Invisible Ideas

In a previous blog post, "Journeys of Our Minds," I  said that, up to the first few chapters of the book, Marco Polo was actually talking about knowledge. I believe I was mostly right as further in the book his ideas about cities become increasingly related to perception, imagination, our minds, or things that relate to knowledge. It's still hard for me to put all of the author's ideas together and understand them as a whole, but Calvino's philosophical ideas are hinted throughout the novel, either through the conversations in the interludes or the descriptions of cities.

The way we see things, or our perception, is an explored idea throughout the book. Calvino uses the sections under Cities and Signs when representing perception and understanding, but in other parts of the book similar ideas are mentioned as well. Marco Polo speaks about the cities in an imaginative way. He doesn't describe factual things about the cities, but rather gives abstract ideas about them. The young Venetian allows Kublai Khan to have a different interpretation of what he says, he opens his ideas to different perceptions. As Calvino shows in the interludes, through metaliterary elements, Marco Polo's relationship with the Khan, or the author's relationship with the reader, depends on interpretation. The reader questions Calvino's book and, as we spoke about in class, Calvino might as well been dead for a long time as our only connection with him is what he wrote. The cities have shown how languages are abstract, and communication can be about things and not ideas, or how our memories are based on simplifications of occurrences. One could say that the book shows how people's perception of things is abstract and undefinable.
In chapter 3 Calvino says, "Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours" (pg. 44). I believe this quote sums up many of the things Calvino is trying to represent throughout the book. Material things don't necessarily help you, but the thoughts that they can bring upon your mind, like when the cities allowed Marco Polo to reflect on his life, do make a difference. Our mind, and what we do with it, make up reality.

Should Women Mean Something?

Invisible Cities is loaded with literal and figurative depictions that help understand the cities and their meaning. One representation that Calvino has frequently used is women, bathing or naked, in the cities. The women never really interact with Marco Polo or the travelers, they just pose there as an attractive object. In Diomira women cry “ooh,” out loud, while in Anastasia they just tempt the men to bathe with them. Marco Polo wishes to fin women everywhere, in Hypatia he expected to see women in a wonderful river but he finds people committing suicide instead. The wonder of Isadora is that when a man is with two women, a third always appears.

Maybe it’s just my rather feminist point of view, but the author’s symbols or metaphors are too chauvinist for the year they were written. I do disagree with the way Calvino portrays themes like desire in the book, using a chauvinist tool. This made me question whether one should be able to question the author. I don’t like the way the author portrays women but I’m not sure if I can judge that. This made me wonder if art can show unfair or offensive things that shouldn’t happen in society. I guess that an artist or an author can express their thoughts in the way they want and not be offensive as long as it does not contradict that much with what we think.

Fantastical Contrasts

 Chapter three of Invisible Cities shows a change in the type of cities portrayed. Prior to the Khan’s dream, the cities had been pretty much possible places with concrete observations. One could see that these comments from Marco Polo were said in a literal way but had a figurative and metaliteral meaning from the author’s point of view, but in this chapter, Marco Polo’s ideas are figurative themselves. The cities show unreal things with imagination. Each of the cities represents ideas that one could expect from a dream, as Calvino suggests.

Zobeide is a city built upon the dreams of people. These people, from many nationalities, united themselves, perhaps showing another common dream: unity. The city was a dream, but a disappointing one (U.N.?). Marco Polo and his companions felt it was a trap, and ugly disappointing city, showing perhaps how some dreams can be.

Hypatia also shows a somewhat unrealistic city, which shows how Marco Polo’s narratives are growing into ones that are more figurative. In this city, the contradicting signs disoriented people. Some signs suggested that something would happen, but what acutally happened was unrelated. Marco Polo was expecting to see women bathing themselves in a river because of what the environment suggested, but he ended up someone committing suicide. This “Cities and Signs” city suggests that signs or symbols are subjective. As a philosopher of Hypatia said, “Signs form a language, but not the one you know.” That shows how knowledge plays an important role in communication. I found interesting the name of the city, Hypatia, which resembles hypocrisy. Hypocrisy comes from the Latin word hupokrisis, which means “acting of a theatrical part.” Perhaps by choosing Hypathia as the name of the city, Calvino meant that language can be an act that we must decipher.

An interpretation of Armilla

The rest of the cities in chapter three all show subjective situation, where Marco Polo observes some unreal ideas. He no longer focuses on describing the physical aspects of cities but rather wishes to explain them. Armilla has nymphs as some of its inhabitants and is made of pipes that don’t really make houses or any organized structure. Nymphs and naiads usually live in fantastical and beautiful places, creating a contrast with the mess in Armilla. Chloe is a city where people connect a lot through their looks but are actually completely distant. People just look at each other for an instant as they walk. Valdrada, built on a shore where people could see the reflection of a city on the lake, shows how contrasting appearances can be from actual meanings. All these cities show how things have different meanings and ways to looking at them. How we communicate is subjective, our connections can be all fake and people can pretend to be things they’re not. This chapter, as it implied ideas through abstract cities, made the way the cities are describe shift to being more figurative. 

