We don’t need all the modern frills

To the editor:

I never worried much about what I wanted to be when I grew up, and after high school I took a dead-end job until something better came along. A year later, I had a chance to leave Ohio and go to Alaska, which I did for a year and a half, and when I returned I ended up getting addicted to booze. Then I got married and we had three kids before I had to get sober, and after that we had three more kids and then got a divorce. After another marriage and divorce, I stayed single and became a mostly self-employed handyman for a few years. At age 40 I had a mid-life crisis that required me to re-learn everything I thought I knew. I ended up in Alaska where I started all over, and things worked out well. Now, I’m retired, but I’m still not much more than a handyman, and I still haven’t become anything in particular, which doesn’t really matter because I’m healthy and content.

I learned a lot the second time around, but it hasn’t made much difference in the world around me. I feel good about myself, and I’d like to share some of my peace of mind and contentment, but those things need to be earned by one’s own efforts. I was fortunate that my life-circumstances had required me to become honest with myself and do a lot of difficult introspection. I still remember “discovering” that lying to myself — or to anyone else — is a really stupid thing to do, and I also learned how hard it is to figure out what is really true, and even though it seems futile, I continue trying. Nothing really goes to waste in this world — especially our efforts toward self-improvement and our attempts to solve social problems that are caused by partisan politics and greedy corporations. I suspect that some of our political leaders and Wall Street moguls use their position to twist our old-fashioned ideals — of honesty, fairness, and a concern for the “good of the group” — into the false belief that an excess of money, goods and services constitute modern success.

The evening news can be discouraging in its depiction of the modern world, but an open-minded look at human history reveals there has been enormous progress since modern man came on the scene. The Neanderthals were expert survivors who lived through 400,000 years of ice ages, climate change and viral infections, but they couldn’t compete with their more modern cousins, who continue to benefit from the Neanderthal survival skills. Our science and improved communications ensure that our slow progress will continue, but survival will always be the main goal in the game of human life, where politics can go wrong, and greed is a major distraction to genuine success. Our main assets are the common sense of Neanderthals and our own old-fashioned self-honesty, plus a healthy concern for the good of the group. It is also likely we’ll soon learn that we honestly don’t need all the modern frills.

Art Carney

Wasilla