Double Blood's Golden Drippings of a Dirty Mind

Money, Beginning Thoughts

2011-11-29T08:58:00.001-08:00

The current state of economic inequality is rooted in the concept and practice of money. What is money? What are the current rules surrounding money and what have those rules been in the past? What do we want the practice of money to do, and how do we most efficiently achieve those ends? An economy is a group of people who operate under the same rules and who regularly trade goods and services among themselves. Money is a promise to return a good or service received. Because it is a promise, it has no self-limiting need to fit the actual world. People can promise and promise until there is no way for them to fulfill their obligations. Can we base money on anything else? Could rolling back and eventually ending the practices of interest and money-lending move us toward a sustainable economy rather than our current unsustainable growth economy?

Bill Wilson, light & loose with the truth

2011-08-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Bill Wilson used two quotes in Alcoholics Anonymous. Neither is correct. "Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire grenadier, who caught his death drinking cold small beer. Soldiers be wise from his untimely fall, when ye're hot drink strong or none at all." The "contempt prior to investigation" is not Herbert Spencer's but was a misquote of a misquote that came from a book Anglo-Israel in which it was argued that the British were the lost tribes of Israel.

The point?

Mr Wilson played light and loose with the truth. At best, he was sloppy; at worst, a liar. His BRILLIANT (yet borrowed) idea was that people with irrational cravings could create societies to help each other deal with those cravings. The rest of his writings should be treated very cautiously. He never "worked" the beloved steps that he wrote. (Pass It On, pp 298-299.) Mr Wilson further claimed the steps were dictated to him by the spirit of his Ouija board (Pass It On, pp 196-197, 278-279.)

Secular Recovery comes to Modesto!

2011-01-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

I feel a little resentful that my AA friends are allowed to tell their stories in hospitals, rehabs, and jails. I would like to be able to tell others my story about my recovery without a higher power or stepwork. To that end, I've decided to affiliate with the secular group, LifeRing. I see as AA2K, an upgrade to AA. It captures the best of AA (social support) and eliminates the powerlessness barrier, the God barrier, the inventory & confession, and amends-making. It is open to people with any history of chemical dependence, encourages people to give up tobacco, and encourages psychiatric pharmacological treatment. It also allows people the freedom to avoid self-identifying as an alcoholic or addict. Our local website can be found at modestolifering.org.

Post-modernism is gibberish.

2010-11-24T15:25:00.001-08:00

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

There is a barbarism that is stalking America...

2010-11-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

a Christian-Zionist Taliban. We have to make religion, all religion, socially unacceptable. We cannot let people spout gibberish as fact, because reality is too precious. The fantasymongers blaspheme Reality. I like a tall tale and a bit of fantasy as much as anyone. But I worked too hard and too long to teach myself to think and to weigh evidence. And I will not let people pose as authorities because they can recite their personal gibberish better than others.

Buddhism...

2010-11-23T11:43:00.000-08:00

is a halfway house on the road to atheism. It feels like you're enveloped in a religion, a tradition, a set of proscriptions and rituals, but there's no god. Karma is a shriveled leftover of the divine judge and it poses as universal natural law. When you finally evolve past Buddha, you realize that only you are left to play God.

Boundaries, boundaries, all round!

2010-11-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

Boundaries are rules I set for myself, not others, to observe - what I myself will do when others frustrate my reasonably stated and rational expectations.

The "Politics" of Twelve Steps

2009-10-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, I did it. I threw up my hands and have removed myself from the local AA honcho scene. I was working my ass off for a local AA event, when I hear a supposed friend tell a newcomer that the meeting I started wasn't "real AA." That remark, and one "kill Obama" joke too many forced me to my senses. I gave up trying to educate these hicks. Here's my resignation letter that I posted in the local AA newsletter.

FAREWELL TO THE INTERGROUP

I am quitting all my service positions. CVI & MCVYPAA will need someone to run their websites, create the newsletter, keep the calendars current, and act as Intergroup Chairperson. I have tried to sophisticate AA in this area, but it’s no use when the founding text is laden with religious terms and when this area has gleaming churches next to rundown schools. The courts find AA to be a religious institution; I agree. I got sober without a Higher Power and I received little benefit, and perhaps some harm, from working the Steps. But the religious mind ignores and discounts all evidence that does not support its orthodoxy. I think it is a fraud and unlicensed medicine to imply to desperate folks that a Higher Power and working the Steps are necessary to stay sober. I hope AA can make a searching and moral inventory of its Big Book and beliefs and weigh them against clear reasoning and all the evidence. Ciao bebes, [Diogenes Akritas].

At my weekly Saturday morning meeting last week, the topic was which step you are "on." I shared about the AA philosophy - not worrying about things I can't control and looking for what I can do. I shared that this philosophy has greatly helped me. I also shared that sobriety has improved my life, health, and attitude immensely. AA philosophy and sobriety - two great things that have NOTHING to do with each other. There are too many counter-examples of drunken Twelve Steppers and non-Stepper folks with long term sobriety. I repeated that it's bad medicine to tell people that the Steps will get them sober.

After my share, someone said they wanted to stay out of "the politics" surrounding the Steps - they just did them and they helped. Politics?! When I state that something is bad science - that has nothing to do with politics. It is or it isn't. These Stepper cult members would like to think my statement was mere politics - that way they can rest smugly in the belief that their opinion is as valuable and as important as anyone else's. But science isn't democratic. Credentials, mental prowess, and careful observations matter.

My friend is just another cult member missing the point - there is no evidence that the Steps get people sober. There is some evidence that getting together for sober social support helps, but that is not the Steps. In fact, there is no step that states "we regularly went to meetings."

What about all those sincere people that really believe the Steps got them sober? Well, sincerity doesn't fucken matter when it comes to science - integrity does. Someone may have noticed that birds return each Spring before the lake thaws - someone may sincerely believe the birds' return caused the thaw - but someone would be wrong. When people are finally ready to quit drinking and using, they become willing to stop. That willingness may also cause them to do tasks other people suggest such as the Steps. The willingness causes both the abstinence and the step-work. The fact that they happen around the same time does not mean that either caused the other.

My recovery hiatus...

2009-02-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

I would like to apologize to the well-wishers who have encouraged me to begin posting again. I have been busy with my activist sober life and haven't felt angry enough about AA meetings to voice my dissent. I only go to "safe" meetings that I had a hand in developing so I'm comfortable and don't have to defend my atheism or my belief that the twelve-step system is a medical fraud.

My anger, however, has been building toward religion and faith in general. I started a Facebook group called The Godless Horde that hopefully will arrange atheist pride parades, atheist lobbies, atheist fellowships, and actively attack religion and faith — picketing places of worship with provocative slogans and come-on-let's-fight postures.

I am a trained philosopher and a lawyer. I’ve spent over 25 years wrestling with theodicies, trying to come up with answers to the Problem of Evil. The best answer I found is that there is no loving God. I do not have time for the immoral Jewish jingoism of the Hebrew scriptures and the bloody genocides committed by Jews against those in their way. I don't have time for the Quran and its reiteration of the Jewish and Christian exclusion and animus against outsiders.

I do not have the time to waste with Christian apologies. I still love certain passages of the Koine scriptures. I still try to live by the principles in the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5-7; Luke 6) But the whole gospel premise is silly and mean. A gruesome death is required to pay for the theft of a fruit 4000 years earlier. God can’t forgive humanity without a gruesome death. Oy!!!

RELIGION IS EVIL. It's our job to get rid of it.

DoubleBlood in the news...

2009-01-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

Forgiveness...

2008-12-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

means giving up all hope of a better past.

- Landrum Bolling

What the American public doesn't know...

2008-01-16T17:18:00.000-08:00

is what makes them the American public.

Take a look at http://home.earthlink.net/~bbaa.library/quiz_on_world_affairs.WMV

Original closing of How It Works

2007-12-28T07:36:00.001-08:00

You can find a transcription of the original manuscript here or here. You can see a copy of some of the original pages here.

How It Works originally offered people the choice of completely ignoring the steps and the Big Book. This was obviously not a good idea for an ambitious, fledgling alcoholic cult. But it does show that a certain free spiritedness and enlightened secularism were present in early AA. How It Works originally ended with these words:

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after, have been designed to sell you three pertinent ideas:
(a) That you are alcoholic and cannot manage your own life.
(b) That probably no human power can relieve your alcoholism.
(c) That God can and will.
If you are not convinced on these vital issues, you ought to re-read the book to this point or else throw it away! [Emphasis added.]

Well said, Mr William Griffith Wilson!

Another thoughtful review of Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure - A MUST READ!

2007-12-27T17:01:00.000-08:00

Marty N of LifeRing Secular Recovery wrote a very insightful review of Charles Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure? To read Marty N's must-read review, click here. To read Bufe's book, click here.

Marty N reminds me of earlier remarks I have made on this blog concerning AA's pretension to practice medicine. He states:

It seems to me that AA’s attachment to the disease theory is skin-deep and purely opportunistic. The disease theory serves as a psychological hammer with which to crack the tough egos of certain types of alcoholics and open them up for religious indoctrination. It serves as respectable, scientific windowdressing for AA’s evangelical religious program, much like the "Science" in "Scientology" and in "Christian Science," which AA most resembles. It serves as political camouflage for the maneuvers of the invisible AA to channel public funds into AA pockets. It is the sheep’s cloak on the Buchmanite wolf.

Instead of peremptorily dismissing the disease theory, as Bufe does, it would be sounder strategy to hold AA to its claims and to demand from it the same accountability that is applied to other medical and quasi-medical efforts. Since alcoholism is a disease, those who purport to dispense advice about it to sufferers, e.g. AA sponsors, should be examined for basic medical competency and either licensed and bonded or prosecuted. Since alcoholism is a disease, accurate epidemiological and outcome statistics should be required of all entities that benefit from public funds related to its treatment. Refusal of an entity to submit to controlled double-blind efficacy studies using standard sociometric techniques should be immediate ground for termination of funding. Since alcoholism is a disease, there should be no less openness toward alternative treatment modalities than in treatment of other diseases. Since alcoholism is a disease, an approach that relies primarily on religious conversion should get the same short shrift as such methods receive in the medical treatment of diabetes, allergies, and other diseases with which alcoholism is often compared. The disease theory, if really taken seriously and applied consistently, is the burial shroud for the whole legacy of Buchmanite "soul surgery" in AA.

I'm beginning to feel less alone and more convinced in my criticisms. Thanks, Marty N of LifeRing Secular Recovery!

To become the person you want to be...

2007-12-27T10:19:00.002-08:00

you have to give up the person you are.

AA: Cult or Cure? Posted at Briggsmore Beach

2007-12-26T15:41:00.000-08:00

I've just posted Chaz Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure? in the Briggsmore Beach online library. To access the library, click here. The following are excerpts from Dr Stanton Peele's review of the book:

In conducting this evaluation, the reader feels Chaz is not an ideologue. He gives credit where credit is due, acknowledging the brilliant insights of AA-founder Bill W., represented particularly in the 12 Traditions that Bill authored for AA. Chaz sees in these a successful blueprint for ensuring the democracy of AA as an organization not beholden to commercial, political, or intellectual interests.
* * *
Unfortunately, this strength is vitiated ... by the tyranny of the group and AA philosophy over the individual. There is little room for individual variation and none for individual questioning of AA. The AA attendee does not speculate that he or she may not be an alcoholic, or question any of the 12 steps — for example, the need to turn oneself over to a "higher power."
* * *
Chaz also shows — often through analysis of original data sources — that AA succeeds with relatively few (5% at most) of the massive numbers of alcoholics who wander through its meetings. The data which show this are general population surveys, AA's own membership studies, and research on outcomes of AA and other 12-step treatment (which forms the overwhelming majority of treatment programs in the U.S.). But AA is not concerned with data about its effectiveness or the numbers of people it leaves out in the cold. The fundamental goal of AA is to propagate the 12-step belief system and to support the small minority that finds this approach facilitative of recovery.
* * *
Chaz takes as his fundamental task to evaluate whether AA (and the ubiquitous 12-step treatment programs based on AA's model) comprises a cult involvement.... Examining cult philosophies and indoctrination techniques, he answers with a qualified "yes": the most important therapy group/technique in the U.S., in the eyes of the public, media, and health care system, is in many ways a brainwashing factory, one whose impact has led to no reduction in alcoholism in the U.S. In fact, by discouraging alternative approaches and free thinking about America's drinking problems, AA may have had exactly the opposite impact.

