The French Governments Attempt To Mandate "neighborliness"

Today is Neighbor's Day in France. If I don't get home late -- I usually try not to -- I won’t be able to cross the courtyard and reach my apartment for a quiet evening with my family. That’s because there will be a neighbors' party taking place, and I know that I will be in for an hour of polite chit-chat (unless I decide to behave like the cranky person that I am. Not that an hour of small talk is in itself torture. It can actually be rather pleasant. The problem is the inevitable follow-ups, since the persons with whom you politely discuss things you will probably have forgotten about before going to sleep are literally living next door. If you are going to look a bit more interested than you really are, you might have to keep it up for years and prepare yourself for unexpected time-consuming encounters between your apartment door and the elevator.

I remember Jonah Goldberg once expressing amazement (on a radio show)at a Michelle Obama speech in which she somehow implied that people would know their neighbors better if her husband got elected President. "What?!" was his reaction, indicating that he had not visited Paris recently. Yes, they can. Here’s how.

Neighbor's Day--"la fête des voisins",--was invented in 1999 by a Paris local councillor who thought that big cities were lonely places. He felt that people would be happier and vote for him if he provided them with an occasion to meet each other. Neighbor's Day rapidly spread to the rest of France through the Mayors of France association. Next, the Belgians adopted it in Brussels; then it spread to the rest of the EU, to Canada, Turkey and, yes, even Azerbaijan! (Perhaps I shouldn't mention this on an American website?)

In practice, the city council reminds people of the date for Neighbor’s Day's with posters and announcements. Social pressure, along with a few sponsors, do the rest. Superintendents or caretakers of apartment complexes will generally take charge of organizing something, and tenants will feel more or less compelled to attend.

Actually, the neighbor's party can end up being relatively pleasant, strangely more so than condo meetings. But while it is not the Orwellian nightmare it sounds like, the whole thing still makes me feel a little bit stupid. Apparently, someone has concluded that we citizens were so infantilized that we were unable to organize a party by ourselves if the council did not "create" an occasion. Also, we are apparently so unable to socialize that some bureaucrat has to do the socializing on behalf of us. In fact, we definitely must be dysfunctional considering all the things that the government has taken on the burden to do for us.

Maybe they took for granted the French reputation as cold, distant and unsociable people and decided to transform us. True, apartment building parties were not so common in France for most of its history -- but keep in mind that France is a geographically centralized country with essentially one big city. The French don't move very much. They easily keep in touch with their close friends who will often live in the same place for their whole life. For instance, the recent spreading of about 80 ridiculously small universities on the French territory ensured that even fewer people would have to move from their hometowns in order to study. The French are not nomads, and maybe that is one reason why they did not feel the need to reach out to their neighbors wherever they settle.

One frequent complaint about big cities is the idea that somehow, people have lost the sense of being part of a community and that this is a tragic loss. Sociologists have done a better job than I would analyzing the social links that were broken throughout this process, but I still suspect that some of them were not that missed. After all, the very notion of spending time on your own thinking, reading or just doing anything you please, emerged at about the same time as the industrial revolution and the subsequent rural exodus. Individualism was part of a general movement which brought us the modern world, technology, and many things that are difficult to separate from one another. Do most people really have second thoughts about urban civilization and all the rest?

But maybe I’m now getting cranky.. It's neighbor's day, so politics and religion are out of order. Besides, the kids want to attend the party (there will be cakes and other kids), and that pretty much settles the matter.