Commentary: Farewell to consideration

GURAT, France, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- My upholsterer came by the other day for urgent repair work. When he was done he sat down for a beer and let off steam: "We need a new revolution. We need it now to undo the consequences of the last one."

By that, this middle-aged Frenchman meant of course the revolution of 1789, which ushered in the liberation of man as an absolute ideal, resulting in grotesque forms of social engineering today. It is not unusual in contemporary France to hear second thoughts about the event everybody celebrates on Bastille Day, July 14. But to hear it with such urgency from a local artisan was amazing.

What triggered his outburst was his personal experience with the effects of the 35-hour week, a destructive legacy of the last leftwing government, which the current right-of-center administration has so far failed to undo; indeed, next door, in Germany, at least the metal workers' union is actually pushing hard to emulate it.

In addition to wreaking havoc with small businesses, such as restaurants, bakeries, or farms, the 35-hour week has brought forth a new mindset. Until recently, if you needed a workman for a few extra hours -- and were of course willing to pay accordingly - he'd be happy to accommodate you. The French, I had always found, were every bit as industrious as their German neighbors.

This is no longer so. "Over the years, I have had many wonderfully helpful apprentices and journeymen," my upholsterer went on, "but now there's a 35-hour-week type in my shop, counting the minutes. Like a civil servant, he puts down needle, thread, and hammer at five o'clock sharp. No matter how many urgent jobs are waiting for us, or how many customers we have to turn away, he wants to rush home to his television set, and that's it. He does not care about extra money; he simply does not want to serve."

So my upholsterer works in clients' homes until late in the evening, accompanied by his pretty and competent wife, and keeps wondering what point there is in keeping an employee without a sense of service and consideration for the needs of others. "He's costing me an arm and a leg in social charges. I'd be better off without him, but this would not serve the interest of my customers and in the final analysis destroy our craft."

That's what I hear all day down here in the Southwest of France. In a country priding itself on its excellent cuisine, one family restaurant after another is forced to close down because the staff's 35-hour week, excessive taxes and social charges - and the chicanery of a hostile bureaucracy render such businesses unprofitable.

"What we are up against is our nation's ugliest trait - envy," an innkeeper friend of mine told me. He runs a bistro in a small town nearby; it's always full because its food is simple and good, the prices are right and the service is cheerful. Now he had the opportunity to extend his restaurant into a neighboring building, thus creating an extra job or two.

To obtain official permission for this project, my friend was made to rush from one local or regional government office to the next, where bureaucrats opined that in their eyes he was getting far too big for his boots. In the end, he just gave up.

My French friends see in this a latter-day manifestation of the envious "tricoteuses mentality" that made women sit and knit all day by the guillotine two centuries ago to cheer every decapitation. It is a mindset passed on through elementary school teachers, petty officials, so-called intellectuals and, in the 20th century, Communist trade unionists, a mindset that pits "us" against "them," the latter being not the unreachable rich, however, but enterprising men and women valiantly trying to succeed - people like you and me.

"Work used to be something honorable," said an elderly neighbor, who had labored all her life, through the German occupation and postwar reconstruction of France.

"Now work seems to be something only fools do. In this village we have young couples making no effort to earn a living. Why should they? He's on welfare; she gets a substantial child support for unwed mothers, even though her children are his, but of course they are not married! There's a good housing allowance, too, and free medical care. So they receive more than the minimum wage. They drive a nice car and walk around in elegant slacks - at our expense."

There is a theological point to be made here. The point is that in post-modernity the accomplishments of the French revolution have reached their highest level of absurdity so far. This revolution, Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, was "the laying bare of emancipated man in his tremendous power and most terrible perversity."

Socialism - hard as it was under Communist regimes and soft as it is in Europe's welfare states - has added another dimension. It ploughed under an urge that to Jews and Christians - and by extension, Muslims - is based on a Biblical worldview, the urge to serve and be considerate to one's fellow man.

This urge was by no means limited to monotheists, however. You'll find it in Buddhism and many other faiths. When I was in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei's capital, I sought refuge from the heat in a Dao Temple of the local Chinese community. I fell asleep. When I woke up I found that someone had placed a delicious meal in front of me.

This showed to me that the sense of consideration comes under natural law, which according to the apostle Paul God has written upon everybody's heart, irrespective of faith. Natural law, then, is what is being violated in this latest phase of the post-Enlightenment period, and not just in France.

Recently, on a train from New York to Washington, I sat facing the toilet. A young man, college athlete type, came out, leaving the door open, and exposing other passengers to an ugly sight and evil smells. "Please close that door behind you," I asked politely. "I am not working here," he growled and walked on.

"We are not talking about work," I replied, "but about civilized behavior." The young man just stared at me, clearly no understanding what I was talking about. I can't blame him. I assume that neither his parents, nor his teachers nor, surely, his electronic sources of information have ever told him what considerate comportment was.

How did we get here? How did we arrive at a point where people cause stinks and don't care if it offends others? How is it possible that on both sides of the Atlantic we have lost much of the Biblical notion of duty that is manifest in the logo of the Prince of Wales coat of arms, which reads - in German -"Ich dien'" (I serve)?

I put this question to one of my favorite pastors, the Rev. Johannes Richter, former regional bishop of Leipzig in Germany, who in Communist days had witnessed a tyrannical regime's deliberate attempt to destroy the essence of Christian civilization.

He replied, "It's all about 'I' and 'you.' If you emphasize the 'I,' you'll never grasp the 'you.' But if the 'you' is your starting point - if you are willing to be there for others -- only then will you discover yourself."