Explore the search for truth and answers

My interest in the perplexities of human life began with the miseries of alcoholism that compelled me to get serious and get sober at age 27. From then on, I saw things from a broader point of view and eventually became disillusioned with organized religion, which was replaced by an attempt to find the real purpose of human life.

My efforts to find an ultimate Truth continued through two divorces, various changes in occupation, and a mid-life crisis that revealed to my satisfaction, that there is no purpose for human life. At that point, I decided to begin living as if there is no God, and I abandoned what remained of any religious faith — including my heretical belief in reincarnation that had given me a reason to hope our trials and tribulations are not suffered in vain.

My outward behavior remained pretty much the same, but after adopting a secular point of view, my mid-life crisis ended when I quit worrying about a divine “plan” and began to pursue what I saw as my own best interest. Surprisingly though, I soon found that we are still answerable to something that is greater than ourselves. Later, it occurred to me that human culture is an ever-present authority over human behavior, and it compels us to obey the laws and customs of the land and provide for our own well-being and that of our loved ones and community. As long as we maintain our culture’s moral values and support our economic and other cultural institutions, humanity will survive and prosper. Regardless of being Eastern, Western, primitive or modern, human culture provides a sustainable way of life to humanity. In a very real sense, human culture is the “secular religion” of mankind, and it is unwittingly practiced by all human beings, even though they are mostly unaware that it provides our “God-given blessings” in the form of social order, employment, education and modern convenience.

Sadly, in spite of our culture’s benevolent aspects, discord exists between the religious beliefs of different “national ideologies,” such as Shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the God of Western religion. Fortunately, the discord is slowly being tempered by the secular nature of human culture, which is slowly incorporating tolerance into the ever-expanding emotional awareness of humanity. In a manner of speaking, human culture utilizes—instead of trying to change—the self-centered nature of human beings through common sense, which will modify their religious beliefs to conform to their greater need for cross-cultural harmony in our new world order. The group’s goodwill always prevails.

As these ideas took root, I began to learn “how to live” as I came to accept the fact that both good and bad luck bring about the vicissitudes of life that are an inevitable part of being human. Accidents really do happen! I also found that accepting a less-than-happy state of mind is better than the frustration of pursuing an impossible dream, and as I adjusted to living alone on my small subsistence farm, I learned the value of individuality, as well as the benefits of being part of the local community.

In effect, I settled down, but shortly after retirement age it occurred to me one day — beside a small river — that, “Everything in the world makes sense.” It was somewhat like the spiritual experience that helped me get sober many years earlier, but at this time in my life, I was content with both the good and bad realities of my life and circumstances. Even so, I felt compelled to find the reason why everything in the world makes sense, so I resumed my previously abandoned search for Truth.

During the next 10 years I sought to find a rational explanation for the Big Bang and the origin of man, which required me to “re-interpret” the book of Genesis according to my own imagination and experience, plus some ideas from my intermittent studies at the local college. Slowly, I became able to envision that the energy of the universe came into being in the emptiness of space — when basic bits and pieces of intelligence and emotion came together and formed the “force” of primordial logic. The synergism induced by the union of intelligence and emotion infused the force of energy with the basic principles of logic, causing the activation of the (intelligent) laws of physics and the awakening of life’s (emotional) will-to-live.

The result was the Big Bang and the formation of our physical universe and the evolving realm of life.

Although primordial logic is a “logical” force, it does not have a mind or a will of its own; it is only a well-spring of intelligent and emotional energy that forms matter and expresses life — the laws of physics automatically govern the actions of matter, while involuntary emotions motivate the behavior of life. The reason why everything in the world “makes sense” is because everything expresses the underlying nature of logic. More simply put, matter and life are incapable of doing anything stupid.

On the other hand, self-consciousness enables human beings to make choices and pursue their own emotional priorities. However, we are born self-centered and ignorant because — except for self-consciousness — our mind is a blank slate at birth so we must learn everything through a process of trial and error, and things might not always stand up to reason. Nevertheless, human beings also “make sense” because we accumulate knowledge and experience while learning from our mistakes.

We spend our entire life expressing the nature of primordial logic by utilizing intelligence and experiencing emotion. If we assume that souls exist on a higher plane of life, then we can speculate that “our” soul awakened the self-consciousness of our (blank) mind at the time of our birth, and if that is the case, then it “makes sense” that when we die our non-physical inner-self, which is the sum total of our individual lifetime of experience, will become a part of “our” soul’s living memory, which includes the total range of its “human” history.

Art Carney lives in Wasilla.