“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I have to change myself.”
– Rumi, quoted in Colum McCann’s Apeirogon
When overwhelmed by world or life events, which is often, I return again and again to Voltaire’s Candide. How can something written by a Frenchman a couple hundred years ago make me laugh today? Why do I think it’s instructive for me, and maybe for us now?
The world that Voltaire chronicles in Candide is truly terrible. War, sickness, pestilence, earthquakes, fires, swindlers, pirates. He was making fun of Leibniz, represented by the absurdly optimistic Dr. Pangloss, who can always come up with some reason why this is the best of all possible worlds.
Candide worships Pangloss at the start—the best philosopher in all of Westphalia! Candide is charmingly naive, though his worship of Dr. Pangloss, like his love of Miss Cunégonde, is sincere.
But the events of the world, with the help of a very different philosopher, Martin, challenge Candide’s views. Martin, a disillusioned and pessimistic poor scholar, helps Candide realize that things may not be all for the best. Appearances can be deceiving. Goodness as well as evil lurk in the heart of every person. Misfortune is universal. What seems like virtue may be vice. Often virtue is a mask for greed, vanity, or self-interest. Holding a high office does not confer morality. Martin’s blunt assessments sow seeds of doubt in Candide’s optimistic worldview.
Voltaire would have thrived as a satirist today. If I were to complain to a fictional Martin I imagine he’d reply, “of course it’s so—haven’t you been listening? Why would you expect anything to change?” But our hero doesn’t adopt Martin’s pessimism. Instead, Candide is transformed after visiting a humble Muslim farmer whose family works together to tend their
orange grove, eat candied citrons, and ignores the constant political upheaval. Yet Candide resists Martin’s pragmatic doom and gloom settling instead on the farmer’s lived experience.
From this experience, at the conclusion of one of Dr. Pangloss’s soliloquies, Candide stops him. Work, he concludes, is the only reasonable response. We must cultivate our garden—in the case of his crew, this is a literal garden. Everyone pursues what they’re good at: carpentry, pastries, philosophizing. Like the modest farmer, they have enough, but there’s no scheme to transform the world.
Voltaire’s garden embraces practical, grounded wisdom. We might not be able to change everything, but we can tend to the things around us and make them better with work. When I look around, I see gardens everywhere—whether it’s a well-tended tree pit on my block bursting with flowers, or a store where the proprietor has lovingly collected every manner of notebook, faith-based congregations that look after people in its vicinity as well as its congregants.
I have taken to calling this approach unapologetic incrementalism. I may not have time for a long bike ride, but I can ride to work. The recipe calls for thyme but I only have oregano? It will probably work. Julia Child, who said ‘the only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude,’ was an unapologetic incrementalist. So was Voltaire.”
The question Voltaire leaves us with isn’t whether this is the best of all possible worlds, but whether we’ll choose the practical wisdom of tending what’s in front of us over the ambition of fixing everything or spending time on an overarching theory that explains it all. Not sure? Begin. Make it part way, and then come back again tomorrow, and the day after that…
Note: Neville Jason’s Audio narration of Voltaire’s Candide is excellent and the Norton Critical edition’s text comes with helpful essays. The text is short, the lessons are large.
