Read Candide by Voltaire. It was written 260 years ago and it will make you laugh out loud. Voltaire created a naive young man named Candide, tutored by the relentlessly optimistic Doctor Pangloss. Pangloss believes no matter what happens that we are living in the best of all possible worlds. Then Voltaire hurls them through earthquakes, the Inquisition, slavery, disease, betrayal, and every catastrophe imaginable. And there's Pangloss, glossing over all of it with cheerful optimism. That gap be