Glossing It over with Pangloss
It’s the Age of YOLO: You Only Live Once. Rather James Bondish, but the intellectual initiative de jour is reductionist to the point of becoming philosophical pot residue. Modi’s centrality in this election, as it was for the last two, is today’s YOLO. Is a Modi victory the best thing for the country? Will Rahul be good for India in the long run?
YOLO for the answer.
The key argument of the eclectic German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz to explain unfairness in the world is that it’s the “best of all possible worlds”, and the reason why God created it so, with warts and all, was because it was the only possible thing to do: in other words, an optimistic acceptance of suffering. Philosophers are chemists of ideas.
They distil everything into a single unified concept which they deem the only relevant perspective. Leibniz, called the “last universal genius” for his equal mastery of philosophy, science, religion, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, music, etc was the leading rationalist of his age.
Such a vast genius must have instilled optimism as a life value to rationalise the contradictions of multifarious disciplines in one frame. His younger contemporary, the free-thinking Voltaire lampooned this worldview in his 18th century novel Candide about the (mis)adventures of Pangloss and his aristocratic student Candide.
All the horrible things that happen to Pangloss—his lover Cunégonde’s rape, the massacre of her family by Bulgars who torture, maim and force him to go to war—was the “best of all possible worlds,” as he explains to Candide. ‘Panglossian’ would later come to mean asininely optimistic.
Voltaire was no ordinary lion of letters; he was an intellectual giant who challenged the Roman Catholic Church: no mean feat in Catholic France; He advocated freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state. Voltaire would certainly be as unpopular in today’s world as Leibniz would be lionized.
But Pangloss would fit in nicely in India now. Unemployment? It’s for the best, he would say. The allegation of EC rigging votes using dodgy EVMs? It’s all for the best would be the Pangloss response. Lalu asking for reservation for all Muslims? All for the best.
The ED is unleashed at anyone who shows the slightest sign of disobedience and the agencies are plucking Opposition chief ministers as if they were chicken crossing the road, not the floor; all for the best. Corruption probes vanishing into thin air after an Opposition politician joins BJP? All for the best again.
However, the ‘best possible thing’ may not be the ‘greater good.’ The 18th century English writer John Bentham’s famous phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number” to which the great American conservationist Gifford Pinchot cynically added “in the long run” seems the best way to describe Indian politics.
Because “for the best” is not necessarily the best ‘for the greater good in the long run.” Liberals may knock Modi as a Panglossian panacea, but reversing the gains of last mile welfare connectivity, a muscular foreign policy and security counter strikes is certainly not for the best, even in the long run.
The ideal of running for office is for the greater good, both in the long and short run. Our rulers demand sacrifice from the people to achieve the greater good in the best possible manner. What have they been doing since 1947? Certainly, it’s not YOLO.