In one of the best novels ever, and in my opinion the satire that better describes our entry into modernity, a young man named Candide travels the world together with his philosophical mentor, Professor Pangloss. They suffer all sorts of misfortunes. They were forcibly conscripted into the army, beaten, mugged, caught by earthquakes, convicted by the Portuguese Inquisition, raped, and again beaten and mugged. Every time a new misfortune happened, Professor Pangloss proclaimed, however, “everything was going well in the best of all possible worlds”.

The reason why that satire is so effective has nothing to do with the fact that the 18th century – when Voltaire wrote it, a few years after the Great Lisbon Earthquake, under the title Candide or the Optimism – was such a terrible century. Quite contrary, the 18th century was by then the best century ever, and since then it has won all kinds of brilliant titles, from the Age of Enlightment to the Age of Reason. This satire is very effective as it attacks those who think things will work well in the best of all possible worlds without having to do anything for it. Voltaire’s main target was the German philosopher Leibnitz, who was known for believing that God had a plan for humanity, and that everything was going according to that plan.

God’s role in this plan was later replaced by the figure of Progress, by the invisible hand of the Markets, by the historical law of Class Struggle or even by the goal of the End of History. Each one of us has their own Pangloss Professors, always ready to brush all the inconsistencies between reality and theory with a layer of explanatory varnish. What these indoctrinators forgot was that, quite contrary to God, Progress or Technique having a plan for humanity, humanity will be lost if it doesn’t’ come up with a plan of its own.

The alternative to this type of circular thinking like the one shared by Pangloss is not pessimism, fatalism or decadentism. The truth is that each of these ages was in general better than the previous one, at least by from the moment when charts were produced ns showing the point when human wealth and well-being took spiralled almost vertically, precisely in the 18th century. But the problem doesn’t lie there. The 19th century was obviously wealthier than the 18th century, the 20th was wealthier than the 19th, and the 21st was wealthier than the 20th. All they were also, safe for epidemics, healthier. And also, safe for the wars, more comfortable. And all those centuries have witnessed innovations and discoveries emerge that have greatly improved the life of humanity. But sticking to that description can lead us to immoral arguments: after all, what differentiates the 1920s from the 1930s or the 1940s is not the fact that the latter had more houses with electricity or that radiotelephony became widespread. To say so is not to lie, but rather failing to see the moral evidence: what differentiates the start of the 1940s from the early 1920s is the rise of fascism and the mass murder machine of the holocaust. In that sense, humanity has gone backwards, even if technical innovations have not been uninvented or the economy has grown during the war.

Current times are now dangerous given the level of democratic setback, the collapse of the rule of law, the return of national populism, the growth of intolerance and the destructive bias. Current times are entering a stage of existential crisis as a result of an ecological crisis falling out of control and the resulting climate change. None of this prevents cell phones and computers from getting better, the economy has made progress in relation to the 2008 crisis and there is even now a counterculture of tolerance, ecology and cosmopolitanism among the young. But that is not what defines current times.

Politics, culture and human morality don’t always walk along the same lines of technology or science, or even of economics. And the consequences of forgetting this are often disastrous. We should bear this in mind at all times and in particular after 2020 – so that our history will not be written by the wrong hands.

After all, it is up to us to “grow our own garden”, just like Candide finally answered Pangloss after having heard too many times that everything was going well in the best of all possible worlds.