Journeys of Our Minds

In the beginning of the second section of Invisible Cities, Marco Polo, who is actually representing the author, Italo Calvino, explains Kublai Khan the reasoning for his journeys. Calvino says, “Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the forgiveness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places” (pg. 29). Later, as Kublai Khan mentions, Marco Polo does not talk about the material things of his trips, but instead the observations he made or the realizations he had, showing how exposure to different things can make us think about the ones we already know. These comments made me realize what traveling is all about, for some people at least, and how the cities can represent different things in one’s life. Calvino’s cities show how places or foreign things can make us reflect on our realities.

Isidora, the city of one’s dreams, contains the common flaw people find in themselves. In this case, people arrive there wanting to be younger, which relates to the quote I mentioned earlier, as the city makes people see what they didn’t do before, when they were younger. In Isidora, “Desires are already memories.” Just as people felt old in the city, society sometimes can make us feel like it’s too late for everything. Traveling can isolate us from that and make us realize what different perspectives exist. Marco Polo wouldn’t be able to comment on his experiences if he didn’t had such a wide array of them.

Marco Polo’s trips in the book mean much more than just a visit to those places. As Kublai Khan says, his observations and thoughts make his trips special. Even more, these trips or observations are just a literal and figurative way of explaining Clavino’s beliefs, as a work of metaliterature. As I mentioned before, traveling is a way of growing and understanding life, but what gives traveling those characteristics is the knowledge you obtain from it.

All Marco Polo’s observations, whether it is the ways one can see Dorothea, how Zora walks people down their memories or that Zirma is remembered by a few repetitions, show how he analyzes things. He is able to analyze them because he understands them as a foreigner, as he gets to discover them and differentiate them from other cities. What I believe Calvino is saying is that with knowledge, just as one can compare cities, one can build up upon ideas and eventually understand things. Another case in which the author shows that understanding is valuable and necessary is in the city of Zenobia. Merchants form different places gather at equinox, a special occasion, to trade something more special than goods: memories. Trading in memory, or learning and teaching, is better than building up on material things.

As I read the first two parts of the book the way, I perceived it changed. I started reading it as a simple book where each city critiqued a few things about society, personality or life, but as I kept on reading, and was able to put together some of these ideas, I started to understand what Calvino actually meant—I was able to understand some of its metaliterary aspects. Marco Polo’s trips, as I first observed, are an explicit way of showing how stepping out of your comfort zone is beneficial, but when put together, along with the conversations in the interludes, one can see that the book is showing how valuable knowledge is. Ways of acquiring information and insight into life are important, but as what made Marco Polo different from other travelers was that he analyzed what he saw, what we do with what we learn is what matters. Looking back at the first pages of the book I can realize that all along the author has said how influential knowledge, like this book, can be. 

An Intricate Structure

The way Calvino wrote Invisible Cities makes it an interesting but complex book to read. Even though I have tried to understand it, in the following chapters I would like to get to know where all these allegories or metaphors are going to and what they actually mean all together. The first aspect that came to my mind was that its chapter introductions and conclusions (the interludes), which are a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, are describing the book itself, making it metaliterary, like Mr Tangen explained in class. Marco Polo represents the author and Kublai Khan represents the readers, showing how the author tells stories to the readers, and describing the way these relate an how the author communicates using the book. It is interesting to try to decipher what the metaliterature parts of the book mean, but I hope that when reading the rest of the book my questions about what it means are answered.

Another interesting aspect of the book is the way its chapters are divided. I decided to read the book in the natural order of the pages, rather than through the types of sections. In the way I have read it, it seems that each chapter has an introduction and a conclusion that relate to the chapters in between. These sections, which have dialogues between the two characters, have helped me as a reader since they make sense out of descriptions of cities. I feel like the interludes have helped me understand that in the first section Kublai Khan feels some sort of deterioration and that Marco Polo’s cities are meant to be interpreted, or that they are not just accounts of his expeditions. I hope that when continuing to read the book I can understand better the purpose for its structure. 

Genes of Memes

I agree with Hawkins in that memes are a unique feature that distinguishes humans from other animals, but I believe that this happens because of the complex level we are at evolution. Natural selection has made our brains prone to develop memes, want us to imitate genes, and therefore replicate them, in order to seek survival in our current modern cultures. Our selfish genes allow memes to happen. 

