An eminent French professor has launched a website dedicated solely to optimism in an attempt to end French pessimism fuelled by a group of "declinologists" who lament the demise of the "French model".
Photo: AFP/GETTY
In January, a poll found France to be the 'world champions of pessimism', fearful of the future and longing for the past.
Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, economics professor at the Paris-Dauphine University, said he launched the 'Tous Optimistes' (All Optimists) site to counter an army of doom mongers who preach that France is inexorably heading for economic and social ruin.
France is considered by many foreigners as one of the richest, safest and most agreeable places to live on the planet. But in January, a poll found France to be the "world champions of pessimism", fearful of the future and longing for the past.
The findings suggested the French take a gloomier view of their prospects in 2011 than the worn-torn residents of Afghanistan and Iraq. Vietnam and Nigeria were the most wildly optimistic. Britain came fifth in the pessimism stakes.
The pessimism is being led by a group of "declinologists", claims Prof Lorenzi.
Their "high priest", Nicolas Bavarez, wrote in an article in Le Point magazine last month that "France's economy is going up the spout".
Its businesses are being subjected to "euthanasia", its industry "heading for extinction", its trade deficit is more than 50 million euros (£43.6 million) and its heavyweight multinationals make 80 per cent of their profits abroad, he wrote.
Prof Lorenzi, however, is convinced there are signs France is finally freeing itself from the declinologists' clutches.
His website gathers a raft of books, essays and articles that support his claim that France is "in a far better state than the declinologists claim" and "potentially one of the most dynamic countries in the Western world".
Among the arguments in France's favour, he cites France's birth rate – the highest in Europe alongside Ireland, the "record" number of new businesses created last year – around 630,000 – and the country's huge amount of untapped personal savings.
The fact that a million people showed up to a recent Monet exhibition in Paris was another indication all was not black, he said. "How can one imagine that a country is in decline when people queue for several hours at night for the love of art?," he asked.
Mr Lorenzi dismissed the poll ranking France as the world's gloomiest nation as misleading.
"Since the end of the reign of Louis XIV, in other words almost three centuries, the discourse about the decline of France and its institutions has been permanent. But when you ask the French about their personal future, their own reality, they are always very positive," he said.
© 2011nytimes.com
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