Looking at History

It is fascinating to see how humans try to find a reason for everything. Now a days we have science and philosophy that help us find proved reasons for most of what happens. I also enjoy watching how we build on the others discoveries, to slowly build a ladder that will finally take us to the answer we were all looking for. Also, there are cases, like the light bulb, were we find what we were searching for but we have no idea how we arrived to it. However, if you are the person to build the first step of the ladder, and you are the one to start from scratch, it is most likely that you will make a mistake or assume something that will prejudice others.

In the case of Candide, “Dr.Pangloss and his pupil, Candide, were arrested as well, one for speaking and the other for listening with an air of approval.” (pg.36) because people were trying to find out why the earthquake had stroke them.
Apart from being a stupid, it does represent moments of our history that have built a lot of suffering, basing their reason on a mistake. In the case of science we lost Galileo for having a different theory that was in fact right. But what shocks me the most, is that Voltaire wrote Candide way before the Second World War. However, the exact same scene of the misfortune of Candide and Pangloss was repeated in the war. We saw how they were arrested for doing the most innocent, normal and unthreatening thing possible, and somehow they were the cause of the earthquake. In the other hand, decades later after we understood the stupidity of what the two characters had to go through, we killed thousands of people because of their religious belief. For me, it is more absurd that we repeat our history over and over again without gaining from our mistakes, than the actual arrest of Candide and Pangloss.


With the auto-da-fé Voltaire showed a very strong point about assumptions that can end in the killing of innocent people. However, I can build to his idea saying that it is extremely important that we are careful with the methods we use to achieve something we want, and even more careful if it involves others. Adding to that will we ever learn from our history? In my first Social Studies class the teacher said, “We study and understand history to prevent from repeating our errors.” Unfortunately that hasn’t been our case. When will we start changing?