Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Candid


Candid or CAN DID could be Candide, Voltaire’s hero who's forced to contend with the hyperbolic Dr. Pangloss, who claims “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” The modern interpretation of Leibnitz’s maxim might be the far less portentous though equally impervious “I can’t complain.” Really? You might not be able to complain, but there are a lot of people who can and did or will. In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut’s hero intones “so it goes” which is a far more ironic form of the stoic contempt for reality. In Voltaire the overly optimistic prognostications of his character are made more damning by the advent of the earthquake of 1755 which destroyed Lisbon and is the background against which the novel unfolds. "Satisfied customer" is another meme employed by smugly self-satisfied pundits. But who could possibly adhere to such a rosy prognosis in the face of the multi-faceted morbidities which afflict the race: vast economic inequality, a raging pandemic and seemingly irresolvable political unrest leading to the prospect of civil war in a number of countries, most notably the United States? To be "candid," no one.

Read "Dr. Pangloss" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to Luciano Pavarotti and James Brown singing, "It's a Man's Man's World"

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.