Humans a ‘step in the right direction’

To the editor:

My search for a personal philosophy of life began to take shape at age 27 when I finally quit drinking booze.

I expected to live happily ever after, but among other things, my idealistic beliefs caused problems that resulted in a divorce — after being sober for 10 years. A second marriage also failed, which was followed by a mid-life crisis that forced me to start all over and create a new outlook on life based on common sense and the circumstances of the present time.

After a few years of adjusting to a new way of thinking, I found that our beliefs do not necessarily have to be true, but they do need to be sincere if any good is to come from them. For instance, I really believed the problems in my first marriage would eventually be worked out. I believed that right up to the bitter end of the marriage. The point is, my false belief enabled me to maintain a mostly positive attitude during most of those troubled years.

Hindsight is 20/20, and now I realize it was my troubles that compelled me to get honest with myself and re-evaluate my core beliefs and personal values. By age 50, I had acquired a new understanding of life, which gave rise to some much appreciated peace of mind. Later, at retirement age, I had an overwhelming realization that everything in the world makes sense — because the universe is governed by the principles of intelligence that are inherent in the laws of physics. In other words, the universe and the realm of life are products of intelligent principles that always “make sense.”

After trying and failing to explain my new ideas to friends and neighbors, I came to realize that all human individuals are at different levels of development from everyone else, and we are all trying to satisfy our own needs according to our own beliefs and values.

Then it occurred to me that, to some extent, we are the masters of our own destiny because we are responsible for the consequences of our personal choices. However, we must keep in mind that the quality of our lives depend on the well-being of our community, and our survival as a species depends on the good of the group.

Simply put, I came to believe that a combination of intelligence and emotion is a (Godlike?) force of logic that exploded in a Big Bang.

That singular event was an outward manifestation of logical forces that coalesced into the intelligent laws of physics and the emotional force of life. The laws of physics and the evolution of life govern the universe. We humans achieved the use reason and the awareness of passion in our struggle to survive and be happy, and those attributes of reason and passion are enhanced applications of intelligence and emotion, which indicates that even the original force of logic is evolving in an upward spiral of growth and improvement.

In the scheme of things, human beings are a step in the right direction — despite our politics and religion.

Art Carney

Wasilla