Memes are always in a way benefiting our survival. Human brains have imitated religious memes, the idea of believing in God or in hell, for thousands of years because it helps us live better. It can be because it makes us happy and satisfied to have an explanation for everything, and consequently makes our lives easier and for us to focus more on survival. It can also be because our brains are complex enough to analyze that imitating a meme and “fitting in” is necessary for survival, in many cases because doing otherwise might cause humans to kill you. Other memes, like Internet memes, also help our survival in a way. Entertaining oneself in leisure websites like 9gag or Funnyjunk, made up of memes, might help us be happier, relax ourselves and in the long-run, survive. Leisure can help us later focus more on things that help us live, like relaxing to later work harder, or simply distract our minds from survival-threatening thoughts.

Memes can also be ideas cheaters, like referred to in chapter ten, impose in our culture. Memes related to patriotism and nationalism are a way people manipulate suckers to make their ideas of survival rise and gain popularity. As Hawkins says, memes are selected, and I believe they aren’t selected by coincidence, our selfish genes shape the way memes are created and spread.

I believe memes are the complex gene expression that characterizes humans, but like every gene and its expression it is ultimately for the best of the organism or survival. The selfish genes that make us up at this point in evolution cause memes. At the end of the chapter Hawkins says, “We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicator.” Our selfish genes are so complex that our brains have been able to “turn against our creators” for the sake of our survival. 

Reciprocal Altruism?

We all have selfish genes, DNA whose only purpose is to survive, but how does this affect our lives? As I read chapter ten I noticed how we humans are simply really selfish organisms. Earlier in the book I had contemplated that ideas, but not until now had I noticed what it really means. It took me various chapters to get to know (or at least think that I know) what the title of The Selfish Gene means. It means we only care about ourselves, and I think it is true. During this chapter Dawkins gives some examples of fake altruism, like gazelles who try to jump high when a predator arrive, which looks like they're alerting the others if you have a naive unaware mind, as it actually means that they're trying the predators to kill the others. That's what organisms are, simply individualists who might pretend not to be one if it'll make it better for themselves.

Not as nice as it seems.

Earlier in evolution, or species that evolved further back in time, expressed their selfish genes through direct traits. Animals fit for survival like fish probably need to swim fast, or birds have better wings. Other cases might involve more complex survival skills, like a snail hiding fast inside its shell, or as Hawkins shows, a fish maintain its symbiotic relationships. As evolution brought about more complex organisms, like humans, survival became not only speed, or simple cause-effect analysis, it became networks of analysis and evaluation of stimuli and the environment, what is good for us taking into considerations thousands of factors. The way our brains think through every decision, unless we have a mutation or condition that alters our selfish genes, is always following an individualistic approach. Selfish genes or what makes us survival machines shape the way we think. Our ethics are selfish ethics. As my English class discussed a couple of months ago, when faced with the ethical dilemma of saving people from a train, people overall take a selfish approach. People rather kill someone with a lever than directly themselves. This exemplifies how selfish our ethics are. Our brains notice that for society it looks better to indirectly kill someone than doing it directly, so it's better for one's survival to do it the good-looking way. Thousands of genes in our elongated dan strands determine our actions, and at this point of evolution, humans' selfish genes have strengthened survival probabilities by disguising themselves.

When explaining the cleaner-fish's case, Hawkins says, "This is a considerable feat of apparent altruism because in many cases the cleaner is of the same size as the large fish's normal prey"(pg. 187). He uses the phrase "apparent altruism" because that's all altruism really is. Also in chapter ten, Hawkins generalizes individualism in communities by dividing individuals into cheater, suckers and grudgers. I believe that this truly explains modern society. The reason suckers survive is because grudgers make cheaters not overuse them, so that grudgers can benefit themselves, making them also cheaters. Suckers in a way are also cheaters, as survive because of the incentive they give cheaters for letting them survive. Society has this scenario is a more complex way. Grudgers make laws to help suckers benefit everyone, including themselves. Grudgers/cheaters benefit themselves and are more likely to survive. In a way everyone is a cheaters, a sucker and a grudger, in whatever proportion is adequate to survive and live better. In many cases of the modern world, survival doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of the others, so our selfish genes disguise themselves even more. Our selfish genes might make us want to guarantee our survival, so if it's not necessary to get rid of the others, we make our survival more likely by fulfilling any requirement that society puts on us towards having what is considered better. For example, people love doing charity work, but many times this is the result of billions of years of evolution that have led to our brains being able to analyze that helping others might help us look better, and therefore be more successful, or end problems in society that could potentially expand and affect you, therefore guaranteeing   your survival. Altruism means "the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others," so as I read chapter ten I noticed that "reciprocal altruism" is contradictory. Reading The Selfish Gene, particularly during this chapter, I've noticed that altruism is one of those words like utopia, which just don't happen, even if they appear to happen.

