Paris was melting last week, flirting with 40°C and zero chill. Apparently, the moment was ripe for an epiphany.

I was in an Uber, as one does when public transport becomes a slow cooker. I always enjoy chatting with the driver – usually Algerian or Moroccan. We got to talking about our lives and what led us to France. At one point he looked at me and said, “No husband, no kids, and you have air conditioning! You’re totally cheating at life!”

“Cheating,” huh? Interesting word choice. So opting out of the standard life script is breaking the rules? But whose rules? The ones written by the establishment – whichever power structure has successfully colonized your brain.

I was fortunate to have been raised by parents who believed in free thought, not groupthink, and who told me that you should be able to do anything you want with your life as long as you’re not harming others. Which is a long way of saying that if I want to crank the A/C during a heatwave in my own home, it’s nobody’s business. Especially not that of some guy in the front seat of a Peugeot who thinks that I’ve short-circuited the Matrix.

But the fact that he grouped air conditioning with not having kids or a man says a lot. It’s not just cultural expectations, but also the deep programming of state-sanctioned virtue that has come to dominate cultural norms. And in France, one of the strangest markers of virtue is rejecting modern cooling technology.

The week was so blisteringly hot that the French government anticipated shutting down 1,350 schools so kids could sweat it out at home instead of in class.

Even the local public swimming pool had to close........

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