But the good news, in Chaz's analysis, is that America's honeymoon with AA is nearly over. Chaz traces this cultural shift to the recent more critical thrust of popular articles on AA and its 12-step philosophy, repeated negative court decisions on the constitutionality of forcing people to attend AA/12-step programs, and a growing awareness of AA's limited effectiveness — as well as to his own and other books, many published by See Sharp Press. In the next quarter century, Chaz predicts, what has often been AA's reign of terror over American alcoholism treatment will end.

Went to a Christmas marathon meeting this morning...

2007-12-25T22:12:00.000-08:00

I held my tongue and let people prattle on about God and the Steps. I was there because I was grateful that I had a sober Christmas morning, and that room had been somehow instrumental in getting me to this place. I shared from my heart. I mentioned I had achieved some measure of sobriety without a Higher Power and the Steps. But I didn't harp on this fact. I was content and at peace. The others with their god, bible, and steps didn't bother me ... that simply was not what happened to me. There's a lot of the program I agree with, that I have been helped by. For example, page 84 of the Big Book reads:

Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol.

This is my program. No twelves, no sequence or order. Just simple principles that have become part of my habits and my life.

The Bible says "Love thy neighbor."

2007-12-25T21:45:00.001-08:00

That could also mean leaving them alone.

- Charles Bukowski.

Ferguson's story

2007-12-19T09:57:00.001-08:00

Click here.

Prayer for Understanding

2007-12-19T09:28:00.000-08:00

Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Open our hearts to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

A friend thought "psychotic" was too strong a word to describe the religious...

2007-11-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Of course, there’s a survival value to religion that arises from not angering religious psychotics that you live among. But the survival value I’m talking about arose around the time of symbolic thinking – the ability to recall complicated commands of an alpha individual in the primate troop. Professor Julian Jaynes of Princeton University (The Origin of Consciousness, 1976) noted that certain portions of the right brain are virtually unused by modern humans. When these areas are stimulated, the subject hears authoritative voices and thunders. The subjects sometimes report that the voices remind them of parents or teachers from the past. I believe this area of the brain has a lot to do with the conscience. Jaynes also notes that ancient literature is filled with hallucinations, and he hazards that people in the past lived in hallucinated wisdom (and folly). Jaynes also notes that the first temples seem to have been built around the tombs of chiefs, suggesting the possibility that people would go to the tomb to listen for the voice of their fallen chief.

I believe the contents of the conscience are personal and these contents vary between individuals. I believe esteem issues and inability to discipline one's reason prevent people from taking their personal ethical positions seriously. Therefore, they recast their personal conscience as God’s will. Unlike their personal conscience, this “will” cannot and should not be questioned. This “will” doesn’t have to provide reasons. Since debate is foreclosed, the only tools of persuasion are unreasonable benevolence (Mother Teresa) or unreasonable violence or threats of such violence. This good cop-bad cop routine is a classic evangelical ploy. Many people overlook religion's over-the-top claims of singular infallible revelation because of all the "good" and community that seems to be generated. However, the goodness seen is not that different from the goodness shown by loving primate groups which operate, I assume, without any supernatural beliefs.

Abraham is considered the father of all three great western monotheisms. Abraham became an example of faith when he listened to a voice that asked him to murder his son upon an altar (Gen 22). Nobody says this, but Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, originated in this mad act. The madness continues and can easily be seen when you deny a religious person the use of his silly and bloody scriptures in debate.

Freedom of speech and thought is only 200 years old. I’m afraid we could lose it if our liberal politeness and courtesy allow these lunatics to say whatever they want without argument or evidence.

Mood for the day: feisty.

On any given Sunday... or Sabbath...

2007-11-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

In the three great western monotheisms, the story of Abraham almost taking his son Isaac's life is recited as a show of faith that anointed Abraham as the father of faith. The Jewish version, in Genesis 22:1-18, reads in the King James as follows:

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, [here] I [am]. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only [son] Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid [it] upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here [am] I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where [is] the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here [am] I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son] from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind [him] a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said [to] this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.

And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son]: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which [is] upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

The Christians and Muslims have cited this passage with approval. For all three great faiths, this is the gold-measure of faith.

However, to a modern ear, Abraham sounds dangerously psychotic. How come nobody points this out in temple, church, or mosque? Abraham was a madman!

2007-10-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Anonymity - Enabling the Dishonesty of AA for 72 Years

2007-10-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

Anonymity in AA jargon is used in two ways. (1) It is used to describe the need to protect against disclosing others' involvement in AA. (2) It is also used to describe the desire to protect AA from being associated with (i.e., tainted by) ourselves.

Other people's involvement with AA

Loving-kindness, respect, and courtesy are the motives behind protecting others people's anonymity. The promise of personal anonymity and confidentiality is very important to many newcomers. Sadly, this promise is often broken. When people ask me about how someone in the fellowship is doing which might involve revealing some sensitive information, I merely tell the them that so-and-so would probably appreciate a phone call. If they don't have the number, I get theirs and pass it on to the person they're asking about.

One's own involvement with AA

Protecting AA by not revealing our own personal involvement is motivated by salesmanship, evangelic loyalty, and deviousness. Many people say that they don't share their affiliation with AA because they then become a spokesperson or representative of AA. Early AA was afraid that if someone announced their membership in AA and then started drinking again, then it would make AA look like it failed. And we, as conscientious AA members, must never admit that AA doesn't work for most people. We have to keep our failures behind closed doors.

We simply couldn't afford to take the chance of letting self-appointed members present themselves as messiahs representing A.A. before the whole public. The promoter instinct in us might be our undoing. If even one publicly got drunk, or was lured into using A.A.'s name for his own purposes, the damage might be irreparable. - Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p 187.

At my Al-Anon meetings, I hear many people in toxic families reiterate the claim the family makes on its privacy. Abusive households set a high store on keeping the family secrets. I have been helped and hurt by my attendance in AA for the last fifteen years. AA has helped and hindered my progress toward a happy life without strong toxins. If AA is happy to take credit for my clean and sober life, then AA also gets the blame when I decided to drink or use drugs. The fact is: AA doesn't get the credit or the blame for my decisions. It provided a time and place for me to meet up with other folks who were trying to live a clean and sober life. Some of these people truly helped me and encouraged me; some were sick twisted fucks.

I will not keep my name or affiliation with AA private. I will not enable AA to pretend that it is a better institution than it is or let it make claims that it helps more people than it actually does. If AA is a program of rigorous honesty, then it should not be ashamed of its success rate... nor of its failures.

Going to any lengths... including reading outside materials

2007-10-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

From AA's Website
http://aa.org/en_services_for_members.cfm?PageID=98&SubPage=214

The term “Conference-approved” describes written or audiovisual material approved by the Conference for publication by G.S.O. This process assures that everything in such literature is in accord with A.A. principles. Conference-approved material always deals with the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous or with information about the A.A. Fellowship.

The term has no relation to material not published by G.S.O. It does not imply Conference disapproval of other material about A.A. A great deal of literature helpful to alcoholics is published by others, and A.A. does not try to tell any individual member what he or she may or may not read.

AA DoubleSpeak: How AAs misuse the word "drink"

2007-10-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

I often hear AA members admitting that they have addictions other than alcohol, but they have a lot of respect for AA, so when they attend AA meetings they refer to themselves as alcoholics (a word the medical profession refuses to use), and they talk about their problems with drinking.

Drinking is something I do with water and fruit punch to quench thirst. But I used alcohol... the same way an addict uses his or her drug of choice.

I do not have a lot of respect for AA. Respect has to be earned through good institutional decisions. AA is giving in to the current bias against drug abuse rather than staying true to its message of helping others with our stories of redemption. Many people cite the failed experience of the Washingtonians to justify keeping AAs message on helping people with alcohol – only! The Washingtonians did not fail because they expanded their efforts to help those suffering from other vices; all indications show that the group was co-opted (taken over) by religious prohibitionists. The situation is the same today with AA. AA is sucking up to the drug prohibitionists and denying its higher calling of helping others. All reasons for denying AA membership to addicts do not hold any weight.

Alcohol is legal...

But alcohol was illegal during Bill Wilson and Dr Robert Smith's drinking careers. The early AAs did most of their drinking when alcohol was against the law, drinking bathtub gin bought from moonshiners and speakeasies. More importantly, thinking back over our drinking careers, how many times did we break the law by climbing behind a steering wheel. Aren't we all criminals to greater or lesser extent? So why are we trying to climb up on top of addicts in this bottom of the barrel deal we have going?

Alcohol abuse is a single and separate disease...

Current research has identified several genes connected with addictive behavior. A person may have some or all of these indicators. This might explain why there seems to be so much variance in the different types of drunkalogs heard at AA meetings. My major problem was with alcohol, but I feel more kinship with the way some of my heroin addict friends used their drugs than I do with some of the alcohol-only drunks. If being able to relate is one of the key components to breaking down the isolation of a newcomer, then it was these drug abusers that I related to that were more important to me than the drunks that didn't use the way I did.

Many AAs bring up the nearly insignificant number of newcomers that only abuse alcohol, stating that these newcomers must be protected from feeling out of place at an AA meeting because of shares which include mention of drug abuse... but what about the vast number of alcohol abusers who did other drugs as well? If easy tolerance of others is an important lesson to learn in sobriety, we should explain to these hypothetical thin-skinned drunks that they should look at the similarities rather than the differences, and take what they want from the shares about drug dependence and leave the rest.

Alcohol abuse is different from drug abuse...

All medical research indicates that there are broad commonalities between the physiology and histories of both types of addiction. The only major funders of alcohol-specific research are alcohol companies – everyone else seems to understand that the addictions should be treated as a common problem. I've heard of people with a chronic marijuana habit picking up their 15-year AA chip – their conscience clean because AA does not have an official opinion about marijuana dependence. But a person who has had problems with alcohol should be warned that the compulsion to irrational flight from reality may take many dangerous forms other than alcohol. A person freshly released from the physical compulsion to use alcohol will find many other dangerous mental obsessions to take its place. Thrillseeking, rage, religious fanaticism, dangerous sexual activities, abusive relationships, unhealthy diets, legal medications, and foolish spending are some of the substitutes that newcomers need to be warned about.

CONCLUSION... for now...

People who suffer from alcohol dependence suffer from an addictive compulsion. They use alcohol for the same reasons that other drug abusers use their drugs. It's time AA grew some balls and told the prohibitionists that prohibition doesn't work. It's time AA welcomed our addict kindred into our fold.

12 Step Horror Stories: Amazon Customer Reviews

2007-10-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

Click here.

Appeals court says requirement to attend AA unconstitutional

2007-10-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

This article appeared on page B - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer, begelko@sfchronicle.com
Saturday, September 8, 2007

Alcoholics Anonymous, the renowned 12-step program that directs problem drinkers to seek help from a higher power, says it's not a religion and is open to nonbelievers. But it has enough religious overtones that a parolee can't be ordered to attend its meetings as a condition of staying out of prison, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In fact, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the constitutional dividing line between church and state in such cases is so clear that a parole officer can be sued for damages for ordering a parolee to go through rehabilitation at Alcoholics Anonymous or an affiliated program for drug addicts.

Rulings from across the nation since 1996 have established that "requiring a parolee to attend religion-based treatment programs violates the First Amendment," the court said. "While we in no way denigrate the fine work of (Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous), attendance in their programs may not be coerced by the state."

The 12 Steps suggested for participants in both programs include an acknowledgment that "a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity" and a promise to "turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." They also call for prayer and meditation.

