Stéphane releases pain and anger on a white page.

A fresh new start.

The 10th of June 2013, I decided to leave.
Why ? What’s this rage and pain you go through ?
For a long time, I had the will to tell the story, tell the pain, scream that anger against France, my homeland.

As I tell my pain and anger to the face of Earth, I hope that I can understand it. Or even get it out or fix it, and next time I am asked about why I escaped this country I was born in, I can answer without pain or anger anymore but with proper words.

So, just to let you know that this article has begun to be written Tuesday the 21st of January 2014 and published the 1st of December. I had to dig, go through deep layer and sediments to find the roots of such pain.

In the middle of everything, there is one land. My homeland and culture.

Enough !…

… enough of this shitty political mood, of this idea that nothing could go on without half the country striking or fighting.

France, land of conflicts

Why ?

In labor relations, everything is considered in terms of power relationship, where there is necessarily winning and losing ! How many people are still trapped in an old communist rhetoric of “class struggle” ? In “class struggle”, there is “struggle”, so violence and conflict.

How is it possible that one of my core values (consensus and compromise) is so far from my home culture ? When I have to solve a problem or a conflict, I will do everything to avoid confrontation, and instead beating around the bush for hours looking and looking at all aspects of the problem and finally propose solutions that I hope consensus, which everyone is benefiting and we can move forward.

No, in France, political leading must be cleaving !

You are either right-wing (thus traditionalist authoritarian, duties before rights, pro-business, and contempt for workers, without thinking, without concession) or left-wing (so everyone is nice, with unicorns gamboling in the streets … pro-worker, anti-business, without thinking, without concession).

Centre doesn’t exist, or is just a Right, without daring to admit it.

And today some young politicians and supporters complain that cleavage looses sense. Stop that shit ! French politicians often compromise, yes !
Assume, admit it. Assume also your ideas, powerful ideas, but search for compromise, because it’s how things work ! Don’t feel ashamed of it. Instead, try to find better ideas and solutions !

Everytime I placed myself in a compromise situation, trying to solve conflicts between two sides, I got bullied, sometimes considered as a traitor. And I am sad everytime something is changed in anyway, maybe to improve life or do better things, half of the people moan.

Enough of this contempt for each other

• contempt for the immigrant - who steal work from Frenchmen and abuse of the social system.
• contempt for the workless - too lazy, he lives while others are working.
• contempt for the entrepreneur, the businessman.
• contempt for the young - who doesn’t respect anything, nor has cultural background.
• contempt for the state employee.

Enough of this country, pretending moral, which is admired by the world for its humanism, liberalism, values and tolerance, for human rights and ideals, but unable to apply it to its own citizens, which closes itself…

Enough of this social pressure. Enough to see my values and ideals mocked.

Enough of this sh***y entreprise culture

So, entrepreneurs of France, you’re praised for courage and smartness, you’re praised as source of social, technological and human progress, but, how is it possible you pass the exam with such a low grade ?

How is it possible that you don’t live up to the expectations ?

Authoritarianism, hierarchy, lack of imagination, empathy and respect…

And you’re still astonished not to be trusted ? That no one wants to be in the adventure …

What is to be astonished of, is there’s still people who want to work for you !

I never saw billard or kicker tables, or a sofa in a French workplace…
We can’t imagine to do anything but work. Job and private life have to be so separated and bordered it looks like Great Wall of China.
Hence the debate coming again and again about balance between privacy and work.

When you’re looking for humanism in entrepreneurship, you got this :

Business’role is to make money. PERIOD.

My first boss was a stupid manager. Half the staff was leaving the office every year. He pretended to be stressed, so was windsurfing during office hours. He lost his three last network administrators, including myself.

When working on building sites, I saw security was really not a concern of the building company. I understood the site managers were dealing with bad adminstration and bureaucraty but couldn’t improve workers’ conditions.

I saw immigrant workers or women under stressfull social conditions, doing all the hard jobs white french men don’t want to do, and same time being bullied at by the hypocrytical right wing businessmen who need them to do their dirty stuffs.

Businessmen, you’re the first ones to call for team work, but when it’s time to share profit of this work, none !

Yes, entreprise is good. When you read theory, it’s supposed to be beautiful, it’s appealing. When you look at reality, it’s bare ugly.

Business, cash-flow, marketing…

… in France, everything is done in a teenage glittering slangish, expressing so few interest for anything but immediate profit.

As if their own culture and language don’t show their state of mind… Of course France is not anymore in business culture.

You are working really hard to show us how ugly it is, how corrupt, violent, with no ideal. We really have to believe, go through, read between lines to get the wish to run a business.

But …

Profit ! That’s what businessmen want !

So I left for Denmark… Denmark, the most honest country in the world, with a level of integration and social cohesion among the highest in the world.

I had to go to another country to figure out that entreprise doesn’t mean necessarily behaving like an asshole !

Here, every job offer I read include “you have to be in good mood and have humor”. Almost no hierarchy, real equality. People don’t consider themselves too seriously. Once, I even wondered if corporate banks hire clowns. This humanistic side is not denied, but assumed.

Enough being stopped for the last thing I want to do !

Everything you do, everything you go through has to be hard. The path is covered with crushed glass, and some don’t care walking on your feet with hobnailed boots.

I wanted to be engineer, to be respected, use all these ideas that pop out of my head, some absurd, other smart. But to be engineer, you need to come out from the elite upper class, because it’s the only ones accepted by French engineering schools, even the ones opened to apprenticeship.

So far for “social opening”… So far for liberals and their beautiful private schools…

So, because my parents were not managers, I did not have the good cultural background…

So I get to Uni, and walked my path, get graduated and found a job…

Not a stable job ? You don’t exist !

Just as I get out of Uni with my diploma, I found a job in just one month. Long term interim. It was OK to me. Beginning, working…

I was doing a pretty interesting job (how weird : not in a business) in one of the most famous public research organism in the world !

The funny thing is that, by work contract, I couldn’t be fired (unless strong professional failure) ! The contract had to go to its end. But landlords never heard it.

I was engineer, quite praised social position, considered as a modern noble title, but my actual life standard was locked because I couldn’t have a new flat.

It was easier for me to do the whores than to have a dishwasher !

Finally, I could, owing to my girlfriend’s workplace’s social benefits : we could have a low-cost public flat.

I find it pathetic that an engineer has to use this way. I never felt ashamed : it was my only solution. I just believed that other people would have more need for it.

Enough of this competition

If you’re not the best, you’re not happy, no ?

No ! You make us unhappy by placing this idea, by pushing to competition.

Competition is often an excuse to humiliate others, the weak or the different.

The second in school is also an intelligent person. He or she worked hard. His poem can be beautiful. Her science presentation can be great.

No, France loves nothing but gold medalls, as Roselyne Bachelot, former french minister for sports, complains of.

I hate this permanent fight. If we, as people and specie, don’t go beyond this competition, then we’re bare beasts… Smart beasts… But still beasts.

Sad

I just felt fed up fighting against windmills.

Going to Denmark, I have to build everything again. I had a flat, a car, beginning of something…

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

Yes, thanks Rudyard !

Yet I wasn’t happy ! 20, 25, 27 years old and not happy !

And worse, I had accepted the thing that I would never be really happy ! I had decided to compose with it for whole life… Going through…

Looking forward, I believe it is severe that a young guy from 25 years old doesn’t feel happy and accept it !

When I think of France, anger rise again ! That beautiful country, full of ideas, but so locked, with youngs running away to seek their own way… Elsewhere …

In contrast, when I stop thinking of it, then I feel well, here, in Denmark, the Zen country… Happy people’s land…