29 april 2025
Voltaire argued, in spite of all the injustices in the world, life can be meaningful if we were to tend to our own gardens with short time we have here. Having read this, more or less, had a profound affect on me in college, as it diverted a my once political-manic ego into a career more interested in technical services and questions. Seeing how people are today. I can say I feel disappointed but cannot admit that I'm surprised. In Candide, Voltaire gives us the grittiest and most terrible histories of humankind in order to convert a devoted optimist towards more empirical reasoning -- of interpreting world events with the lens of someone who assumes it is the "best of all possible worlds." This quantum thinking of sorts, of "many worlds (and no death -- the 'death drive')" is by experience wrong (your experience on this world ends abruptly into a void) or at least dubious (eternal life is promised but what it looks likes may be different materially than a conscious one on earth). Thus it's better to live your life as if you know you will die permanently and prepare for it each day, working towards a goal, with daily purposeful labor, whatever that be -- a vocation, career, or love.