The Structure of Survival

Last blog entry I wrote about a topic I discussed in class and how that related to the importance of DNA and what chapter two of The Selfish Gene says about it. The frequency of discussing DNA and evolution in my biology class made me want to mention few things I've learned to discuss chapter three. During this chapter, Hawkins assesses the definition of the term gene. He decides to use G. C. Williams' definition, "A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for long enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection"(pg. 28). Later on, Hawkins says, "But even a close relative is unlikely to share a whole chromosome with you. The smaller genetic subunit is, the more likely it is that another individual shares it--the more likely it is to be represented many times over in the world"(pg. 31). This made me think of the importance of gene expression in the idea of survival of the fittest, as we might all have similarities in DNA but how we express our genetic material is what matters. 


Species that have evolved in many different eras all share genes or structure in DNA, but how that express it, or whether they express it, determines their survival. I find it amazing how evolution has shaped our DNA sequences to make it perfect for survival in every situation. Evolution is something that's happening all the time, being affected by outside stimuli and how genes affect each other. 
Recently in my biology class I did some reading in cleft palate. This relates to evolution as it shows how DNA always has to be evolving because as it does, the definition of fittest changes. 

Msx1 protein

Scientists have still a lot to research on cleft palate but from what they know, it's human genetic factors which cause it. Cleft palate is very related with a gene called Msx1, which is responsible for the Msx1 protein. Different human factors, like other genes or the amount of folic acid con sued during pregnancy affect this condition. According to an article I read about this condition, "The research team performed a battery of evolutionary analyses on 46 Msx proteins from a diverse collection of animals, ranging from sponges to humans. This analysis identified human sequence variants in Msx likely to underlie disease, and indicated why mutations in the same gene can lead to either orofacial clefting or ectodermal dysplasias." What this basically means is that the Msx1 gene is present in many species but how humans express it and the factors affecting the expression might cause cleft palate. As Hawkins says in pages 30 and 31, we can share genetic units with everyone but through natural selection or survival of the fittest, the most competent type of gene expression will prevail. 

As proteins are what makes up our bodies, gene expression is very important in natural selection.

As in my previous blog entry, I will use this observation on genetics to try to show evidence for evolution. Dawkins says, "The true purpose of DNA is to survive, no more and no less." The DNA from the earliest ancestor of evolution has found its way through billions of years to survive generation by generation. Mutations have made it change, but overall it maintains a similar functioning, with the same structure. In natural selection DNA mutations that change its expression and probability of survival matter, as it eventually causes new species to emerge. Our different appearances are ways our DNAs disguise to survive. Evolution is the processes in which DNA mutates to create better genes and gene expression to survive the most. So going back to the cleft palate case, organisms are very similar. We share characteristics in our DNA with sponges, so a process like evolution caused by natural selection must have made gene expression change. 

DNA in Space

Chapter two of The Selfish Gene stresses out a point I believe is worth discussing. Referring to DNA, Hawkins says "What does matter is that suddenly a new kind of 'stability' came into the world,"(pg. 16) which brought to my mind a topic I've talked about with my biology teacher, Dr. Gregory. The structure of DNA is a almost like a miracle, no other molecule has such characteristics like being able to replicate in such an accurate and unstable way, having such a way of expressing its information through RNA synthesis or attracting each of its strands together. Even the flaws of DNA structure and function, like the possibility of mutations happening, make it unique. Thanks to mutations, as Hawkins explains, evolutions is possible.
So back to what I said about my biology teacher, and to place emphasis on the importance of DNA structure, she told me about the discovery of DNA precursors in space. As she explained to me, a precursor is a molecule that is missing a final touch, like bonds or atoms, to be the molecule it is a precursor of. A DNA precursor might have a slightly different structure or miss some of the molecules that makes it perform its functions, making it actually useless, but its importance, especially to the area of evolution, is infinite. Finding these structures in space shows that wherever these might fall, there might be life. As of now the scientific world doesn't know about any other molecule that can carry out the necessary function of heredity or genetics, so discovering that DNA might have come from space, takes evolution even further back. I decided to do some research online on DNA precursors. Although the scientific world isn't flooded with papers or information about it, I found enough to see how important it is. According to an article on Time, scientists in Antarctica found DNA precursors in uncontaminated meteorites. According to Dr. Gregory, with the ultimate technology on telescopes scientist have also spotted DNA precursors in actual outer space, but I don't have an article to confirm that. If any evolution skeptic reads this, the precursors in Antarctica are not contaminated because, if they were, as molecules always look for their most stable structure, they wouldn't be precursors anymore and would become DNA. The reason these precursors were not DNA already is because the circumstances in space either didn't allow it to bond for some reason or simply don't have the necessary molecules.
The stability of DNA has allowed these precursors to have landed on Earth billions of years ago, or at least have existed in space since. Having DNA be built, even without a cell living with it, probably gathered up molecules, that throughout millions of years built up until a life-like structure was formed. Viruses could have developed from it, and as some scientists hypothesize, cells could have come from these viruses. The rest is history, these prokaryotic cells reproduced asexually until mutations allowed them to grow into multicellular organisms, then have specialized cells, and in the long-run become animals like humans.

