Week 2 - Charles Miin

War brings out the truest colors of mankind, good and bad. However, it materializes most often in the latter, in the forms of despair and sorrow, death and destruction for all individuals alike. This was especially true in the past when modern luxuries such as television and the internet were not around to distract entire nations from trouble on the homefront. France, thought of today as the absolute peak of refinement and romance, was no different in this regard. It sense of national aesthetic may as well not have existed when compared to the modern day as conflict had drained both the country and its people. Other European powers danced on the doorstep, waiting for the moment to pounce and forever relegate the lesser French ideals to the annals of history. Yet a lifetime of perseverance and conquest would not allow it. Policies were enacted by a strong government to support the private sector of skilled craftsmen and artisans who would regulate and induce growth amongst each other. The commonfolk also had inspiration through King Louis XIV whose life of excess and appreciation for creative pursuits allowed for the creation of an infrastructure geared towards opulence and wealth. The French truly found their place once they identified a crucial human element. The idea of need versus want. The need to survive is clearly without equal in any given individual, but the drive, and more so the existence, of desire is what really elevates a civilization. This concept was understood, molded, and magnified to an unimaginable scale that affected the elite landowners and poorest vagrants alike, so much as transforming an entire metropolis into the strongest and most primary association with the idea of "want". Therefore, with these points in mind, the ironclad and globally pervasive national aesthetic of France can be understood in its entirety. Now the only steps that remain to export their cultural senses through the instantaneous conduits of the internet. However, as we exist in the present day, will the Earth be capable of financing every man's greed beyond their modest needs as French opulence dictates?

Usher, Abbot “Colbert and Governmental Control of Industry in Seventeenth Century France”. Review of Economics and Statistics 16.11 (1934): 237–240. Web. 09 Jan. 2016.