Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the following chapters, we will describe how to manage
yourself inside and through the many circles of French life,
how you need to look and act, both to enjoy yourself and to
accomplish your objectives. Perhaps even to survive!
Living in a Circular System
Edward T. Hall in his book
The Hidden Dimension
talks about the
sociopetal or socially-centred aspects of the French. They connect
all points and all functions to centre points, in geography, in society
and in business.
“It is incredible how many facets of French life the radiating star
pattern touches,” Hall says. “It is almost as though the whole culture
were set up on a model in which power, infl uence and control fl owed
in and out from a series of interlocking centres.”
This sort of organisation demands you start out in the right
direction in the fi rst place, otherwise you get progressively off-base.
The wrong turn off the Etoile, for example, will lead you further and
further from your goal. In a square grid pattern, like the ancient
planned city of Xian, China, or New York City today, you have many
ways to reach a destination, all equally workable.
Living in this circular system, a French person will consider all his
options, fi rst. He will establish his goal and the best plan for getting
there, before he takes his fi rst step. A Chinese or an American, on
the other hand, will charge right out in the general direction, fi guring
he can amend his way as he goes along. This emphasis on goals
among the Gauls pervades many aspects of French life, including
language and politics.
The French
'France is a hodgepodge. There
were the Gauls (though nobody
knows what they were), who
adopted the Roman culture and
language quite willingly. Saxon,
Viking, Moorish, and English
invaders came and went after
that. Only centuries later did
national identities start to emerge
in Europe. The people you meet
in France are really descendants
of all the tribes and races that
ever invaded France, and all the
immigrants that ever flocked
there from other countries.'
—
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't
Be Wrong
, Jean-Benoît Nadeau
& Julie Barlow
THE EARLY FRENCH
Evidence of human communities
date back 30,000 years in this
part of Europe. In Brittany, the
western extreme of the country,
stone monoliths at Carnac,
4,000 years old, are credited to
the Beaker people. While little
is known of these people, they
lurk in the genes of the French.
In
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't
Be Wrong,
the Canadian authors
report: “It occurred to us that the
French are really the Aborigines
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