"Perlegen's microarray technology shows that the human and chimpanzee genomes are more different than previously thought. In yellow, researchers have circled areas of the genome that have been rearranged over time."

I didn't just want to write aimlessly about DNA and evolution, I also want to make a point on the accuracy of evolution. The stability of structures is essential to evolution. Having such structure as an base of life shows that every organism, every cell, shares something. We all have something in common, so we all must have come from something similar. If you observe the DNA or chromosomes of different organism, you can see how species that are closer in evolution (in time) have similar characteristics. Every organism functions with the same axiom, and evolution seems to explain that better to me than other creation theories. The image above shows a comparison between human and chimpanzee DNA, and although it means nothing to me, the article explains how scientists discovered how similar they are. As believing that protein can be genetic material is outdated, evidence of evolution like this will soon obsolete the ideas that reject it completely.


This is the link of the article I mentioned: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2087758,00.html 

The Simplicity of Happines

As Candide ended, Voltaire concreted his ideas about life in the conclusion. With an allusion to the Garden of Eden, he shows that humans have to toil, to "work without arguing," in order to be happy or "make life bearable," as Martin puts it. He also implies that having a simple life is much better than living in luxury and wealth, as the Turkish philosopher thought that people are only happy when they live simple lives and Pococurante, a rich nobleman, lived unpleased in an extravagant palace. Even though I don't agree completely with him, starting with believing in the Garden of Eden or whatever it represents, I do think that people who just live without questioning everything, and simply work, tend to be happier.

I am not a real believer in that God made the Earth in a week, placed a man on it and then made a kleptomaniac woman out of his liver, but where all these ideas come from, religion, does help a lot in making things simpler, understandable and therefore more pleasing for people. By believing in the idea that humans need to follow God's will and work hard, be nice with others, be humble and do things for the good of everyone, life is made less complicated. Meanwhile, if you try to be the best always and expect good things to happen specifically to you, you will be definitely disappointed and hopelessly seek happiness and to reach your goals. I interpret that Voltaire in Candide was trying to say that in such an unfair world, it is better to resign from the complicate things, like philosophy and existentialist questions, and have a simple life where all you can do is work. As reflecting on the book made me see, it is better to focus on working on the present and finding the happy things in its simplicity rather than thinking about complicated questions about life.

Happiness: as simple as water in hot summer...

Satirizing Optimism

This week we finished our unit on satire on my English class and I feel that reading Candide introduced me to what satire is and made it into one of my favorite genres of literature. Voltaire criticizes several aspects of society, but his ultimate mockery is that life is destined to be miserable and that the world is not just. As I learned in class, satire is made up of four elements: hyperbole, irony, absurdity and a target, all which can be seen in Candide and help Voltaire mock the European society during the Age of Enlightenment and express his pessimistic philosophy. Although many times these elements are put all together, I will try to show how Voltaire used each in the book to mock his target.


To start off, hyperbole in Candide is ineluctable as it is what makes Voltaire able to satirize life. As he was trying to show that life is not fair, he used exaggerated situations to make it visible to the reader. Hyperbole can be seen simply in the miserable lives of all the characters, who get constantly imprisoned, attacked and simply fall in the misfortunes of the world, which highlight what Voltaire has to say about his targets. Exaggeration can be seen throughout the book, from the weight of the Baroness and the unwillingness of getting married because of the number of quarterings of the Baron's sister in the first page, to the overly unreasonable logic of Pangloss in the last page. Many of the characters suffer from too many unlucky events, like the stories each character tells Candide as they meet, like the old woman, or the Baron and Pangloss towards the end. Voltaire shows how unreasonable the Inquisition was by showing how the auto-da-fé was made under ridiculous reasons. In order to contrast the flaws of Europe and America with his idealistic society, Voltaire makes Eldorado a complete utopia, where people have huge amounts of wealth and live simply perfectly. To wrap up hyperbole, in Candide many of people's thoughts are made overemphasized to show how illogical they were, like that chocolate justified syphilis from the new world, or that noses are made so that people can wear spectacles.

