Finally I read Voltaire’s Candide! What a splendid farrago of nonsense woven apparently drunkenly or high on something more exotic, around a profound philosophical debate between optimism and pessimism. The characters of Pangloss the eternal optimist “everything is for the best “ and Martin “I am a Manichean and believe in the battle between good and evil” in contention for the soul of our naive hero Candide whose adventures in pursuit of  his adored Ms Cunegrund take him all over the world.

How long have I been Candide! Chasing all over the world in pursuit of a chimera, a ghost, a soul.

So these are the possibilities:

Theory 1: All is for the best!

Ultimately there is a Supreme Being who has it all planned, to the extent that the actions interactions and reactions of us humans are someway important and leading somewhere. This is the view of evolution that says fine, there is a direction and a destination. Much as individuals may suffer sometimes the journey is toward perfection

Maybe we are destined to abandon our bodies in favour of what we are now calling AI, Artificial Intelligence, which we will ultimately call Us. When we are no longer organic – or analogue – we become digital. As digital beings we can travel easily to the stars snd colonise the universe. My sympathies, universe!

Theory 2: It’s a shitshow!

… a mishmash, a mess. We humans came about as a result of a series of 99.9% impossible events. . Well, it took a very long time, 4 billion years or so, which does make this theory believable. After all, if there was some kind of god or purpose to it all, wouldn’t he/she/it have put this together in half the time? And so what has emerged is a smattering of versions of human, generally divided into 2 tribes: us, and them. Of course They refer to themselves as Us. And us as Them.

This goes further.  Here are the characteristics of Us:
Right
And Them:
Wrong
Also. Us:
Good
Them: 
Evil
Manichean, eh?

So, which is right? 1 or 2? Poor Candide who had to travel the world tried so hard to work it out. And in the end, decided that it was entirely irrelevant.

3. Cultivate your Garden!

Ultimately Candide finds his beloved and she’s ugly! Dried up, fat. Yes she becomes good at making pastry and the others of his party all find skills and occupations which please them. But committed to marrying her, he settles down to a life of cultivating his garden.

I have no garden, although I look down on one from my first floor window. I can watch the neighbour, shirt off in the globally-warmed evening, chopping snipping digging and shovelling, while my news sources burn with approaching doom. (Although let it be said I have the privilege of staying sometimes in the Shropshire Hills where my putative other family have a lovely garden. Above, some of the produce thereof.)

A Conclusion of Sorts

And so, I prefer to quietly determinedly and studiously cultivate the wider garden. Message: skip this part if you don’t like messages! Because it’s about the fact that our world garden is under terrifying threats: Climate Change, pollution, war, stupidity.

So my way is to work with those who really care and want to defend our garden, whether they are believers in Theory 1 or Theory 2. Because, dears, it really doesn’t matter who is right. What matters is who takes care of the garden.

Love to you all….