Considering mental afflictions as signs of intellectual superiority
“Parisians value intelligence more than happiness. In Paris, happiness is the sad symptom of an atrophied brain, the curse of the stupid, the limbo of the ungifted.
Mechanically he who is not happy is gifted, he whose brain does not agree with the world is intelligent. The more brutally unfitting the person is, the more gloriously superior his brain is. In this undeniable logic lays the utter privilege of the crazies: that of being looked up to by the Parisian.
The inability to handle the vicissitudes of life testifies to the Parisian eye of an acute perception of the incertitudes and difficulties that make up life. Knowing that life is about incertitudes and difficulties is pure intelligence to the Parisian. Therefore, if they were to choose between being an irremediably unhappy creative genius or a perfectly happy nobody, most Parisians would opt for the grandiose life of misery.”
This blog by witty, Parisian sommelier Olivier Magny has had me laughing so hard as to nearly spit out my Cabernet Franc in mid-swill. It is smart, well-written and full of bitingly funny insight. Bien joué, M. M!