Friday's 3-0 ruling allows a Honolulu man to go to trial in a suit on behalf of his late father, Ricky Inouye, who was paroled from a drug sentence in November 2000.

A Buddhist, he objected to religiously oriented drug treatment in prison, sued state officials over the issue and told Hawaii parole authorities just before his release that he would object to any condition that included a treatment program with religious content.

When Inouye was arrested for trespassing in March 2001 and tested positive for drugs, his parole officer, Mark Nanamori, ordered him to attend a Salvation Army treatment program that included participation in Narcotics Anonymous meetings, the court said.

Inouye showed up but refused to participate, dropped out after two months, and, for that and other reasons, was sent back to prison in November 2001 for violating his parole.

After his release in 2003, he sued Nanamori and others for violating his constitutional rights. Inouye died while the suit was pending, and his son took over the case.

A federal judge dismissed the suit, saying officers are required to pay damages for violating constitutional rights only when those rights are already clearly established.

But the appeals court said Nanamori should have known in 2001 that coerced participation in a religion-based program was unconstitutional because eight state and federal courts had ruled on the issue by then and all had agreed that a parolee has a right to be assigned to a secular treatment program.

Just about done with this AA business...

2007-10-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

I'm filled to the gills with AA service... doing our local newsletter, running our website, trying to attend the various business meetings to make a difference... then getting sidetracked by personal concerns that pull me away from continued change. However, I think my lack of enthusiasm for continuing as an agent for change is due to fundamental defects in the AA "message" and service structure itself.

AA members accuse me of trying to "blow up" AA; my point is to remind AA of its higher self – "the better angels of our nature." AAs keep trying to make the Big Book and Twelve and Twelve into Bibles. Bill W is some sort of prophet, and his chloral hydrate mixture that led to his hypnotic supercalm is reinterpreted as a "spiritual experience." People keep reciting bad science and poor observations as if their repetition will eventually make their bullshit true.

My recipe for change is: "Fuck the Big Book, the Steps, God, the Traditions, Bill and Bob, the General Service Conference, and anything else that is supposed to be true." Nothing is supposed to be true - it is, it isn't, or it's kinda true with some qualifications. I would rather hear what happened to you without your self-editing to bring your truth into alignment with some dead text.

AA is (or should be) a process, the message is the process – not the Steps, Traditions, or Concepts. AA is the regular meeting of alcoholics (and why not addicts?) who share their experience, strength, and hope of a life without mood-altering chemicals.

One of the reasons for my service-junkee lifestyle over the past few years involves an amends I was making with AA. But I believe that amend has been made. Now I will go to AA and serve at my pleasure. I will speak out whenever I hear anyone preaching BS to people who need understanding and not sermons.

So lets say you're immortal... now what are you going to do?

2007-10-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. – Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky.

There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. – Woody Allen as Alvy Singer in Annie Hall.

What you leave behind...

2007-10-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

is not engraved in stone monuments; it is what is woven into the lives of others.

– Pericles, 5th century B.C.E.

Non-membership has its privileges

2007-09-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

I am no longer a member of AA.
AA's Third Tradition states that I am no longer a member.
And what a freaking relief!!!

AA members are fond of repeating AA's Third Tradition – the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking – but in actual practice, there is a high road and low road in AA membership. If you are a dues-paying, meeting-attending, two-fisted Big-Booker, you're expected to say nothing negative about the history of the movement, its founders, or its whack literature and "spirituality." You are also expected to mindlessly repeat your admiration for the Twelve Steps, how they've helped you, and how they can help anyone. If someone dies or reclaims their right to drink, you are expected to blame them for following an inadequate "program." And finally, you are supposed to rigorously observe the other eleven traditions which have absolutely nothing to do with not drinking.

Screw it!

Bill Wilson (the womanizing, acid-dropping, narcissistic founder of AA) wrote to Father Dowling that he admired much in the Catholic faith and wished the Catholics had a fellow-traveler program that he could adopt. For Bill, there was too much silliness and cruelty in the history of the church's theological quarrels. I feel the same way about AA.

I've seen Steps 4, 5, and 9 kill people.
I've seen sponsors break the confidence of their sponsees out of an innocent desire to force their sponsees out of their secrets – sometimes with fatal results.
I've seen sponsors talk their sponsees out of taking their psych medications out of an innocent belief that the Steps can cure just about any psychological problem.
I've seen petty squabbles about whether an alcohol addict can speak about his use of other chemicals.
I've seen desperate people turned away because they crave a different flavor of mood-altering toxin or practice another type of self-destruction.
I've seen jealous infighting between General Service folks (who look to New York for guidance) and local intergroups (who believe New York answers to the local groups).
I've seen people racked with guilt about using mouthwash or taking a single drink.
I've seen people given undeserved respect for their unverifiable claim about how long it's been since their last drink.
I've seen other people who deserve respect hushed or minimized because they exercised their legal right to drink.

AA's freaking crazy! And if you consider yourself a member, it will drive you crazy.

Verily I say unto you, Screw it!

The Third Tradition itself, due to Bill Wilson's poorly chosen language, states I am no longer an AA member – and neither are most oldtimers. Why? Members are supposed to have the desire to stop drinking. The desire to stop drinking entails two opposite desires - the desire to drink and the desire to not drink. However, I no longer drink and no longer desire to drink, therefore I do not have the desire to stop drinking. Ergo, I am not a member of AA. Q.E.D.

Having said this, peace descends upon my limbs and a rippling fuck-it soothes my troubled mind. I don't have to do anything that those AAs hold in such high esteem. I don't have to count my clean time. I don't have to work the Steps. I don't have to honor the Traditions. I don't have to be of service. I don't have to reach out to dangerous or manipulative newcomers. I can scold oldtimers for being stupid. I can hearten people who decide to drink again – giving a true "hats-off" to them if they can drink reasonably. I am free from the little-minded inanity that is my local AA! I am free from the need to correct AA's message to conform with reason.

The Lilliputians will claim that I am harming the newcomers. But my conscience is clean because I know that what they do kills people... some of these people have even been friends and lovers... some have even been me.

But I can still go to meetings if the desire strikes,
and I will go to meetings when the desire strikes...
and I will joyfully disagree to my full, foolish, and boisterous heart's content.

Higher Power! Who you callin' a Higher Power?

2007-09-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

I know it's hard to believe, but for all my religion-bashing, I think that praying to one's Higher Power – correctly conceived – is a useful part of the retraining of the addict's conscience. The problem is that the superstitious continue to believe that their Higher Power is external to themselves and somehow communicates clear bright-line ethical precepts that are true for all persons at all times. All of the evidence and argument I have considered leads me to disregard the theory of God to understand myself and the world. So obviously I am led to physiological and evolutionary considerations when I try to understand the conscience.

Napoleon: Monsieur Laplace, what about God?
Laplace: I no longer need that hypothesis.

My first encounter with the idea that "god" might be a substructure of the brain was Julian Jayne's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. This book is either whack or way ahead of the data. Professor Jayne cited electrical stimulation experiments involving the right side of the human brain corresponding to the left-brain's Wernicke area. The Wernicke area is one of the major brain substructures governing language. Jayne noted that brain imaging shows that this right region is relatively unused by modern human beings – a notable exception being schizophrenics. Jayne wrote that when this area is stimulated, the test subjects reported hearing authoritative voices and thunderous noises. Jayne noted that this was not unlike the reports of schizophrenic symptoms. In later parts of the book, Jayne theorizes about the usefulness of recalling the commands of alpha individuals when they were not present, and he correlates this to the observation that the first temples seem to have grown around tombs of tribal leaders.

What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God? – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Another book that has proven useful in thinking about this topic is Why God Won't Go Away by Dr Andrew Newberg, MD, et al. Using brain imaging, the authors theorize about mystical experience and its association with overloading the occipital regions of the brain. The occipital regions create the awareness of the boundaries of our bodies and our bodies' locations in space-time. When these areas are shut down, the person no longer thinks of themselves as a separate ego and "experiences" timelessness and spacelessness.

So what?

Well, my theory about why the Twelve Step programs work for some people – and the parts that I believe helped me – is that the meetings, step-work, and slogans work as a gradual reinforcing hypnotism. Over time, the addict is hypnotized into retraining and strengthening their conscience – especially the suggestion to stay away from drugs. However, most people with self-esteem issues are going to disregard their personal ethical positions unless these are glorified and overstated as "God's will". The problem is that "God's will" is still their own glorified personal conscience. This conscience – this substructure of the brain – has been groomed by the elder primates in their troop. If their parents and teachers are screwed up, then their conscience will be screwed up as well.

Many people come into AA with a mean, arbitrary, and screwed-up Higher Power – a leftover from our dark and brutish history. They are told to get a new Higher Power. A useful Step Two exercise for me was listing the attributes I wanted my Higher Power to have. Although I don't think that the Universe took on these qualities just because I made a list, I did have, at the end of the exercise, a good idea about who I wanted to be when I grew up.

I think it is stupid and dangerous to replace chemical dependence with an overblown fantasy of our personal conscience writ HUGE across the starry sky. The religious (including Communists and Manifest Destiny Capitalists) are notoriously cruel because they know or suspect that their positions cannot be defended by reason. Their only tool for persuasion is the horrible use of force and the threat of such force. I've seen this religious bullying too many times in AA meetings, and people that might have been helped are turned out to try sobriety alone.

CONCLUSION?

You are a dumb monkey who has been taught by even dumber monkeys.
Your biology and training tells you that certain things are good for dumb monkeys and other things are bad for dumb monkeys.
Your biology and training are right part of the time and wrong part of the time – practice learning which is which and when is when.
Do not think in terms or right or wrong but in terms of smart and stupid.
Understand that there are only facts and the value we place on those facts.
Understand that your values are YOUR values...
It's up to you to make the world the way you like it.

The Universe has no lessons to teach us...

2007-09-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

but that doesn't mean that we don't have any lessons to learn.

Democracy doesn't mean I'm as important as you...

2007-09-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

it means that you're as important as me.

The Kooky Evasion of "My Truth"

2007-09-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

I used to be fond of protecting myself from oldtimers in AA by stating that the Big Book, 12 Steps, and sponsorship did not help me get sober. If pressed, I would claim that this was "my truth" as if truth could be personalized and pluralized. If there is truth, i.e., if there is a reality beyond my understanding and perception, then it is singular and unknowable by definition.

The early philosophers and shamans posited a world-beyond-the-senses to make sense of inconsistencies in our perceptions – the most accessible examples are tricks of sight such as the refraction of objects by water. A stick is placed in the water and seems to bend. I place my hand in the water to test this, and my forearm seems to bend. Obviously, water bends objects which are placed in it. However, my visceral three-dimensional body-awareness does not tell me that my arm has bent or changed its location, and this creates an inconsistency in my understanding of what is happening. This confusion was finally accounted for by Newton's theory of optics and refraction.

So is Newton's theory "true"? Do I "believe" Newton's theory?

Let me content myself to say that the theory gives us more exact ways of predicting what will happen, and these predictions have been borne out by repeated tests. These results have given us the confidence to build new technologies which assume the correctness of these theories. And these new techologies have proven useful over time. I don't believe Newton's optics; I use Newton's optics.

I now see my claim to a personalized truth as just one last vain attempt to hold on to the fable of "truth" – to feel like I was part of the group – one of the believers. The point is: use whatever you can to get yourself sober and to get back in the game. Do not make the mistake of generalizing your personal understanding of what got you clean and sober into blanket statements of what is good for all addicts at all times. If you do make the mistake of saying that the methods you think got you sober will actually help someone else get sober, you will be practicing medicine – negligently and probably without a license.

I also now see my claim to a personalized truth as a lazy claim to authority – without all the tedious testing and argument. If it is only my truth, then I can repeat it forever, disregarding the people I hurt who follow my lead, and there's nothing you can do about it because I was only asserting my truth.

But am I only asserting my truth if I want other people to take me seriously. If I want you to listen to me, am I not trying to get you to agree to our truth.

