This is Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
In 1759, the French writer and philosopher Voltaire published a satirical novel about a young man and his tutor.
Pangloss, the tutor, instructs the student, Candide, that they live in, quote, the best of all possible worlds.
As the story unfolds, Candide witnesses war, disease, natural disasters, torture, and death.
Pangloss encounters many of these tragedies himself.
Yet, no matter what happens, he continues to insist that everything is unfolding exactly as it should.
It's from this character that we get the word Panglossian, describing someone
who relentlessly maintains that everything is for the best.
Most of us are not as optimistic as Pangloss,
but many of us do carry assumptions in our heads about how life works,
that good choices lead to good outcomes, that the world is fair,
and that everything will make sense in the end.
These assumptions are often unconscious and unarticulated until something happens to destabilize us.
This week on Hidden Brain and in a companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus when bad things happen to good people.
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