“The Only Way To Improve Politics Is By Talking Less About It“, Swarajya, 10 Sep 2026.
“Voltaire never trusted the masses with power. He persuaded the people who held the levers instead. The exhausted office worker cannot hold a reasoned view on every policy, and asking it of her is not democracy but cruelty. Citizens must rather tend their own families, work, and neighbourhoods.
Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu (Once the people begin to reason, all is lost). [Voltaire, in a letter to his friend Étienne Noël Damilaville, 1 April 1766]
In his magnum opus Candide, or Optimism (1759), the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire imagines a guileless young hero named Candide who is banished from the idyllic castle of Westphalia after kissing the baron’s daughter. In his exile, Candide wanders through Italy, England and finally Turkey, witnessing every form of human folly the eighteenth century could offer: war, slavery, greed and hypocrisy.
By the end of the novella, exhausted and disillusioned, he and his companions come upon a small, tranquil farmstead along the shores of the Propontis, where a humble old farmer tends his plot of land.
Candide’s companions “asked the old man what the name of the strangled Mufti was. ‘I don’t know,’ answered the worthy man, ‘and I have never known the name of any Mufti, nor of any Vizier. I have no idea what you’re talking about; my general view is that people who meddle with politics usually meet a miserable end, and indeed they deserve to. I never bother with what is going on in Constantinople; I only worry about sending the fruits of the garden which I cultivate off to be sold there.'”
At first the farmer may come off as rude, but he is not. He even invites Candide and his companions to his house, where his children present them with several sorts of appetisers.
“‘You must have a vast and magnificent estate,’ said Candide to the Turk. ‘I have only twenty acres,’ replied the old man; ‘I and my children cultivate them; and our labour preserves us from three great evils: weariness, vice, and want.’ Candide, on his way home, reflected deeply on what the old man had said. ‘This honest Turk,’ he said to Pangloss and Martin, ‘seems to be in a far better place than kings… I also know,’ said Candide, ‘that we must cultivate our garden.'”…………”
Read the full article at Swarajya.
