent pandemonium. What prevails are the forces of dissociation. It seems as if this country is cracking and crumbling, which bodes poorly.
These terms demand explanation. Essentially, in this endless conflict, it is about cohesion against dispersion, connection against disconnection.
Another version of the same battle: union against fragmentation. Nothing is ever definitively lost. But when the fragmentation persists, countless energies go up in smoke.
One might even wonder at times if it is still endowed with simple common sense, when we see, gathering at night here and there, tiny groups of autistic dreamers telling tall tales.
Or even protesting against a law by dressing like fighters and breaking everything in their path.
Such a picture can worry even those who have little taste for apocalyptic prophecies. For this sterile cacophony signals that France is crumbling.
Indeed, France is burdened by repetitions and recurrences, tired of rehashing the same tunes, enduring the same tensions, unable—for now—to produce either new wealth or strong ideas.
The country is disintegrating, fragmenting. It fractures and scatters. It divides, disintegrates into a multitude of communities, regional retreats, clans, tribes, families…
Overall, it’s quite pleasant to live in the Hexagon. But by constantly withdrawing into itself, cutting off from the world, and protecting itself, the worst is forgotten, almost erased.
Moreover, reducing France to its timid side is far too limited. There are also, evidently, many openings, energies, initiatives, and courageous desires to rise from the quagmire.
What is lacking is a cohesive force that can bring together the positive aspects of France.
not Paul Bismuth
