Paris 1789 Over Again?

Busker Shorts

Paris - 1789 Over Again?

I should say that since I published this story the above image has been shown to be a fake. So, as much as many of us would like it to be true, it is not. I have learned a lesson today that I am thankful of and will tread more carefully in future. Thanks to Richard Steven Hack for illuminating me. Cheers. In my defence, however, I should say that the farmers’ anger is so great that it could feasibly have been expressed in the construction of these bales of hay in Paris. So for me, it did appear to be credible. We are all Human, All Too Human.

(This is the first of a series of ‘shorts’ that I will be doing now and again relating to images. If they are not popular I will stop doing them).

Photographs can sometimes tell us more than books, so I believe, and I think this is very true (if anything can be said to be very true) of the above image. I copied it as soon as I saw it because I think it tells us something quite profound, that could have been inspired by the French Revolution of 1789. The creators of this image transformed the urban Paris landscape into a rural one and there was a calmness about it that contrasted with the normal Paris rush hour traffic. It recalled the rural peasantry challenging the urban French Aristocracy in 1789 while the May blossoms were fragrant in their gardens. In this photograph, traces of the industrialization that followed the revolution have been erased and a rural view has asserted itself. Indeed, in recent times, farmers have asserted themselves on the political consciousnesses of Europeans just as Canadian Truckers proudly did for Canadians not so long ago. Now it seems that rural values are becoming fashionable or even important, again, as something fundamental to human existence. Farmers producing food without political interference seems like a good idea to me. Farmers producing enough food for the populations they serve seems like a good idea to me and farmers producing meat, which humans have thrived upon and depended upon for almost as long as we have existed, also seems like a very good idea to me. This image represents these very basic ideas that some are attempting to persuade us are less important than halting global warming. At least, that’s what I see in it: you may see something different.

Best Rob