French eccentricities

D. and I often discuss why we enjoy France so much and the people, and much of it comes down to the quirkiness and acceptance of eccentricities. In America, we seem so often to search for conformity, and punish those who either can't comply or won't. We only have to look at how children act as bullies in a US school, picking on anyone smaller, weaker or different, particularly different. The bully always looks to exploit that weakness or difference, whatever it may be.

Be it our political system, education, and so many other areas of life where originality is discounted and discouraged, and bullies seem valued. That said, without those traits and beliefs, we would never have had Edison, Jobs, and so many others who changed the US and the world. But they had to fight the mainstream conformists to do so, swimming upstream against our narrow Patrician beliefs. We discount people with experience and knowledge and value those who are the loudest, and appear the most confident and aggressive, as if that is the same as competence.

In contrast, in France, original thought is valued and esteemed. Take so many French philosophers and writers, artists, etc. Quirkiness and eccentricity is accepted without question, as this is part of the liberty and equality that the French believe in.

So, D. and I, as quirky eccentrics that we are, know that we fit in with French culture. That our eccentricities will be accepted without challenge or question.