The situations the characters face are an example of hyperbole as they move around the world and find obstacles and problems everywhere. 

Irony in Candide is mainly focused on the situations, to show that the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment were many times unreasonable. He mocks ideas like that everything was made for a reason, like that noses were made for people to wear spectacles or the constantly mentioned "cause and effect" in situation where things simply happened because of the unfairness of the world. It's also ironic that Pangloss, completely optimistic has such bad luck. All throughout Candide's life, he suffers from the most unlucky miseries, but as his name implies, is naïve and thus fails to see that the world is unfair. It is as well ironic that he struggles all his life to get Cunégonde and when he finally does, she is ugly and he doesn't really want to marry her. Irony is also used in specific targets such as the Catholic Church, as Pope Urban X has a princess daughter, Brother Giroflée is homosexual and the Church, instead of following God's will, is very cruel and irrational in things like the Inquisition. 

As it can be seen in the cover of this edition, ironically Candide is optimistic while he lives in misery. 

Absurdity in Candide is also seen from the very beginning, where a second cover page says that the book was translated from the German by Dr. Ralph, a complete absurdity. Throughout the book you can see that Voltaire uses small unrelated details that simply  give you a laugh sometimes and contribute to the satire. For instance, things like mentioning the height of Candide in one of the first chapters, having two Guarani girls be infatuated with two monkeys or saying that Brother Giroflée finally became "Turk" are some cases where Voltaire adds unrelated and unexpected details that make his work more humorous. Many times he also over explains what is happening and characters have unusual responses, like when Cunégonde is telling Candide how she was raped and imprisoned by the Bulgars, and all he replies is that he'd be interested in seeing her wound. Voltaire combines many of the elements of satire, like naming the German town Thunder-ten-Tronckh, which is partly absurdity but mostly hyperbole. The same happens with Pangloss' job, being a métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologist. 

Details like that is was translated by Dr. Ralph are an example of  how Voltaire uses absurdity to mock his target, in this case the Germans. 

As it can be seen in the previous paragraphs, Voltaire uses all these elements of literature to criticize a target, as satire does. He mainly shows that the world is not fair and that we have to toil to survive it, as he explains in the last chapter, but along the way he mocks many other things, like feudalism, or military, religion, infatuation, the use of wealth or the whole of Germany. Throughout Candide, Voltaire ridicules feudalism and the illogical wars or social segregation it brought. He makes fun of the irony of religion and the overrated romantic relations. Many times he shows that wealth wasn't being used well (and all those things that triggered the French Revolution) and the irrational philosophies of the enlightened, many times in Germany. In conclusion, as the book's title directly says, Voltaire shows that the world is unfair, while he mocks optimism, basically by satirizing the life an optimistic yet miserable person.  

Candide in Six Words

Candide:

Doomed though happy, worked to satisfaction. 

Pangloss:

Uselessly enlightened, was blind to reality.

Cacambo: 

Though moral, victim of humanity's faith. 

Cunégonde: 

Infatuated throughout life, ended doing nothing. 

Martin:

Couldn't really see behind solid pessimism. 

Old woman:

Pushed to death, managed to survive.

Humans are Perfect

At the end of chapter XXI, Candide asks Martin whether he thinks that humans have always fought each other. Martin replies with a question, asking him if hawks have always eaten pigeon, to which Candide answers that they have. Martin says that as hawks haven't changed, neither have humans. Finally Candide responds that the difference is that humans have "Free Will."

I can't say that I completely agree with what Martin said, as humanity has somewhat improved, but I did find Candide's reaction, a very human reaction. People for some reason always tend to believe that the human race is absolutely superior to any other, which quite frankly really bothers me. In terms of dominance, survival, intelligence, or the way we relate to each other humans are certainly superior than other animals, but that doesn't mean we're not animals or that other animals are bad. In a previous blog post I gave my opinion on bull fighting, and I don't mean to sound very insisting but animal cruelty and unfairness towards them is unacceptable.

I'll be brief with this, so to start off, during the last years an increasing number of scientific studies have shown that animals do have feelings, inter-specie relationships, etc (all those obvious things). Animals are not able to make advanced technology, communicate in a very elaborate way, but that doesn't mean people should underestimate them and feel worthier than them. As an owner of four dogs, I can tell for sure that they have personalities, relationships between them, an authority, a family-like structure and understand how humans feel about them. Treating animals badly affects them, even though they can't express them in human words. I don't like humans that are in love with their genetics and feel that evolution gives them perks. People who treat animals badly are highly likely to also be violent with humans. Again, I don't want to sound insistent, or a radical like PETA, but unless people want to be statistically related to criminals, they shouldn't be mean with animals. 