As it stands, truth is better left to the imaginary gods who have access to it. Let us concentrate on repeatable methods and results. When newcomers ask what to do with all the time they have after getting clean, don't give them another kooky book on spirituality and narcissistic introspection – tell them to study art, literature, music, medicine, history, physics, and law.

What can be asserted without evidence...

2007-09-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

can be dismissed without evidence.

What is "Spirituality" anyway?

2007-09-09T14:18:00.001-07:00

I would like some real examples and definitions. My favorite example is a dog enjoying the sun on its nose. If you mean being someone like Mother Teresa, forget it – that woman's faith has kept uncounted people in superstition and disease by her condemnation of condoms and abortion. Really, you should be able to describe something as important as spirituality – shouldn't you? Is it contentment? Happiness? Self-satisfaction?

Returning to my example of the dog in the sun, spirituality is when one's biology, including one's brain, is running smoothly – when one does not live in unsatisfied and unsatisfiable fantasies – when one is not sputtering around on pipedreams, toxic chemicals, and untreated diseases. There is no such thing as spirituality, and it's easier to prove that God is a sadistic demon than a benevolent guardian.

Right now a six-year-old child is being brutalized in a dark apartment and crying for God to help her... Sadly, God won't help. Karma fares no better.

Nietzche said that compassion is too rare to waste on imaginary beings. The "spirituality" that describes itself as acceptance of the child's brutalization is a shameful waste of the short time we have here on earth. My advice to the newcomer is to use the sleepy spirtuality during one's convalescence, but at some point, we are cured and need to return to the struggle to make this world better – without hiding behind our "recovery".

New Briggsmore Beach Post: The Problem with Evil

2007-08-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

I recently posted a very well written explanation of the problem I have with making sense of the universe if there is an almighty benevolent entity overseeing our beautiful mess. You can find it at:

http://briggsmorebeach.org/Library/DostoyevskyOnEvil.htm

Don't go to bed angry...

2007-08-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

stay up and fight.

AA, Stay Out Of My Bathing Suit Areas!

2007-08-21T02:58:00.001-07:00

There is a tradition in many AA groups of passing around phone lists which are given to the newcomer so they can call for support when they feel shaky or squirrelly. However, most groups only allow women to put their contact info on phone lists for women, and men are only allowed to put their info on lists for men. Again, this is a leftover from AA's origins from the "Primitive Christianity" movement of the early 20th century. The point is that AA – like every other witch's brew of superstition and irrational authority – wants to regulate functions as personal as a person's sexuality. Some argument can be made for avoiding highly emotional situations early in recovery, but again, this is the choice of the person seeking help.

I think the tradition of giving newcomer's phone lists is a good one overall, however, I think that each individual, regardless of their sexual orientation, should decide whether they want to give another person their contact info. This is the practice we follow at Briggsmore Beach – phone lists with both men and women's numbers are regularly updated and given to persons attending our group for the first time. To date, I have heard of no problems with this system. In fact, it helps us "recovered" folks more than it has the newcomers.

It's true that we must caution newly sober people who want to help from giving their contact info to people who might pose a danger. But again, that is a decision between the parties.

Another problem with this tradition is that it assumes heterosexuality. Gay men and women's sexuality is overlooked or ignored. A gay man or woman might just as well abuse the privilege of calling us for help as a straight person, but this is overlooked. Again, pass the list and let each person decide if they want to offer their number to the newcomer.

Preoccupation With Growth As An Indication Of Cult

2007-08-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

One of the primary features of AA that distinguishes it as a cult rather than a healing institution is its interest in expansion and in increasing its membership. Cures are meant to be finished at some point in time. Sometimes – as with HIV – symptoms can only be held at bay, but this does not mean that the search for a real cure is forsaken. People are expected to remain in AA for the rest of their lives because of two untested propositions: (1) that a person who becomes chemically dependent was already organically defective from birth, and (2) regular contact with other abstaining persons is the only true safeguard against this defective condition. The theological ideas of Original Sin and Mother Church are very much alive in the AA cult.

If AA is a healing institution - which I believe it must strive to become – then it will count its success by the people it has helped who have moved on to live their reclaimed lives. However, AA - as an institution and as reflected in the oldtimer party line – only counts its successes by the people that stick around for years, donating valuable services to the organization. AA, like any other cult, is concerned with its survival and expansion – a true cure longs for the day when it will not be necessary.

The Argument Over Personal Preference

2007-08-19T18:33:00.001-07:00

He said: "My favorite color is purple."
She said: "No, it's not. Our favorite color is blue."
He said: "But I don't like blue, and I know that many other people don't like blue as well."
She said: "Don't worry. You'll see. In time, your favorite color will be blue."
He asked: "What if I never like blue?"
She said: "Then you'll drink and you'll die."

He said: "Well... I guess purple isn't too different from blue. Would it be alright if I said my favorite color is indigo or blurple?"
She said: "That will be okay for now, but newcomers need to be told their favorite color is blue if they want to stick around. Blue is just too important! Look around, blue is the favorite color of everybody who's anybody!"

What's Good About AA?

2007-08-15T12:10:00.000-07:00

http://orange-papers.org/orange-whats_good.html

I think Agent Orange (http://orange-papers.org) has done a tremendous job with his AA muckraking. Along with Jack Trimpey (http://rational.org) and Stanton Peele (http://peele.net), I think Agent Orange is on the right track in developing an alternative (and dare I say - better) path for people who want to stop using chemicals.

I wouldn't mind using this as an opening reading at AA meetings I develop ... that is, if the author would permit me to reprint this article.

Powerless over my beliefs...

2007-08-09T16:38:00.000-07:00

How am I supposed to change the way I think and feel if it (like my proclivity toward alcohol abuse) is genetically hardwired into my personality?

From the pamphlet A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous

2007-06-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

There must come a day, it seems to me, when every alcoholic, in or out of A.A., finally sits down in the presence of his enemies. When he does, he will be amazed to discover that he is attending a meeting of one - himself. The day the alcoholic in A.A. realizes that his enemy is within, that the tigers are largely creatures of his own design and lurk in his own unconscious, that is the day when for him A.A. becomes what I believe its founders meant it to be: a flight into reality.

Science versus Spirituality

2007-06-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

I heard someone share the other night that science could only make a drug that will make you throw up if you drink or a drug that would dampen your high. Because of this, the AA member concluded that the "spiritual" program would always be needed to help alcohol addicts in their recovery. I believe this is a "straw man" that trivializes or "absurdifies" an opponent's position, in order to trounce the opponent with one's superior logic. Current epigenomic studies – through use of methyls and histones – may provide the basis for completely nullifying the genes that create problem drinking. In such case, AA may find itself in a crisis of relevance. Only blind organizational loyalty would denounce a real cure for alcoholism that does not involve AA literature or practice.

However, it may suprise you that science is a "spiritual" way of life. It requires great discipline, courage, and humility of spirit. It is no accident that many of the great scientists began as religious devotees. (E.g., Copernicus, Newton, Mendel, Darwin.)

INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY

Science requires its devotees to maintain a state of pragmatic disbelief. Every theory about how things are is maintained as a working hypothesis. These theories may be beloved to the devotee because of time spent working these theories out, but the devotee must always be willing to discard pet theories when they cease accounting for observed phenomena. The devotee is prohibited from saying "This is the case," but is only permitted to say "This seems the case," or "This accounts for all observed phenomena to date."

DISCIPLINED MIND

Science is concerned with understanding the nature of how things behave. Things include people, souls, ghosts, myths, bigotry, fraud, and all the goings-on in a human brain. Nietzsche suggested that all science is revenge against the past. How do we prevent another Hurricane Katrina catastrophe? How do we "don't get fooled again"? Science has developed a highly tuned sense of description that seeks to prevent ambiguity and arguments that are untestable. Science uses the discipline of logic to search for inconsistencies and to weed them out. It's not that science has removed inconsistencies – only that science is aware of them and is disturbed by them. The current state of physics involves a search to reconcile the inconsistent theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. These two sets of understanding both work amazingly well in their area of inquiry, but they cannot both be true. Science knows this, does not deny this, but science seeks to find a theory that can account for both sets of phenomena. The disciplined mind does not settle for fuzzy definitions and theories that are so loose that they are virtually trivialisms. The disciplined mind searches for a theory and then proceeds to knock it down.

If you meet Buddha on the road... kill him.

COURAGE

The devotee is required both to work on creating theories, fleshing them out, and then attacking them. Science tries to eat its young. This reminds me of an ancient Israelite custom of taking in the Passover lamb and raising it as a pet the year before its sacrifice. The family doted over the lamb, the children would sleep with it, but on Passover, the family would take its pet to be slaughtered. A scientist must do the same with the theories that the scientist slaves over. Once a satisfying theory is found, the theory must be tested and retested. Every time the theory withstands the test, the scientist is elated. But each time, the scientist must brace for the theory's collapse.

REVERENCE

The scientist, above all, respects reality. To the scientist, reality consists of all observations by anyone at anytime. Some observations are already couched in the terms of a discounted theory, (e.g., a "sunrise") but the scientist must explain the observations of ghosts, unicorns, the flatness of the earth, and any other description of events – honest or not. But just because a scientist must account for such described observations does not mean that the scientist has to accept the observer's explanation of the observation. The scientist must attempt to fit the observation into other tried and trusted tropes of explanation.

SCIENCE'S ROLE IN RECOVERY

We recovering alcohol addicts have found techniques and "gimmicks" that seem to have helped us overcome our cravings. Some of these techniques have been tested in repeated settings and are found to help a certain group of drunks in certain situations. But we must also take pains to recognize and account for the times when these techniques fail. We must catalog them and search for alternative techniques to treat these program-resistant drunks. If AA really holds that service helps to keep one sober, then AA will have to move out of the drunk's way when the drunk isn't helped by AA's literature or program. Intellectual humility and courage demand that we widen AA's scope.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

2007-05-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

What if it is broken?
How do you tell if it's broken if you only look at the times it works?

As anyone who cares to read this blog knows, I want AA to change. Every time I bring up the subject, AA members tell me that AA ain't broke. But I think AA is broke — take that either way — every time a newcomer comes to a meeting and reaches out for help, and the newcomer does not find a way to stay sober in AA. Success can only be measured against failures, but AAs are unwilling to look at the people that are not helped by the Big Book, Higher Powers, and talk of spirituality. AA must expand and diversify its message.

A call recently went out from the General Service Office for groups in the United States to update their group information to show increases in members. The worry is that AA has not been gaining US members during the last few years, even though there are many unserved alcoholics. My worry is that the old-timey AA message has saturated its market. It has been accepted by everyone that can tolerate the Big Book and the 12 Step Goosesteppers.

My hope is that other alcoholics could be helped if we would tone down our high-toned skree. Help the alcoholic where they are at. When you push the Big Book and Steps, you virtually tell the drunk that AA won't help them unless they comply. And for that, you are responsible.

The best revenge...

2007-05-25T11:04:00.001-07:00

is to live well.

Analysis of therapy suggested at AA meetings

2007-05-25T01:34:00.001-07:00

Click the image to enlarge.

Sobriety without Big Book or Higher Power

2007-05-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

I've struggled with AA since 1992. The talk of spirituality, God, Steps, and cultish devotion to the founding text raised the hackles of my sophisticated skepticism. For years, I suffered at AA meetings, thinking I was doing something wrong. I listened to brainbashing know-nothings and felt out of place. After years of this and an abusive alcoholic girlfriend, I found Al-Anon Family Groups, and I found that the difficulties I was having might not be my fault. Finally, I came through to a rational and human sobriety that involves no white knuckling.

I am tired of referring to myself negatively as an atheist. People who believe in God have the burden of proof on the question of God's existence. Those that don't believe in Santa Claus aren't called to answer for their lack of belief. My view is positive. I believe and trust in rational thought and human power to unravel fallacies and free up misused resources. I am a humanist and a rationalist. I believe in the healing power of rational thought, and I believe in pursuing and defending the values of cultured humanity.

