La France s'ennuie

 The riots and violent protests that have gripped France over the last few days are rather frightening. They are also typically French in that it's very difficult to tell what they are even about. 

They had something to do with conditions at French schools, I thought. But now I am told they are more about the cost of living and the deteriorating conditions of the country's public finances. 

People seem mad that the government has driven the country to the point of bankruptcy by overspending. But then, they are also mad that the government is imposing austerity measures to cut costs. 

There is no actual way to resolve this self-contradiction by means of brain-power. And so, people are resorting to fists. They are donning black masks and toppling symbols of the French republic—seemingly without even issuing any concrete demands. 

It's like the 1968 student protests in France. One can never tell from the history books what exactly people were upset about at the time. What were they protesting? Their grievance seems to have been nothing more than a vague existential restlessness and dissatisfaction. La France s'ennuie, as Lamartine remarked. 

I owe the quotation to the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, who aptly cited it in his own analysis of the root causes of revolutions: "In the last resort, [...] the impulse to great periodical changes is rooted in human nature, and whatever degree of average bliss were granted to man, he would one day (indeed, then more than ever) exclaim with Lamartine: La France s'ennuie." (Hottinger trans.)

The student protests in the United States in the 1960s could at least be traced to something relatively concrete: the war in Vietnam. But the French students did not even have that much of a hook to hang their angst upon. They were simply out there making la révolution pour la révolution. 

Besides, even the American students—who at least had some skin in the game of not wanting to be drafted—often forgot this all originally had something to do with so specific a demand as ending the U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia. As a character in a Caroline Blackwood story observes: 

For the love of Christ, what did they think they were demonstrating? If they were against the War, he was certainly with them. [...] How the Hell could you tell from their placards? 'Love!' 'Love!' 'Politicians take a trip!' How could they expect anyone who was sane to join them for Love?

Likewise, it is very hard to tell from the French rioters' placards what they are for or against. Some journalists have said this is all about the rise in gas prices set off by the Iran War. But the French people are fortunate in that their government is not responsible for that problem. 

If anyone should be marching in the streets, it is Americans, since our own elected politicians are the ones who started a pointless and murderous war of aggression that is driving up the cost of living for human beings everywhere on the globe. But streets across the U.S. are relatively quiet, and there has never been an organized protest movement against Trump's Iran war on any large scale since it began in February. 

The "gas prices" explanation therefore feels pretty post hoc to me. I really think it may just be as simple here as that, once again, la France s'ennuie.

I have long thought that historians tend to overestimate the importance of economic and rational causes to the rise of social or cultural movements. If a bunch of people are protesting, we tend to assume they must have some definite grievance and some clear notion of what they think toppling statues and desecrating republican symbols is supposed to achieve. 

But they may not. They may just be bored and looking for some action. 

I think Oscar Wilde was closer to the truth when he observed that life has an inchoate vital force of its own, and it is always looking for expression under various guises. Its nature is to seek an outlet. This does not mean the forms it takes will necessarily be rational or stem from a clear cause-and-effect analysis about what the protest is expected to accomplish. 

He writes: 

Scientifically speaking, the basis of life—the energy of life, as Aristotle would call it—is simply the desire for expression, and Art is always presenting various forms through which this expression can be attained. Life seizes on them and uses them, even if they be to her own hurt. Young men have committed suicide because Rolla did so, have died by their own hand because by his own hand Werther died.