A hyper compressed satire poking fun at everyone and everything but especially toxic optimism and the religious belief that “everything happens for a reason”.

Voltaire’s writing in Candide mostly reads like it was written yesterday, it’s extremely funny and I can’t believe it took me this long to read it.

One of the funniest jokes in Candide is a recurring gag where a character will mention the words “Free Will” then Voltaire will abruptly end the scene or end it with someone pouring themselves a drink.

It’s a fun gag on its own merit but the fact that this scenario still happens to this day is really funny to me. Even today, people groan, complain will do anything to avoid confronting their irrational beliefs in Free Will despite being decidedly not religious.

It’s a completely irrational stance to take and yet I’ve found that most people believe in Free Will.

Either believe in God and Free Will or don’t believe in God and acknowledge that you are nothing more than a meat puppet being led around by electrical impulses that you have no control over. There’s no Free Will organ in your body, and …

pour yourself a drink