My sobriety now (and at all times past) has come from my human understanding of my situation and does not involve a Higher Power. For many years, I played along with the people in AA and allowed myself to refer to Reality as my Higher Power (patently true but psychologically useless). I also let people convince me to refer to the "Group" as a Higher Power (dangerously close to cultism). All this talk about Higher Power always puts me in danger of pretending that I believe it's okay to believe in absurdities. But we believe in absurdities at the peril of wasting our lives and chances to do good (at the minimum) and culture war at the worst. Since there is no way to convince another person about your pet absurdity, you can either do it gently through repetition, advertisements, and hypnotism, or through violence. I do not want to be a part in overcoming another person's rational choice, therefore I will no longer use the term "Higher Power." I will also avoid the word "spiritual."

Let me stand up decidedly and state that the Group is NOT my Higher Power; I have no Higher Power. The Group has been helpful and harmful to my sobriety. I have learned to avoid certain members and fellowships out of wise concern for my serenity. Oftentimes, the Group is flat out wrong. When that happens, I don't feel that I must remain quiet or comply with rules I find morally repugnant. My own conscience, after seeking counsel from my peers, is the final word as far as I'm concerned.

I understand the attraction to believe in a Grandparent who oversees the world. We evolved in primate tribes that passed on the wisdom of forbears to their offspring. Part of our primate mind evolved to store the old wisdom of our ancestors. This part of our brain is accessible to us when we enter a psychological posture of a child and relax to listen to the distilled knowledge of our culture. Sometimes, this wisdom is very good - sometimes it is insane. But because this part of our brain received the wisdom of our beloved elders - the wisdom transmitted is always authoritative. It is important that we put correct information into this part of our brain, because the wisdom we receive from our God-brain is only as good as the knowledge and experience we put into our human-brain.

A REAL Einstein quote...

2007-05-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you that are tired of the Internet drivel about Einstein's alleged refutation of the scary atheist professor who suggested that God must have created evil. (Einstein probably was that atheist professor.)

I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary as they have always been for the select few.

New Briggsmore Beach Post: The Euthyphro

2007-05-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

I've posted an explanation of the uselessness of postulating supernatural entities to make humans do what we know to be right. You can find it at:

http://briggsmorebeach.org/Library/Euthyphro.htm

Critics Say Washington AA Chapter Is Cultlike

2007-04-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

MSNBC.com

Recovering alcoholics say a Washington, D.C., group has hijacked the 12-step program's name.

By Nick Summers, Newsweek
[Bold emphasis added by the Blogger]

May 7, 2007 issue - By the time May Clancy turned 15 years old, she was well on her way to drinking herself to death. A middle-school student from Potomac, Md., she had been through 11 different psychiatric and alcohol-rehab programs in two years. Each time, she started drinking again as soon as she got out. Her parents were terrified. "We'd taken her to hospitals—everything possible to get her the best care that we could," says May's father, Mike. "And all these places told us that they didn't think she could make it without Alcoholics Anonymous."

So in November 2005, when May agreed to begin attending meetings at Midtown, one of the oldest and largest AA groups in the Washington, D.C., area, it felt like a miracle. Other AA meetings in the city attracted mostly older men and women; Midtown was known as a place for recovering alcoholics in their teens and 20s. Some of the group's senior members were older, but there were also dozens of high-school and college kids with stories a lot like hers. From the moment she arrived, they seemed to go out of their way to welcome her. At first, May was thrilled to find a group of people who accepted her as she was. "When I went there," she says, "I didn't really talk to anybody, didn't trust anybody. And these people would hang out with me even if I didn't say anything, and include me in conversations. I was desperate to be liked at that point."

But something about Midtown was not right. After a few months, the group's embrace of May began to feel like a chokehold. She says the sponsor assigned to give her moral support and help keep her sober pressured her to cut off ties to anyone outside the group. Another member snatched her cell phone and deleted names in the directory. She says she was pressured to stop taking the medication a doctor had prescribed to manage her bipolar disorder: group members told her she couldn't be sober if she was taking any kind of drug. There was a hierarchy to the group. Younger members were sometimes expected to wash cars, clean houses and do other menial chores for more senior members.

May says she was especially uncomfortable with the emphasis on dating within the group and sex between members. She would listen as girls her age compared notes on the men in the group they had been encouraged to sleep with, some of whom were decades older.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she left Midtown and began attending a different AA meeting. She was surprised—and relieved—to find that many of Midtown's common practices were exactly the opposite of what Alcoholics Anonymous literature teaches. By design, there are no "leaders" in AA groups who exert control over other members. AA doesn't expect members to ignore doctors' prescriptions. It doesn't tell them to turn their backs on friends and family. And far from encouraging sex, AA groups overwhelmingly frown on intimate relationships for the first year of sobriety, when a recovering alcoholic is thought to be most vulnerable.

May's story isn't unique. Now 16, she is one of hundreds of recovering alcoholics who are taking sides in a bitter, unprecedented dispute among Alcoholics Anonymous adherents that pits members of Midtown, who insist the organization has saved their lives and kept them sober, against angry former members, who charge it is a coercive, cultlike group that uses the trusted AA name to induce young alcoholics into a radical fringe movement that has little resemblance to traditional AA.

It is a fight that has been largely waged in private. Some of Midtown's most driven critics organized a committee, dubbed the Concerned Friends Group, and created an anonymous MySpace page for ex-members to share stories. They have, unsuccessfully, tried to have Midtown expelled from churches where its meetings are held and have made numerous complaints to the police. (Law-enforcement officials say they have investigated the group but have not found evidence of criminal wrongdoing.) Many of the people involved in the dispute are recovering alcoholics and have been reluctant to go public with their allegations—both because it is a violation of AA's "anonymous" credo, and because they do not want it known that they are alcoholics. But in dozens of interviews with NEWSWEEK, recovering alcoholics and mental-health professionals describe a group that exerts an unusual amount of control and sometimes seems to put the social desires of some members above the recovery of others.

Despite repeated requests for comment, no current Midtown members agreed to be interviewed on the record, citing AA's tradition of anonymity in the press and their belief that negative publicity scares on-the-fence alcoholics from getting the help they need. But those who spoke or e-mailed without giving their names for publication say that Midtown is a flourishing group that has saved their lives, and that those who criticize it resent their success, have scores to settle or are simply making it all up.

Lauren Dougherty says that doesn't describe her at all. Now 29, she loved all the attention she got when she decided to sober up and join Midtown 11 years ago. A member of her family was an alcoholic, and Dougherty had sat in the back during AA meetings before. But Midtown was different from the meetings she remembered. Her first night, she was introduced to another member of the group and told, "She's your sponsor." Dougherty thought that was odd. AA sponsors are chosen, not assigned. But everyone was so friendly she let it pass. They gave her specific instructions about which Midtown meeting she should attend each day, and told her to cut off friends from her old life, even the ones who didn't drink. Soon her new circle of friends insisted she get an "AA boyfriend." Like May, Dougherty says there was pressure to sleep with older group members, which she refused to do. ("They live off of sex," says Meredith, a 19-year-old former member who, like several others, did not want her full name used to avoid being outed as an alcoholic. "I feel like their way of dealing with alcohol addiction is just by having sex with each other. Being in that group made me want to drink more.")

Disgusted, Dougherty tried to quit the group. She says her sponsor was furious. "You can't trust any of your own thoughts," she said. "You can't go into your own head unsupervised." At first, Dougherty didn't know what to believe, until a rehab counselor told her in no uncertain terms to get out.

Some former members say they too were made to believe that leaving Midtown would doom their recovery. Twenty-six-year-old Kristen spent eight years with the group, shunning family and outside friends. When she applied to go to art school in Richmond, Va., her sponsor, an older man, cursed her out. "You will drink," he told her. "You will fail. You will die." The reaction of her sponsor persuaded her to leave the group once and for all. She began secretly attending other AA meetings in the area. "I was so tired of being afraid all the time," she says. "I'd rather die than be in Midtown again."

Former members claim that Midtown makes it difficult to leave in other ways. About half the group's approximately 300 members rent houses with each other across the D.C. area. Many find work through contacts in the group. For them, exiting Midtown is not just a matter of walking out the door—it means getting evicted, breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, and starting a social life from scratch.

The group's practices have raised concerns among some recovery professionals. Jay Eubanks, who oversees the Gaithersburg, Md., branch of the Kolmac Clinic chain of intensive outpatient rehabs, says patients who come to him from Midtown often need "damage control" to unlearn what the group taught them. "They start isolating people, getting them away from any feedback other than their own ... Only go to their meetings, only talk to people in their group. If you're seeing a therapist, stop seeing a therapist; if you're in treatment, stop going to treatment; if you're being medicated, stop seeing a doctor."

Midtown's approach to treatment so concerned Dr. Ellen Dye, a clinical psychologist in Rockville, Md., that she wrote an open letter to the Washington recovery community in August 2006, detailing two patients' experiences with the group. One young woman, she wrote, was "assigned a boyfriend" and pressured to go off antidepressants; she became actively suicidal and was hospitalized. The second was bossed so severely that he is now unwilling to attend any AA meetings, despite his worsening alcoholism. "At this point," Dye concluded, "I am very apprehensive about referring any clients to AA even if they are severe alcoholics. I think that it is essential that this group be eliminated from AA so that my colleagues and I can feel safe making these referrals again." While most recovery specialists know about Midtown, Dye said, parents and general therapists don't. "We're all saying, 'Go to AA, go to AA,' and we may be sending people into this terrible situation and not realizing it."

Other recovery specialists are more conflicted. Beth Kane-Davidson, director of the addictions center at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., says that the center stopped steering patients to Midtown during the past year. But, she adds, "the flip side is, I know people in the group that have long-term sobriety and are doing great." For some recovering alcoholics, she says, "Midtown has been a real godsend. It's taken them in and structured their activities, and filled the void left because they're not using anymore. But where do you draw the line? Given that the line is so fine, we try to err on the safe side."

David Hanrahan has a similar perspective. He got sober in 1985 while attending some of the meetings that later coalesced into the Midtown network; in his mid-30s, he drifted away when he decided he was more comfortable around recovering alcoholics closer to his own age. Hanrahan says a little disorder and disagreement inside AA isn't necessarily a bad thing—in fact, it almost always works out for the good. "I think AA is a miraculous organization that is run by nobody and controlled by nobody, and is complete, pure anarchy—as long as it's tied to the 12 steps—and I mean that in a good way," he says. "There are meetings all over the world, and anyone can start one, and nobody's in charge of it. That's AA's strength and weakness, right there." Hanrahan is concerned by the direction Midtown has taken in the past 20 years, but he also fears that its most organized critics care more about harming the group than reforming AA.

What does Alcoholics Anonymous itself have to say about Midtown? Nothing. A completely decentralized organization, AA has no spokesperson and no national leaders. Its worldwide headquarters in New York—which largely serves to distribute its literature and help people set up local meetings—declined to comment. AA has always relied on locals to govern themselves. Midtown can claim as much right to the Alcoholics Anonymous name as more traditional AA groups. For struggling alcoholics already wary of seeking help, it's another reminder that it isn't always easy to find someone to trust.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368218/site/newsweek/

Rethinking childhood...

2007-03-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

Quotes from the Great Lumberjack, Eric B from Montclair

2007-03-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

Death is just God's way of killing you.
You can forgive someone, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
Have a nice day... unless you have other plans.
I'm learning to get drunk without drinking.
I don't recall stopping drinking... but one day, I just didn't start.

There are a lot of other Eric one-liners, but Eric has been able to manage many years without a drink AND without a "program". I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of being programmed. Thank you, Eric, for your strong sense of fun... it taught my jihadist to laugh instead of rail. I still don't have it down.

Why Grace is Bullshit

2007-03-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

Many people think that Outer Space Dude guided them through a series of potentially fatal experiences and smiled lovingly upon them, at last bringing them into the rooms of AA and arranging a series of kind tricks which allowed them to get sober.

