Candide Thoughts

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On 23^rd August 1973, two criminals one of them a jail fugitive entered a bank in Stockholm shooting in the air with automatic machine guns. The assaulters took three women and one man as hostages attaching dynamite to their bodies and keeping them inside a safe for more than five days. After liberation, the hostages who had been threatened and mistreated offered clear signs of loyalty to kidnappers. During their captivity they had developed a positive emotional attitude towards their aggressors and were convinced the captors had protected them. They totally refused to testify against them in court. Furthermore at the trial, one of the women organized a fundraising campaign in favour of the criminals. This event led to the name Stockholm syndrome for the reaction of attraction towards aggressors shown by mistreated, humiliated and captive people.

So yeah quite often we find ourselves in be-gripped in rather unfriendly conditions. We are held hostage in excruciating situations that wretch us into further misery especially if in a routine fashion. It could be a toxic partner, a beastly boss, an unruly colleague or some meddlesome majirani. And so we end up having dull days while constantly having to be defensive of our personal choices or still well intended actions. Well sometimes it works to ignore and probably hope that in future, things will even out. Sometimes that kind of future won’t come to pass. To cope its human to develop a positive attitude towards our aggressors because we think we are helpless or they are way too superior.  But hey, there is a lot more danger in this as Voltaire succinctly depicted.

Published in 1759, his fictional work Candide begins in a baron’s castle in Germany, where a young Candide lives peacefully. His tutor, the optimist Dr. Pangloss, teaches him that “everything is for the best.” Through a series of events, Candide travels throughout South America and Europe, where he sees and experiences misfortunes ranging from natural disasters to unjust acts of violence. He starts to question whether all is for the best, and the meaning behind the terrible events he witnesses. Throughout the story, Pangloss reminds Candide that all is for the best. Pigs were made to be eaten, which is why we eat pork. Legs were meant to wear shoes, which is why we have shoes. And finally, the Bay of Lisbon was created in order for the character Jacques to drown in it. (By the way when Candide tried to save Jacques from drowning, Pangloss stopped him to prove that Jacques was meant to drown)

One reason for this has to do with the very nature of the societies in which we are bred. The over-the-top rationalization of optimism. We are brought up to believe that lives are written scripts that we got to play. That you stumbled down the staircase because your radius was to meant fracture anyway, when thieves break into your apartment, that telly was never yours and when politicians pilfer your taxes…….yes yes you guessed it right. And so you have to be okay with that anyway after all positive thinking is a core ingredient to success.

Truth is, pigs were never created because pork was meant to be eaten, that car crash did not happen because your uncle was meant to die neither were killer cops were created merely coz innocent civilians are mortal. There are lot more similar yet illogical mantra that we use to justify wanton recklessness and intolerance perhaps because we feel incapacitated.

On the contrary we have so much control over our lives that we can imagine. Our actions always influence some reaction. Hence the sooner we become more responsible and accountable, the better lives we can be assured.

Godspeed.