Some links you should check out: 

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/abuse_neglect/qa/cruelty_violence_connection_faq.html

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/6/883.full  (notice how they refer to "non-human animals")

El Dorado: Quechua for Utopia?

When Spanish explorers arrived to South America they soon heard about the legend of El Dorado. Their ambition made them imagine a city made out of gold and jewels, where their wildest dreams would come true from all the money they would get. Many made expeditions to look for the legendary city but, whether in Ecuador, Colombia, or Guyana, were always unsuccessful. Nowadays some people relate it to the tribal ceremonies that took place in Guatavita, where an indigenous chief was covered in gold dust as people threw golden objects into a lake. It is evident that the golden city does not exist, so as I read Candide, that made me question the significance this legend has. Colonizers probably exaggerated the whole story, but the Indians probably did have a myth with this utopian city were everything is perfect.

As seen in the case of El Dorado, societies create their own imaginary paradise. Whether it was in the Old World or the New World, human nature made people create one. People in India created Nirvana, Catholics had Heaven and Indigenous tribes had each their equivalent. This probably happens because people, no matter where, need to look after something, or a reason to be optimistic.


So coming back to Candide, in class we discussed whether the world was just or not, and what Voltaire would've said about that. At first I thought the world was fair if made it that way, but as I've thought further into it, I understand what that question truly mean, and that the world is unfair. The world isn't either completely unfair or fair, but it is more likely for bad things to happen than to be happy and succeed. For example, it is easier to harm someone than to help them. Like the indigenous and many other societies, people are hopelessly optimist, a perfect target for satire. Voltaire mocks how people, as social conflicts were worse than ever, were busy philosophizing, taking about "cause and effect" and still believing in their imaginary wonderlands. Explorers were optimistic about finding tons of gold, indigenous people looked forward to their afterlives, influenced by myths, as Candide, or optimism as its title says, was cheerful about living his miseries,



Note that in the present Colombian society El Dorado is not longer a utopia.

Early Deceptive Marketing

America was with no doubt the land of opportunity. The New World was where Europeans could flee crowded and impoverished cities for unexplored lands, jobs and what they thought would be success. Voltaire's Candide shows how people in Europe saw America as a way of running away from their mistakes or miseries in Europe. Pangloss earlier in the book explains that although he had been infected with syphilis, an American disease, he didn't think it was bad because the fact that colonizers had gone to America and gotten syphilis introduced Europeans with the wonders of the colonies. Voltaire most likely was mocking his illogical reasoning and that people in Europe were tricked into believing that America was great. Later on the book, Candide, Cunégonde and the old woman decided to escape from Portugal to Argentina as they had killed the Issachar and the Great Inquisitor. They not only failed to run away, as the Portuguese authorities caught up with them, but Candide ended up in a worse situation. As a fugitive again, Candide ran away from Buenos Aires to join rebels in Paraguay, and ended up killing Cunégonde's brother. Candide is clearly very unfortunate, but he represents the typical case of a European seeking a better life in the Americas and failing. Through Voltaire's satire I concluded that America, instead of a land with the best of Europe, for many wad a land with the worst of Europe. In Candide case, the wars continue, they couldn't escape their crimes (which is actually good), Cunégonde gets taken away from Candide, and her family's disapproval towards him get worse. Although many of the immigrants to the Americas eventually ended up in a good situation, most of them were victims of what people nowadays would call deceptive marketing.

People believed that the New World was a better world, and were wrong, because of many reasons, but one of them, probably one of the most important ones was the first impression they got of it. The Spanish were smart enough to name their colonies in a way that people back Spain would want to go to America. By having more people in their colonies they could further colonize them, by being able to protect their lands and have more power on the region. Places like Rio de la Plata, Puerto Plata, Puerto Rico, Buenos Aires, among many others were clearly a way colonizers tricked the Old World into falling for the idea of a land of opportunity. I guess immigrants imagined Buenos Aires as an inspiring city, inside the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, where they could grow rich with silver. Others were simply mesmerized by the idea of a rich island. Other places were named after cities or regions in the Old World. Immigrants thought they were going to a better version of their homelands, like New Spain or New Granada. Instead that found themselves in undeveloped, feudal, violent and isolated jungles.

How they thought live would be:

How it actually was:

Describing the savage circumstances in which executions were into entertainment, and how they shall stop existing

Everyone seems to be debating about the status of bullfighting, and while reading Candide I thought of it, so I might as well just say my opinion. The Romans had fun watching gladiators fight each other or in some cases with animals. Even though it started as a way to humiliate prisoners while the elite had fun, it became an opportunity for these prisoners to move up the social ladder, if they survived. Romans built coliseums all over their territory where, though they had a fancy structure, saw people kill each other in the most sanguinary and savage way. They even brought up exotic animals from their colonies, like elephants, lions, tigers or rhinoceros. The demand for these colossal and imposing grew so much that animals like the European lion became luckily extinct, or near to be in other cases. The Roman Empire ended and its culture dissolved into into its territories as each became its own nation.