Often acknowledged but overlooked are the good and worthy people that Outer Space Dude seems to have ignored. Maybe Outer Space Dude disliked them, or maybe they said something mean about him when they were in second grade. I don't know... I guess Outer Space Dude needs like LOTS of validation. But it's obvious that Outer Space Dude didn't feel that the people who were born before the 20th century were worth saving. Obviously, he let those drunks die without a "program" that might have helped them. The pre-cure victims of any disease are just out of luck - that's the inscrutable mystery of the love of Outer Space Dude.

The more I know about Outer Space Dude, the less I like him.

Yes, coincidences are Outer Space Dude's way of remaining anonymous... but death is Outer Space Dude's way of killing you.

Why Reincarnation Is Bullshit

2007-03-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

Many people believe that there is a soul which is separate from the body, and this soul is the true identity of a being. The body is an accidental form that that the soul has inhabited. To this soul, some attributes are attached, including some sort of memory and ability to reason, learn, and make decisions. The separation of the soul from the body allows for the soul to reattach to another body. So many people who believe in the disincarnate soul also subscribe to the notion that the soul survives through various incarnations, even across species. The same soul can have lived as a Egyptian pharaoh, a Jewish slave, a tiger, a lamb... a tree, a flatworm, a bacterium?

In 1900, the world's human population was about one billion; in 2000, this had increased to about 6 billion. That means that there are now over 5 billion souls occupying human bodies that were housed in other species at the turn of the previous century. This would work if there were roughly the same number of living organisms, but organisms have increased due to the peculiar way that life turns lifeless materials into organisms. The number of organisms increases until an extinction event such as the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

The current working theory of evolution posits that there was an original unique ancestor cell from which all carbon-based life forms emerged. From this original cell, sprang many trillions of living beings. Of these trillions of organisms, science estimates that 20 billion of these organisms have been Homo sapiens. If this is true and reincarnation is fair, the most human lives that someone could have lived would have been 4 but more likely 3. (20 billion divided by 6 billion is 3.33.) These lives would have been scattered across a million years.

If there are more organisms now than there were at a previous time, where did the new souls come from? Were they waiting in heaven? If there are trillions of souls waiting for bodies, what makes us believe that we will get another chance at being reincarnated before the souls that haven't had a body get their turn? How many souls are there? All I want is rough estimate.

Perhaps the souls come from another planet's extinction? Perhaps we have lived on other planets, in other types of universes? But if evolution is correct, (and I believe it is) there was only ONE first organism. All other posited souls would have to be waiting in the wings. We have no idea how many souls there might be, or why we would get another chance before all the waiting souls have had a chance to occupy an organism at least once.

REINCARNATION'S PAYOFF

Unlike animals with a lesser ability for abstract thinking, humanity's ability to conger up possible worlds introduces all of us to a constant state of worry and fear. What if there is a tiger in the cave? What if another asteroid extinction is on the way? Religion and poetic reasoning are valued for their ability to calm our troubled minds. So I can't do anything about fucked up childhood? I'll pick a better childhood next time. So I can't help do anything about the living conditions of the poor? I'll take care of it in the next life.

Like I've stated before on this blog: I have no problem with lullabies... as lullabies. I just worry when people start making real decisions based on lullabies. Soothe your mind, but allow yourself to ask the valuable and value-giving question: What if this is my only shot at life? What is important to me now? Anything that can be put off for the next life can be put off forever. Deal with things TODAY.

Stop marginalizing atheists. We're more honest than you.

2007-03-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

DISCRIMINATION AND SLURS AGAINST AGNOSTICS

Madeline, a new AA trustee and speaker at PRAASA in Portland, just said that she was raised religiously and spoke like someone who believed, but if you followed her around, she behaved "like an agnostic."

What do you think would have happened if she had compared her alcoholic behavior with black people or Spanish speaking persons? What sort of outcry would arise? Madeline, how do agnostics behave? How about atheists? What are we to do with the fact that most of the most horrible atrocities are carried out by religionists?

I am so fucking tired of AA's stupidity. Why must we perpetuate this fabric of lies, quasi-religion, and bad (if any) science? Why can't we look at what really works? Why can't we introduce some education, some sophistication, and some book learning in with our bullshit steps and "program"? Alongside the bullshit, why can't we teach observation, hypothesis, prediction, and testing? Why can't we explain Ockham's razor when telling the newcomer about choosing a higher power and "to keep it simple"? Why can't we talk about double blind studies and the logical fallacies of begging the question, fat ox fallacy, ad hominum, improper appeal to authority, and biased samples? Would it be so hard to teach people how to think as we teach them how not to drink?

TEACHING NEWCOMERS (AND OLDTIMERS) TO THINK

Why must people who think for themselves and choose no-god continue to be marginalized by AA? I think it has a lot to do with substitution of addictions, probably arising from the same motivators as does AA's de facto eucharist of coffee and cigarettes. These enter into "recovery" as lesser demons useful to our salvation from John Barleycorn, the ONLY demon AA is supposed to have an opinion about.

The fear of such purposeful stuck-on-stupid ignorance was probably the reason that the Fifth Tradition left some wiggle room by stating that an AA group's PRIMARY (not "single") purpose is to help alcoholics. Often noted and ignored is the original draft of the Twelfth Step which encouraged AAs to carry this message to OTHERS, especially alcoholics.

AA's history Pass It On suggests that some of Bill Wilson's dissatisfaction with AA in late 1950s and 1960s resulted from his desire to take the group therapy and moral suasion insights gleaned from AA's experience to help victims of other "neuroses". But he was hamstrung by the lowest common denominator of the exclusionist alcoholics who felt they could not (read: “would not”) help addicts of illegal drugs, feeling they would be stained by association with "criminals".

Stay tuned for upcoming topics:

RELIGION AS A DANGEROUS ADDICTIVE NEUROSIS
THE INEVITABLE ACCRETION OF BULLSHIT IN RECOVERY SOCIETIES BASED ON REGULAR SHARING AT MEETINGS
WHY REINCARNATION IS BULLSHIT
WHY CHRISTIANITY IS BULLSHIT

My favorite e e cummings quote (at this moment)

2007-03-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

I will not kiss your fucking flag!
from "I sing of Olaf, glad and big"

People of AA, the United States and its fucking terrorism are OUTSIDE ISSUES!!! Tradition Ten.

No! I will not have a moment of silence for the United States, its idiot unscrupulous President, and its murdering troops or paid terrorists. Please, speak up when you hear this bullshit in an AA meeting. You have my sacred promise (sacred because it it MY promise) that I will not let this jingoism go by without my strenuous objection.

People of Iraq and throughout the world, forgive us for the apathy, stupidity, and fear that have allowed this murder and horror to happen. God, help the people who have made their homes over mineral wealth that the industrial world covets.

Jesus Chrysler, part I

2007-02-23T11:02:00.000-08:00

© 2007, Troy K Spears

the third explanation,
the law of the excluded middle,
either/or...
or if you prefer,
neither and both –
the included midsection,
the tortured torso of venus,
the lost cannibal children
of tortilla flat.

i descended from the greek theater,
staggering behind the berkeley hills
after a night of coma,
sleeping with raccoon, skunk, deer, and kitfox...
waking in vomit and vodka
and little yellow flowers no bigger
than the pupil of the eye of my amphetamine.

i awoke with a counterargument
to my sad russian and german authors,
the brainchild of twirly girls and squirrelly worlds,
a new song that seized in my throat,
which i soon forgot
because all i could see was
the bloody sun crawling
after the beaten day.

what was that song that i almost heard?
dipping, diving, dreaming,
daffy magic of the foregone conclusions.
falling trippingly off the tongue,
all my erudition,
criticized at birth.

comes now my beloved,
beloved shulamite,
the mad light behind her eyes,
her passel of misbehaving children,
filing out of the laundromat,
eyes downcast,
past the watchtower witnesses
who are now awake.

i turned to examine the death
of my youthful friend,
untutored adonis whose liver failed
from too much leaving the path,
too much motherlode
riding along with the white horse,
dripping into the neediness of lonely wives,
the boredom of troubled schoolgirls.

no, you did not dip the needle
in the bleach that would have saved you
before you dragged it along your arms,
deep and deeper into your veins.

no, i did not think before i lunged
into broken philosophers
who drew nearer to me than my breath,
dragging me into the waves.
and i could not summon the faith
nor madness
that would have forgiven you.

now your body is lowered
into the sluttish earth,
and my eyes are lifted
as the horizon falls beneath the sun.
the day turns into the devil's anvil,
my heart is crushed
and laid out upon the stone,
my tears baked into the evening's bread
and i weep for humanity's feeblemindedness
and our contempt.

come no nearer, my beloved,
and speak no more...
let me gaze at you
and your brats
in silence.

Compassion and kindness are too rare...

2007-02-23T08:13:00.000-08:00

to waste on imaginary beings.

- Friedrich Nietzsche, sort of.

WWTD?

2007-02-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

Pedal to the metal, balls to the wall, flat out...

2007-02-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

atheist.

Honesty with oneself is so refreshing.

I don't believe that any cosmic principle or deity
is going to make everything alright or even just.
I believe I have to kick the evildoers' asses
or the bastards will get away with it.
No karma, no dogma.
Only us.

Thinking Your Way Out Of Thinking

2007-02-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

One of AA's slogans is Think think think. Some people in the rooms find this slogan disturbing because they see thought as a hindrance to getting clean. These folks expect that if a problem user is allowed to think, then the problem user will use ratiocination – hairsplitting and argument – to evade the responsibility to try something new. I disagree with them. I believe "My best thinking got me here."

I realized that I had a problem.
I realized that I didn't know how to solve it.
I asked for help.
I learned about my patterns and triggers by writing about them.
I talked honestly about my past with someone who had already achieved some sort of solution to problems similar to my own.
I became willing to change my behavior.
I let myself off the hook for the past and accepted responsibility for the future.
I examined my past for people I had wronged, for which I still felt shame and guilt.
I thanked people I forgot to thank. I acknowledged my poor behavior to those who suffered the brunt of it.
I continued to watch myself and compare myself with my ideals.
I practiced meditation and humble speech about my longings and fears.
I listened to others and shared my story.

All of this involves thought. And thinking clearly, humbly, and lovingly will do the most good - for ourselves and those we would help.

"The greatest deeds are still thoughts. Around the thinker, the world revolves, but it revolves silently." – Friedrich Nietzsche, sort of.

The problem is not thinking per se, but our irrational, superstitious, magical, and egomaniacal attachment to our own inner dialogue. I used to think (read: "drink") all night long, reading and writing with a fervor generated by a survival instinct gone awry. I honestly believed that I was uniquely situated to help the world resolve what I perceived as a general crisis of faith. I drove myself mad.

When I came to the rooms, I still believed in my unique ability to save myself and the world... but there was a chink in my armor... I was willing to listen, even though I discounted most of what I heard. I slowly began to realize that I was too close to my own problems. My fear and my pride kept me from having a realistic assessment of my situation and my abilities. I realized that uninterested but compassionate advice was necessary if I was to get better.

I also realized that my attachment to my own inner voice was irrational. I was addicted to my own thinking. But the thought-addiction was beyond my thinking. I had to think my way out of thinking by first realizing the limitations of what thinking could and could not do. This is what the Vedic gurus referred to as jñana yoga. (See endnote below.) Like the Zen masters, paradoxes and nonsensical stories were contemplated until the mind let go of its language-addiction. I had to surrender to win, give to keep, and die to live.

Now, I am playful with my thoughts. I can wrestle with a problem for the evening and still go to sleep, even if I haven't figured out a satisfying solution. I still believe in the wonderful benefit of scientific and methodical thought, but I don't need thought to solve the world or its problems. I think because it's helpful and a pleasure.

Psalm 131:

LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul [is] even as a weaned child.

