"
Awaken your inner child
".
On their Facebook page, Jonathan and Caroline Attias describe a way of life that feels like a daydream.
For more than two years, this neo-rural couple has traded Parisian life and its frenetic pace (he was a journalist and lobbyist, she worked in the luxury hotel industry) for a more sober existence deep in the woods, in a cabin than they have built with their own hands.
In Le Lavandou, in a natural plot located in the town of Chasteaux, in Corrèze, they joined a small community established there for more than twenty years already and where the inhabitants wish to live in harmony with their environmental convictions, as close as possible to the environment, which they wish to protect.
To read also: Caspar van den Berg: "The ecological dream of urban dwellers must not break the rural world"
Jonathan Attias even recently published at Payot Rivages a manifesto, in which he sums up the “
philosophy
” of his “
movement
”: titled
Désobéissance fertile
, this book exposes its “
three pillars
”, namely “to
integrate into Nature, aggravate the territories, do not wait for the laws to change before taking action.
"The neologism" to
aggravate
"designates the fact, unlike the action of"
degrading
", of living in harmony with a territory in order to leave a positive imprint on it.
The promotion of the book gave the couple a certain notoriety, following in particular its appearance in the programs of Laurent Delahousse (France 2) and Yann Barthès (TMC).
Thus, on the set of
Quotidien
, Jonathan and Caroline were able to describe in detail the serenity of their new way of life, the deepening of their interior life, but also the humility in the face of the cold of winter ... little nest of straw and clay, the two lovers pedal on an old bicycle connected to the drum of a washing machine to clean their laundry, fetch water from the source and use no more than five liters per day , exchange clothes with their friends so as not to play into the game of consumer society.
In the newspaper
La Montagne,
last February, they told the main stages of their installation and the history of this community founded years ago by François Fleury, the owner of part of the land occupied by the cabins of Lavandou.
Cabins built on land ... non-building
But their green idyll is not to everyone's taste.
In 2019, in fact, the mayor of Chasteaux, Jean-Paul Fronty, filed a complaint with the public prosecutor of Brives-la-Gaillarde and intends to dislodge the ecologists from their cozy nest.
Out of chauvinism or out of fear of this unusual way of life?
Not in the least, he assures us, but simply because in their rush to want to reconnect with nature, the occupants of the huts have forgotten that the land on which they have settled is in reality ... an area wet classified as protected agricultural, where it is therefore strictly forbidden to build a residence.
“
Located outside the hamlets of Chasteaux, this land is clearly non-building;
in addition, it is located on a landslide zone, for which we have a risk forecasting plan which doubly prohibits construction;
especially since there is no access for emergency vehicles and the firefighters would be in great difficulty if they had to intervene to protect these inhabitants,
”adds Jean-Paul Fronty.
Moreover, the mayor is not the only one to be in conflict with the new neighbors.
If his procedure has so far not been examined by the judge, to the point of giving, according to him, to the ecologists "
the feeling of being above the law
" for lack of judgment, on the other hand, a summary filed by other inhabitants of the town should be examined in a much shorter time - and for good reason: part of the installations (cabins or amenities) at Le Lavandou have been installed on private land that does not belong to the community.
The owners therefore intend to assert their rights.
Following the example of the nurseryman Jean Coulié, who declared in particular to the newspaper
La Montagne
: “
At the beginning, I tolerated, because we did not use this ground.
But for the past two years, it has grown too much.
It even caused traffic problems with my employees.
And recently, they built a greenhouse on my land
”.
“The Earth does not belong to humans, it is humans who belong to the Earth.
"
For their part, Caroline and Jonathan Attias seem not to care, sure that they are in their rights because of their convictions.
"
We want to truly defend life: at all times there have been people who are illegal, and this is what makes the standard evolve
," Jonathan explained to the journalists of
Quotidien
.
And Caroline to outbid: “
There are laws that allow most waterways to be polluted, but they do not allow us to build a light habitat on our own land.
If these laws do not allow those who want to get out of the infernal machine to find a harmonious way of life, then yes, we will disobey.
"
An answer in perfect coherence, therefore, with the subject of the book published by Jonathan Attias, which opens with an Amerindian proverb: “
The Earth does not belong to humans, it is humans who belong to the Earth.
"Disobedience is thus advocated in these terms:"
If the laws do not allow us to live and integrate ourselves into Nature, then let us go beyond these laws;
also, let's not wait for the laws to change to change our lives.
This vision may seem radical to some;
but the radicalism seems appropriate to us insofar as we want precisely to return to the root of the problems relating to our societies and to change a system of death laws, to solve an equation aiming to perpetuate life on Earth.
The paradox being that in this case, the laws broken by Jonathan and Caroline Attias aim precisely ... to protect a natural area from human activity.
