Till now I didn't have a lot to say to the "so what is Switzerland like?" of my friends and relatives. Switzerland (Geneva actually), is apparently so similar to France that I mostly answered clichés for the sake of answering something.
Till now because now I know what I will answer: Swisses are human beings living their lives, unlike the wild animals known as Frenchmen.
Arriving in Geneva from France isn't something dramatically different and I hardly noticed any change. It is only coming back to France that you can fully understand a key component flowing in France veins, something you progressively forget living in Switzerland: defiance.
I define it this way: defiance in behavior is the permanent need for unproductive challenging and provocation.
Now you may think "uh, there is nothing wrong with challenge and provocation", and you're right. But what I mean here is not positive nor engaging challenge like entrepreneurship, engaged art or politics. It is permanent useless nitpicking, it is aggressive provocation with no benefit, it is the incapacity of simply living in peace in society without restless comparison to others.
This comes after a weekend in France spent walking in the city from friends place to friends place. And even in a not-so-big city like Grenoble, the following is painfully obvious: mistrust towards others passers-by, disrespect of shopkeepers, groups mocking out loud other people, guys aggressively begging for cigarettes. The simple aggressive expressions of many just gives me nausea.
Does it have to be this way? Nope, during the last ten months in Switzerland, none of this happened. Not to say at all I'm living in a candy world; the fact is Swiss are just living their life peacefully and have nothing to prove. Not to say either that it is a bland world with no taste since Geneva has lots of remarkable artists and places to hang out that are all but mean and mild.
So what?
- First, I'm pretty certain not to be totally naive: this is definitely not a question of wealthiness. Yes, Geneva is one of the richest places on earth. But also, I felt way more oppressed in Grenoble than I did for example in many poor South America cities. And contrarily, I fear the next time I'll have to stop by Paris.
- "Swiss neutrality"? The "Swiss military system" forging brave good citizens? Read some Geneva demographics to realize that Geneva is not Swiss, then forget about it.
- It is a symptom, not a cause. Behavioral defiance is the result of the erosion of a sane behavior in a context of economic, politic and corporate defiance. As such, this should be the entry point of any attempt to curb it in France. And this is where I wanted to bring you and where I'll stop because everything that I could say on this subject won't hold up to an excellent essay from Yann Algan & Pierre Cahuc called La société de défiance : Comment le modèle social français s'autodétruit ? It is very concise, readable and well supported by statistics and facts. If you shared some insights while reading this post and can read french, go buy and read this book. You won't regret it.