------

ENDNOTE: The path of reuniting with Deity was referred to in Sanskrit as yoga, which is cognate with English yoke, the device that hooks oxen to each other and to the cart that they pull. There were four ways delineated for going about this reunification: raja yoga, the yoga we are most familiar with, involving meditation and posture; karma yoga, the yoga that comes from ritual and repetition of cycles of actions; bhakti yoga, the yoga that involves fervent devotion to an image of deity such as Krishna, or in the West, Jesus Christ; and jñana yoga, which involves fervent study of theological and philosophical problems until the mind frees itself from them. Jñana comes from the same original Indo-European word as does our English knowledge and the Greek gnosis.

Authority

2007-02-13T15:20:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Bart D Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus which deals with the provenance and pedigree of scripture. It recalls many of my adolescent misgivings as I studied New Testament Greek, the discrepancies of the oldest codexes, and the birth of Christian orthodoxy. When the misgivings reached critical mass, I landed in the lap of another Christian-adolescent- philologist-turned-atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche. Fritz took me through the dark exploration of a world without an external conscience and without authority. Fritz demanded that I own my own authority.

For many years, I was fiercely opposed to anyone turning to a book or expert to help them decide questions that must be decided alone, i.e., questions of value. I still am scornful when people turn to bibles and dictionaries to resolve personal questions. I have no use for Bible or Big Book except to disagree with them. If I agree with a point made in these books, what is gained by citing to the dead text instead of voicing my own living words. But what is gained by disagreeing with them? I believe I help to slow the mad dissent of my lazy minded contemporaries who are always shirking their responsibilities to live their own lives and voice their own thoughts and who are always in danger of becoming a stupid and bloodthirsty mob.

The bottom line is that authority always begins originally with each person. Certainly, authority is the distilled opinions of a child's elders; but this point becomes absurd and infantile once the child reaches maturity. The adult child gropes for elders and heroes that aren't there... and the adult child is forced to imagine an older hero that looks lovingly and/or disapprovingly from outer space. The authority is ours. Mother Eve bit of the fruit, making gods of each of her children, knowing for ourselves what is good and what is evil. We hand over this authority provisionally to gurus and texts, but in the end, the choices are always ours.

"If" is the middle word in "life"

2007-02-13T11:24:00.000-08:00

IF
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Waiting to blog

2007-02-08T01:28:00.000-08:00

I haven't wanted to blog lately because I've wanted my informal blog to have the structure of a published work. I make things too hard on myself for no reason. A blog should be free and obey the mood of the day. Maybe later, I can put my thoughts into some magnum opus... but not today... just not for today.

My head has been swimming with ideas about the true and rightful place of thinking in taming the addicted reptilian brain. I've been wanting to figure out how to get AA to throw open its doors to other addicts, offering them full membership. I've been thinking about the neural location of the Higher Power in the brain's right hemisphere and the physiology of communication, evangelism, and prayer. I've been thinking about issues outside of AA's purview, and what the goddammed Washingtonians have to do with anything. Was Bill Wilson really doing history or sociology? Or was his political conservatism (perhaps even cowardice) grasping for a reason to keep AA from having an opinion on segregation, women's rights, and governmental invasion into our most private acts – including the act of what substances we decide to take into our own bodies.

Perhaps you can tell that I'm feeling restless and a bit hamstrung within the current ambience of my local AA groups, but like the blog, I'm putting rules on myself that I don't have to follow. I'm going to continue doing whatever I need to do to stay clean. I will continue to give the best advice that my right brain (a.k.a., Higher Power) has to offer. I will not let myself be silenced. I will protect newcomers from oldtiming bullies. And I will not expect AA or the people in AA to be perfectly in sync with my vagary moods and opinions.

As long as I can be of some help to somebody who doesn't know how to manage without chemicals – as long as I can listen and share my story – I believe I can continue to stay clean and improve my life year by year. When I stop being useful, I can always change. And when AA ceases being helpful, then AA will cease, or hopefully, become ready to begin again.

As Dr Bob noted about the eventual disintegration or transformation of AA, this thing will continue...

For as long as God needs us.

Those who can make you believe absurdities...

2007-01-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

can make you commit atrocities.

- Voltaire.

Poem Before Breakfast in Oakland Jail

2007-01-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

The sad and saddest moment
is the one of realization
when we turn and turn
the self-mending process
into the "thing" – durable, breakable.
The actual breaking
is only the sadness of the realization
come to pass.

God is just now emerging from his dream.
But the God who is was already dead
and was born dead.

What is most cannot be said and cannot be saved.
What is least, and the excretion of the least,
has been collected and catalogued as learning.
But our learning still stinks of the judgment of Christ,
and his carcass still rots beneath our too worldly gaze.

Who touches does not know, who knows does not touch.
And to hallow one moment is to be blessed forever.

I am and still only cannibal,
I am last of my species.
I decree the blessed eucharist and wither
beneath my too cultured taste.
I starve without kindred.

The Abyss of Perfect Knowledge

2007-01-03T15:53:00.000-08:00

by Max Ehrman

I plunge myself into a sea
of duty, seeking escape from the
questions at the pit of consciousness.

O shadows of Renee, Obermann, De Guerin,
Amiel, and all holders of moral inquisitions -
I shake you off!
I go out into the sunlight,
and I bathe myself in human fellowship.

Under the leaden wings of nights
I see this brood of melancholy
half-gods and half-men,
pitiable because they are neither
the one nor the other.

I grow afraid and turn away
from the bottomless pit of
perfect knowledge. I see the withered
hand that touched all these
curious adventurers who would
search the caverns of the ideal.

I dissipate the thoughts in these
scribblings, to save myself;
therefore I plunge into the sea of
daily duty, to forget the lure of the abyss
of perfect knowledge, and to live and
laugh again.

If This Is

2007-01-03T15:49:00.000-08:00

© 1993, Troy K Spears

If this is dream,
it is a good dream
that make me also good
by its charms and mystic devices.

If this is foolery,
history is full of fools,
loudhearted and big,
and falling at the feet of my dream,
I would be in good company.

If this is falsehood,
it is false as the moon is false,
and she must show her several faces
in order to be comprehended whole.

If this is truth,
it is a dangerous truth,
for each flower and gentle word,
each look and fond remembrance,
brings its own chance
of collapse.

To Be With You

2007-01-03T15:44:00.000-08:00

by Max Ehrman

To be with you this evening,
rarest of the evenings all,
And listen to the whispering leaves
and to the night bird's call
The silvery moonlight on your face-
To be with you in some still place.

To be with you somewhere within
this evenings mystic shade,
To hear your plans and hopes
and tell you mine, all unafraid
That you'd forget to hold them dear,
When I'm away and you're not here

To be somewhere alone with you
and watch the myriad stars,
Far golden worlds beyond the noisy
earth's unkindly jars,
As quietly they sail the night's sea
Above all the world and you and me.

Sleep Sweetly

2007-01-03T15:43:00.000-08:00

by Max Ehrman

Sleep sweetly now that the gates of the
crimson night are closed, and leave
tomorrow's struggle for tomorrow;
The earth is peaceful, only the stars and still moon
are abroad, and they wage no war.

Post-Modern Thoughts On Tradition Ten...

2006-12-22T09:49:00.000-08:00

Tradition Ten - Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

I'm starting a group that is using artistic recovery as way of practicing the Eleventh Step to seek a conscious contact with our Higher Power. Since there is no AA literature that directly speaks to the issue of creativity as a spiritual method, the group has settled on a non-Conference-Approved book, The Artist's Way. I was going to use my lawyerese and my knowledge of AA history to defend this choice, but when I turned to the long form (the official version) of the Tradition, I realized that our choice of reading material did not violate the spirit or letter of the Tradition.

The long form of Tradition Ten reads:

No A.A. group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate A.A., express any opinion on outside controversial issues - particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters they can express no views whatsoever.

The book we're using is part of the AA Tradition of encouraging persons to find their own higher power, and it does not endorse any politics or sectarian religion.

Post-Modern Thoughts on Tradition One

2006-12-14T09:45:00.000-08:00

Tradition One - Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon AA unity.

AA has no enforcement mechanisms other than primitive (natural?) forms of coercion, including ostracism, gossip, and backbiting. There is no court or tribunal to determine whether a group is "real" AA or not. According to the 12x12, the Traditions are principles learned from experience which are self-enforcing, like gravity or environmental science. To "deviate from" or ignore gravity is to invite injury. And yet, if someone didn't think long and hard about gravity and the fluid dynamics of atmosphere, then there would be no airplanes. Principles and lessons from experience are not to be followed blindly or religiously – they are to be used practically to achieve the things desired.

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 130:

"The A.A. member has to conform to the principles of recovery. His life actually depends upon obedience to spiritual principles. If he deviates too far, the penalty is sure and swift; he sickens and dies. At first he goes along because he must, but later discovers a way of life he really wants to live. Moreover, he finds he cannot keep this priceless gift unless he gives it away. Neither he nor anybody else can survive unless he carries the A.A. message. The moment this Twelfth Step work forms a group, another discovery is made - that most individuals cannot recover unless there is a group. Realization dawns that he is but a small part of a great whole; that no personal sacrifice is too great for the preservation of the Fellowship. He learns that the clamor of desires and ambitions within him must be silenced whenever these could damage the group. It becomes plain that the group must survive or the individual will not."

Unity is not uniformity.

Do the thought experiment. Imagine a group where everyone subscribes to the same "program" and the same interpretation of said program... then imagine the power-drives and struggles for dominance by two or three members of the group who are trying to establish that they are more faithfully adhering to the tenets of said program, i.e., they are a better embodiment of the principles of said program. Power-drivers, ego-feeders, eternally hungry, never satisfied. Even though there is doctrinal unity, the group is divided.

Second thought experiment. Group has no doctrinal unity and everyone has a different way of looking at how they achieve and maintain personal sobriety. Some people do the steps, some don't. Some people get a sponsor, some won't. Same power-drivers and ego-feeders emerge, but the group smiles at them because there is no doctrine that the ego-feeders can use to put a good face on their bullying.

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 129:

"We believe there isn't a fellowship on earth which lavishes more devoted care upon its individual members; surely there is none which more jealously guards the individual's right to think, talk, and act as he wishes. No A.A. can compel another to do anything; nobody can be punished or expelled. Our Twelve Steps to recovery are suggestions; the Twelve Traditions which guarantee A.A.'s unity contain not a single 'Don't.' They repeatedly say 'We ought...' but never 'You must!'"

Guardians of the Traditions...

2006-12-05T16:11:00.000-08:00

Either the 12 Traditions are beyond question as immutable truths handed down from on high (which I cannot even think without laughing) or the Traditions are empirically gleaned guidelines generated by early AA experience (circa 1935 to 1955). I have no use for the theory (or cop-out) that dresses itself up as "revelation." I believe the Traditions are empirical in nature and so they are susceptible to the same scientific scrutiny as any other practical guideline that is founded on experience. That said, the Traditions are open for debate. I take issue with the following Traditions, or at least, with some of the interpretations that are being batted around the rooms:

3. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.

5. Each group has but one primary purpose-to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

It's a good sign the relationship's over...

2006-12-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

when the cops arrive.

Sometimes my low self-esteem...

2006-12-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

is just good common sense.

Post-Modern Names for God....

2006-11-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

In case the old patriarch weighs heavy on your enlightened mind:

Deity;
Creator;
Life Giver;
Ancestor;
World Spirit;
Great Spirit;
Over Soul;
Reality;
Existence;
Mystery;
AndroGyn;
Better Angels of my Nature;
and, uhm... uhm...

Let me know what you call your Higher Power.

Curiosity

2006-11-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.
Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die --
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.

A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

- Alastair Reed

When you no longer look for evil in the world...

2006-10-31T16:50:00.000-08:00

you will clearly see its danger.

Worship All That You See

2006-10-30T13:41:00.000-08:00

Always, always looking for miracles and some sign of God's presence in the world. But what if God existed? Would it change any of my decisions here and now? Call me a devout agnostic — or an apatheist, if you will — God exists, but so what? And yet, the presence of miracle in the world absolutely must exist for me in a perceived way in order for me to retain any sense of real happiness.

