edit warning -- beer post

I've been spending a little time trying to overcome the kind of particular anti-French thought that only growing up in the U.S. can provide. I haven't done more than dip my toes into French culture and history, but find myself both simultaneously deeply impressed and disappointed.

In many ways it feels like a more structured, more civilized parallel of the Anglo tradition I grew up in. There seems to be some kind of parallel in every kind of historic point -- but taken towards an alternate direction by the currents of French culture.

I visited Paris first, and like many tourists fell in love with the city. Then, a few years later, I visited London and was disquieted by both its familiarity as an American and its differences -- which I could only relate as a less organized version of French thought on high-civilization.

French literature really is great, French art is the work of superhumans...you almost feel transcendent, like you are riding a great wave that's forcing humanity into a future. It may sound silly, but when I watch "The 5th Element", the French vision of future New York City, unlike anything envisioned in the Anglosphere, has such a magnetic attraction, such a complete vision, I want to dive into the screen and explore this place.

So it's weird to find out about oddly, deeply, conservative parts of French civilization. They're conservative with an intensity that Fox News could never replicate. Académie française, the preservation of the architecture of central Paris, Sarkozy, various kinds of agriculture protectionism, etc. I'm sure I view these with the same kind of palm-greets-forehead many French view American politics and news media.

When I realize that the French had the first go at the Panama canal and come to appreciate the impressive accomplishments of French engineering, Minitel: a pre-internet national network, the Paris Subway system, and so on...we Americans are taught to deride many of these accomplishments and attempts at greatness because they failed or didn't take over the world...while American (or British) versions did...well, the more I learn the more I appreciate the incredible state of advancement of the French civilization in many areas.

France still leads in various areas: sophistication of Food, philosophy, arguably art...but I can't help but feel that in many ways the current civilization is a diminished version of what it once was. Walking around Paris you can't help but be deeply impressed at the beauty and sophistication...the "perfection" of the ideal of Parisian life. You really don't need more creature comforts because that kind of life is almost, objectively, "the best".

But then, as you're walking down a beautiful, gobsmackingly amazing rue, you get accosted by a homeless person, or a cheap car belches fumes on you, or you have to walk around a street "artist" who's performance art consists of painting themselves in used automotive oil or some nonsense. The ideal feels further and further out of reach, an impossible future, set down hundreds of years in the past, that humankind isn't quite ready to achieve.

London, New York, D.C. and other great Anglo cities on the other hand, seems to sit far more comfortably in their respective mediocrity. But several times daily, I find myself indebted to the fruits of French civilization.