Who is Pangloss, and why do you hate him so much?
Anytime I have begrudgingly shared my blog title or twitter handle in the nine years since I first created them, I've been met with bewildered stared. Apparently the general populace isn't as obsessed with French, Enlightenment era satire as I was post high school. (Your loss, really.) Still, in the interceding years, I've had many chances to abandon the moniker but haven't. Why? Because I still really hate Pangloss.
In Voltaire's mid-eighteenth century novella, Candide, the titular character suffers under the inept tutelage of the one and only Professor Pangloss. As a caricature of a contemporary philosopher, Pangloss represents optimism taken to its most ridiculous extreme. Despite a plethora of hardships (including syphilis), he espouses the belief that this is the greatest of all possible worlds and therefore nothing bad could actually ever happen.
Pangloss, to me, represents the inclination to avoid looking at the uglier parts of life. He represents the people who take a look at a broken system and think, "that's as good as it's going to get." If we are not willing to recognize and confront our own shortcomings, how will we ever improve? I refuse to accept the world around me as good enough. I am not Pangloss. I am his critic. It's my job to shine a light on the things that don't work, so they can be fixed.
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| Voltaire, reading "Candide" probably |
In Voltaire's mid-eighteenth century novella, Candide, the titular character suffers under the inept tutelage of the one and only Professor Pangloss. As a caricature of a contemporary philosopher, Pangloss represents optimism taken to its most ridiculous extreme. Despite a plethora of hardships (including syphilis), he espouses the belief that this is the greatest of all possible worlds and therefore nothing bad could actually ever happen.
Pangloss, to me, represents the inclination to avoid looking at the uglier parts of life. He represents the people who take a look at a broken system and think, "that's as good as it's going to get." If we are not willing to recognize and confront our own shortcomings, how will we ever improve? I refuse to accept the world around me as good enough. I am not Pangloss. I am his critic. It's my job to shine a light on the things that don't work, so they can be fixed.
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