Best of all possible worlds

I hear that quote often. "Best of all possible worlds".

I wonder how many people that use it understand where it came from.

There was a philosophy called Optimism. It was thought up to explain why, in religeous terms, there was evil in the world.

All powerful creator right? Watches over us? Why would he create a world in which there was evil?

Optimism held that not all worlds were possible, and that we live in the best of the possible worlds. In other words, God did what he could.

In Candide, Voltaire refuted that, through irony and satire. Candide wanders through a world filled with horrors and cruelty, and at ever gruesome step someone it assuring him that this is the "best of all possible worlds".

Personally, I've always believed that there are two kinds of evil. There's evil that is a circumstance of nature. This is things like volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. This evil is endemic to the way our universe works.

Actually, I can understand this evil. If humankind is to achieve its potential, there must be trials and obstacles. If the afterlife is the IMPORTANT part of our existence, then what happens here is our time to show our mettle.

Face it. In a perfect world, we'd all end up as couch potatoes.

The second type of evil springs from free will. If you think about it, there's no way for free will to exist without the possibility of people doing evil. As long as we're not all robots, there will be murder, cruelty, or (more commonly) callous disregard due to selfishness.

So far, it seems ok. By those criteria, we might BE living in the best of all possible worlds. Given the prerequisites of motivation to achieve, and free will, the evils we face might be inevitable.

But, if you look a bit more closely...

Why must there be so much natural evil that is out of our control?

Why are some people so hardwired to be evil?

Why must we constantly be in a battle to assert good over evil, or in simpler terms... Why must they always have all the advantages?

I dunno. I think Optimism is dead.