The Key to French Greatness

Just as we Americans love our peanut butter, the French love their Nutella, that sweet chocolate-hazelnut spread that kids grow up eating at breakfast.

So it was shocking when French philosopher Régis Debray recently attacked Nutella, causing a national uproar.  Why not just attack God and Motherhood while you’re at it?

The background is that a series of educational reforms is scheduled to take place next year, including a de-emphasis on the teaching of Latin and other traditional subjects.  Debray feels that these reforms will make school too easy and that the existing high standards should be kept in place.  He chose to express his view this way, “Civilization is not Nutella, it is Effort!”  Cue the gasps.

A writer for Le Monde responded with humor, demonstrating the ways in which Nutella is, in fact, at the center of French civilization.  I’ve attempted to translate it below.

Vive la France !

KVS

Régis Debray Knows Nothing About Nutella

Régis Debray has said that “civilization is not Nutella, it is Effort!”  One feels that the school reform debate has now reached its summit.   The image is strong, profound, grandiose.  One imagines how many years of silent reading Debray must have committed - studying ancient languages, in dialog with the great writers - to come to this conclusion.  Where once was the battle between Culture and Candy, now it is between Civilization and Nutella.  One looks forward to Peanut Butter and Heideggerien Worldliness.  The image is sublime but, unfortunately, inexact.  Nutella IS effort. 

-       Because it is practically impossible to stop eating.  Every day, Nutella is a battle against oneself, against one’s impulses, against one’s own excesses.  Nutella is a form of spiritual exercise, the fight against the demon of piggishness.  It is therefore an art of self-mastery.

-       Because it demands that we overcome a thousand ignoble ideas:  all of its nasty ingredients.  There are certain things in it that we must look beyond (one eats these crappy things because they taste good.  One deals with the hours of trying to digest them in order to attain intellectual nirvana.)

-       Because it demands, after eating, long efforts to lose weight.  We learn to measure the consequences of our actions.

-       Because it requires that we clean the knife and the spoon by hand before putting them in the dishwasher.  Thanks to Nutella, the young learn the traditional gestures from their grandmothers, which modernity might otherwise cause us to lose.  It is a link between generations, a vector of tradition.

-       Because it is difficult to get its damned lid off.  And it is difficult to scrape out the last bits from the jar (one tries the spoon, the knife, the round knife, etc.)  Like learning Greek, it requires us to delay the moment of satisfaction.  It refuses the “now now now.”

-       Because one NEVER puts it in the refrigerator.  Nutella is proof of resistance, eternity, sangfroid.  It refuses the diktats of the “consume-by date”, the food supply chain, of all things electric (it economizes electricity enormously and, in its manner, saves the planet.)  It commits for the duration, the long term – it is devilishly Braudélian.

-       Because once you eat Nutella, you really don’t want to eat anything else.  It does not participate in the civilization of channel surfing.  One learns to concentrate on one object, simple and unique, without dissipating one’s energies.

In sum, it is inappropriate for Monsieur Debray to exclaim on a subject as grave as Nutella without understanding it.  Talking about education policy without being informed is one thing – I do it all the time.  But Nutella, no, never about Nutella.

http://maragoyet.blog.lemonde.fr/2015/04/29/regis-debray-ne-connait-rien-au-nutella/#xtor=AL-32280270