The Best Of All Possible Worlds

On November 1, 1755, a powerful earthquake rocked Lisbon, Portugal.  Tens of thousands died in building collapses, fires, and general rioting.  This inspired Voltaire to write Candide, one of the snarkiest and most powerful novels ever written.  In the first part of his novel, Voltaire suggested that both the world and human nature were unchangeable, with devastating effect.  In the second part, he sends his characters to “Utopia,” (literally “no-place”) and suggests that the kinds of perfected worlds we might long for, without war or greed, we might not be happy anyway.  Finally, he returns his characters to Europe and attempts to demonstrate why all of this does not make human endeavor futile – we can nevertheless do our best, and we can achieve happiness and love even in the face of a brutal world and even after having had made bad personal choices in our pasts.  If you haven’t read Candide, I recommend it to you wholeheartedly.