La Femme, La Femme, Toujours Recommencée...

I have just discovered Elizabeth Badinter.   Anger is mentioned, in large spadefuls.   Another reason, perhaps, along with insolent security officials, priorité to the right and foix gras farming practices, to give the dear Hexagone a wide berth?

I have not had much luck with La Douce France recently.   A holiday during La Canicule, where evening news mostly involved up to date horror stories on the abandonment of the aged was replaced, and ... this the coup de grâce from my point of view..., with a flying visit through CDG where I was threatened with calling the police because of my puzzlement (loudly voiced) at being pawed all over like a common criminal.  The suggestion that they could call anybody they wanted but that they were not laying a finger on me ended well enough.   They pawed... I left...

Now I holiday in England...

But back to Badinter.   The ability of the French educational system to produce wonderful abstractions and linguistic flights of fancy is what most fascinates.   

A conversation with an academic about a famous philosopher amused me as it contrasted the pragmatism of the English language with the elegant precision of the French.   To my statement "he was often angry" came the riposte, "he was an irascible (one)".   

Why philosophy and anger should be so thorougly welded in the French tradition would take yet another thesis and would bring yet another barrage of debate with the more sensible adopting a position of "ni pour, ni contre".   Elizabeth Badinter has analysed the split in feminism yet again. 

  Splitting the atom causes less fallout.

Go look, if you dare...