Gladiator fighting a tiger in a coliseum

While man-to-man gladiators stopped existing, the culture of watching people or animals die and suffer remains up to the present. Candide and Lady Cunégonde end up living in Portugal while the Inquisition was still strong. They witnessed the death of their friend and teacher Pangloss in an auto-da-fé. The story of how that happened is told in the perspectives of both, Candide and Cunégonde. On one side, Candide saw how innocent people were captured by the Portuguese authorities for the sake of having a killing. He was wounded but Pangloss was killed. On the other side, Cunégonde was invited to an honoring seat at the execution where she could enjoy of refreshments. Anyway, when she realized that Pangloss was being killed, everything changed and she felt horrible. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions were the outcome of a lot of things going on at that time, but what opened up the opportunity for it to happen was the savage foundations of these cultures.

People observing an auto-da-fé in a town's plaza

In an auto-da-fé heretics were burned usually in the town's plaza as everyone watched and enjoyed. Prisoners sometimes held symbols on their clothes to represent the crimes that had committed. People who went to the ceremony had a feast where they celebrated their Catholicism and culture. Thankfully this doesn't happen anymore but bullfighting does. Although these two things are almost incomparable as one includes religious and political persecution to humans while the other only includes bulls, but they do have similar customs and past. Bullfighting has a similar ceremony to that of a gladiator or an auto-da-fé. People gather around a plaza-like structure where they celebrate, socialize and enjoy a passion. The Roman elite yelled with emotion and what they said could influence what the gladiators did. In bullfighting people can ask the bullfighter to let the bull live in a similar way. People defend bullfighting saying that it is an art, a passion, part of their culture. That sounds to me similar to the acts of faith or auto-da-fé of the Inquisitions, where people went to honor their religion and preserve their culture, as the heretics were damaging it. Bullfighting has an overbearing tradition of procedures and symbols or whatever, as did the Spanish Inquisition.

A man fighting an animal in a plaza. Sounds similar? 

Recently the new mayor of Bogota, Gustavo Petro, threatened to make bullfighting illegal. I don't sympathize with many of his ideas, but I do with this one. He won't probably carry out his idea, as since he became mayor all he's done is to threaten to do unconventional things in order to raise attention and, in the biased way I see it, to cause social instability to make him raise in politics as a populist. Bullfighting fanatics come up with a lot of arguments, but all I think is that since the Spanish Inquisition or gladiators were cruel and simply bad, they shouldn't have any heritage. We shouldn't celebrate the killing of an animal, even if that creates an industry and the existence of the animal. Bulls are better off unborn than killed for the sake of entertainment. I don't mean to be offensive but the pro-bullfighting arguments have logic as good as the Inquisition had, where they though killing people would prevent an earthquake, like in Pangloss' case.

Your argument is invalid.

Things Happen Because of Reasons

Voltaire's Candide targets mostly the way of living during the Enlightenment, such as feudalism and the illogical wars, but many of its critiques can be seen in the present world. Pangloss, for example, is portrayed as a great philosopher, but his ideas have no corroboration. Voltaire mocks his "metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology” as he says all things have been made for a purpose, such as legs, stones, pigs, among others. The philosopher even thinks that it was worth getting infected with syphilis because if it wasn't for Europeans to have gone to America and getting syphilis, they wouldn't have chocolate. He also says that an earthquake not only happens because of the sulphur but also that it is for the best. Other illogical things happen in the book, like accusations to make a war and religious agitations. People laugh while reading this, so Voltaire is a great satirist.
Maybe we think that these are stupid things that don't happen anymore, but these problems still exist and we're not laughing about it. Voltaire covers these problems with satire but in real life you don't get news edited into making people realize how illogical some conflicts are. People get discriminated because of their religion, religion causes people to attack others. People are accused as traitors in wars and required to fight. There's a lot of people who might not be philosophers like Pangloss but they have irrational ideas, like racism, homophobia, or xenophobia. The image below says, "observe that noses were made to wear spectacles," well now, observe that some people are simple inferior because they are. Life would be much more interesting if we satirized it all the time for it to look like Voltaire showed it, as the world has a lot of illogical ideas with a huge potential of satire. 

The Political Status of Puerto Rico

Check out some of these two links that relate to some of the things I said.

• Social security: http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/econ/ss_facts_05_pr.pdf 
• Puerto Ricans in American wars: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/puertorico/soldiers.htm