GOOD & EVIL:
GOD AS GUARANTOR OF CONSEQUENCES

Socrates, in the Euthyphro, explored the problem with using divine authority for establishing the rightness or wrongness of decisions. Socrates confronted an Athenian priest who was heading to the authorities to turn in his father for the abandonment and death of a slave who had murdered another slave. Dad had thrown the murderous slave into a dry well and left the slave to starve to death. The priest was going against his filial duty toward his father in order to show his civic duty to the city and its rules governing the institution of slaveholding.

Socrates was always confused by the fact that the Delphic oracle had pronounced Socrates the wisest man on earth. Socrates knew that he knew absolutely nothing except ... that Socrates knew that he knew nothing. If Socrates really was wise, and if Socrates did not know anything, then all these other people who pretend to know great things must be foolish, mistaken, or they were just flat out lying. With this in mind, Socrates began questioning the learned priest on the question of right and wrong.

He asked the priest if we obey God (1) because of the harsh consequences of disobedience or (2) because God's will is right? The priest said we obey God because God's will is right. Socrates then posed the question how do we know that God's will is right. The priest tried to "beg the question" by stating that God's will was right because it was God's will. But this merely makes the two ideas trivially synonymous, neither concept adds anything to the other. But if the concept of a powerful God is a different idea from our notion of the Right, then conceptually, we can imagine an instance where the powerful God wills something that we would consider wrong.

[Compare Kierkegaard's question concerning Abraham, posed at the beginning of Fear and Trembling: If God tells you to take your only son up to an altar and slay him as a sacrifice, how do you know it is God that is speaking? And assuming you do know it's God speaking, do you obey and why?]

Socrates suggested that we already know what is right regardless of whether we know what God's will is — the notion of Right is more familiar and accessible to us than God's will is. The priest agreed that we had some inborn knowledge of right. To which Socrates then queried, if we already know what's right and that we should do the right, then what force is added because the right decision also happens to be God's will. If we already know what is right, and God wants us to do something wrong, should we obey God out of fear of his wrath, or should we do what is right regardless of God's will?

Though God devour me, I will still trust him, but I shall maintain my own ways before him. — Job 13:15, sort of.

Assuming that doing the right is God's pleasure, would we continue to obey the Holy Will if there were no reward or punishment attached? Better stated, would we continue to do God's will for the sole purpose of pleasing God? Better still...

Would we continue to do God's will if there were no God?

God is dead and we are his murderers! How shall we live up to such a crime?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, sort of.

The concept of Right is akin to the concept of Beauty. If you and I do not agree on what is beautiful, I may refer you to things you already do see as beautiful, and then lead you to see the similarities of a thing you already see as beautiful, and the thing you do not now see as beautiful. If I cannot lead you to agree with me on the beauty of a thing, I can do no more. You think don't think it's pretty, and I think it is. There we leave it, because it is only an issue of how you decorate your room and how I decorate mine.

With Right, we come to our shared living space. This is where Beauty dons the executioner's mask, because I do not want to live in a world where you can display your vision of Beauty which I might consider Very Ugly. This is where our disagreement leads to quarrel and ultimately one of us will be forced to go underground, either figuratively or literally.

Virtue, from Latin vir, warrior, is cognate with English war. Value, from Latin valor, means bravery during combat, and is cognate with English valiant and valor. The Greek word used by Socrates for virtue was arete, which also stood for bravery during combat, and is cognate with Ares, the god of war.

It has been suggested that the reason that these words have come to be taken as words describing the Right is that the notion of the Right has changed from that held by the ancient Mediterraneans. The European culture, once warlike and only valuing warlike qualities, has now broadened to include non-martial values based on capitalism and socialism. We have been tamed by organizational Protestantism (individual rights and a mercantile economy) and Catholicism (organized welfare for the unlucky).

I would like to suggest instead that these words, virtue and value, have not changed their meanings all that much in that the Right is still necessarily warlike. As soon as a person determines something is Right, that person is prepared to fight. With the move from Beauty to the Right, we see people becoming more and more aggressive.

We can see the transition at a city zoning meeting concerning community aesthetics. For example, one group of people wants unused and "ugly" cars off the street, and another group owns the "ugly" and unused cars. The question becomes heated as soon as the discussion moves from the aesthetic quality of the neighborhood to the discussion of each sides "rights." "We have a right to live in a beautiful community." "We have a right to keep our property that we intend to make useful and beautiful." Next we come to fist-to-cuffs with the police on one side and angry rioters on the other.

The Right is something that is personal, and perhaps to some extent, genetic. After all, a culturally selected set of principles with punishments attached — such as taking away the wherewithal to flourish in the form of extracting fines, or removing a person from the breeding population by incarceration and execution — is going to have some impact on the selection of genes in the culture.

The Chinese took this selection, perhaps not knowing its genetic consequences, to the extent of wiping out whole clans for the serious crime of one of the clan's members. I say perhaps not knowing, because humans have known for millenia that different personalities could be bred into their domestic animals by proactively selecting breeding pairs and reactively removing an animal or group of animals from the breeding series.

The idea of God adds nothing substantive to the concept of Right, but it does create an alteration in one's degree of commitment to Right if an eternal reward or punishment is also believed. The believer is more likely to commit suicidal and homicidal acts in promotion of the Right if Heaven or Hell are part of the wager.

MIRACLES:
GOD AS REPRIEVE FROM CONSEQUENCES

Worship all that you see and more will be revealed.

Many look to God for intervention into the normal everyday sequence of events, looking for some serendipitous relief from unlucky catastrophe or stupid decisions. Many look for miracle to achieve a feeling of the extraordinary or the dramatic in an otherwise humdrum life.

A miracle is an irreproducible event. Contrast this to an event that is ordinary in the sense that we believe that we can come to understand the ordinary event's causes and then use the understanding to arrange our lives more to our liking. A miracle does not bear scrutiny into why it occurred. By its nature, it is a freak occurrence and it is unjust. It is often believed to come from God's grace, or God's undeserved favor of one person and not another. This type of miracle is one that conflicts with my sense of Right. I find no comfort in believing that Fickle Inscrutable Favoritism is the driving force of the universe, instead I choose to believe in Dumb Luck.

However, I do notice that my definitions of miracles and ordinary events leaves open an option for seeing miracles everywhere. The choice is mine and involves active decisions to make myself see miracle everywhere. Because in the bigger idea of an event — a slice of universal space-time — the Moment — all events are irreproducible because there is no way to adjust all things back into the same order they were at any time in the past. The universe is not amenable to laboratory study. The Moment is here ... and is gone. It is Miracle!

Science, if it existed, would be justice — the same principles governing all events at all times, the creed that the same causes lead always to the same effects. Science would be no respecter of persons.

However, the universe is such that the pursuit of science has been forced to more intricate abstractions in order to find this desideratum of the "reproducibility of events." Expected results do not occur, and it's back to the drawing board. This has been carried on to the point that the reproducibility is now said to be found statistically at the level of quanta.

The importance of this microscopic and theoretic reproducibility is trivial for human ethical decision until the reproducible principles can be fashioned into a macroscopic product like a pharmaceutical or a weapon. Moreover, all the sciences that deal with the macroscopic world, such as meteorology and electronics, concern the math and movement of large aggregates, and therefore, predict probable outcomes. But again, these sciences, however interesting, are still ethically void.

With History, we encounter stories about humans that have ethical appeal, governed by probable narrative-bound links between antecedent and consequent. We have drama and storytelling. We understand internally how one event led into another; however, we also see how an entirely different outcome could have resulted. Historic events, ethically understandable events, lie somewhere between miracles and ordinary events. They are to some extent causal and to some extent irreproducible because you never know what variable will change the predicted outcome.

But for the want of a nail...

Introspective and emotive thinking are key to historic understanding because the subjects of our inquiry are believed to be, to a greater or lesser degree, like us. History has substantive value for the area of human ethical decision and for the fashioning of Law. History is philosophy's laboratory. History is enjoying the spectacle of ourselves. Theoria, theory, originally referred to the joy the gods (theoi, Old Attic for watchers) have viewing their deeds portrayed in theater. In History, we entertain the pride and joy of the great deeds of our predecessors and the great deeds we feel we are capable of.

The difference between bare proposition and suggestive storytelling is the difference between Science and History and between the laws as written and capital-L Law. There are two versions of teaching ethics — one rule-based and the other role-based. In the former, I list a set of rules. As situations emerge which create ambiguity as to what rule will apply, a judge makes a determination, and this becomes a new rule or part of the annotations to the set of old rules. In the latter, I show you a great ethical individual, real or imagined, in normal and difficult situations, with the hope that you will also see the greatness and be inspired to imitate. Your life becomes an annotation to the great role model that inspired you.

OURSELVES

And you will be as gods, knowing good and evil. — Serpent's promise to Eve.

The creed of the reproducible and a chosen lifestyle of repetition dull the sense of Miracle and numb the beginner's mind. I choose not to see Miracle in events, because this that I see in front of me is the same as I saw the day before. I do the same things over and over, choosing not to understand the immediacy of all things, and I become bored and unimpressed with everything. I try to do the correct and ordinary thing all the time, and then fail to see the historic opportunities which might allow me to swerve the direction of things in an unexpected and different way, becoming an Angel of Miracle, freshening the world.

It has always been the prerogative of children...

2006-10-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

- Neil Gaiman

A Head Touched

2006-10-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

© 1983, Troy Kevin Spears

Touching the circle of my head,
fragile circle of myth -
mother, monster, master, and mission -
pushing me thru amphetamine eternities
of memory and desire
tied and twisted into a being with little use
for a timeline or daily planner.
Goal-directed smile, inward stare, Oedipus-haunted eye,
tearful laughing moment of gods, goddesses, and godlings,
tearful laughing circle -

laughing god,
tortured myth -

empty circle of a head,
a head touched,
fragile.

It shimmered and rained thru air.
The shards of myth are now media,
are growing, obeying an inner law,
becoming childrened, populating themselves.
New nation, new priesthood,
glistening network, machine, contract, intrigue,
dancing beneath a too-young sun.

I touch the fragile circle of my head,
fragile circle of a myth, broken,
and voilà, is now media -
and the medium (median?) is the message.
Transcendent eternity and transfixed moment
find each other through oscillations
of mind and heart and sense.

Buddhist calls this
The Thingness of Things Seen
and is done.

The Son of Man has no place to lay his head
and must continue.

My grandfather told me this story...

2006-10-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

Gregro (GRAY-grow) and his friend, the Professor, were going to the Dead Sea to spend the afternoon at the beach. On the way, the Professor was explaining all the secrets of astronomy, algebra, the Qur'an, and economics. Gregro seemed half-interested in the discussion and spent most of the walk hitting a can with a stick. Occasionally, Gregro would look up at the Professor with a good-natured and bemused, "How remarkable!"

When the two men got to the beach, they swam and then washed off the salt and lay down upon their blankets. After a few minutes, Gregro got up and grabbed his drinking cup and dug a small hole in the sand near their beachspot. Gregro then went to the sea and grabbed a cup of water and then poured it into the hole he had dug.

Again and again, Gregro went to the sea to get another cup of water, and again and again, the hole would swallow it up. After several minutes of watching his friend's endeavor, the Professor asked Gregro, "Just what is it that you're doing?"

Gregro explained, "I'm going to put the sea into this little hole I've dug."

The Professor laughed and told Gregro it would never work.

Gregro then chided the Professor, "You have put the whole universe into your head, so I don't see why I shouldn't be able to put the ocean into this hole."

Do I believe?

2006-10-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

My beautiful friend, the great Tinac, asked me for further explanation of whether I believe. It is common to cite dictionary definitions when it comes to determining the meaning of words, but I prefer etymologies which help me to understand that shifts in pronunciation, spelling, and meaning occur over time. This reminds me that my explanations and arguments are time-bound and are useful, if at all, based on current usage.

The Merriam-Webster etymology for "believe" reads: "Middle English beleven, from Old English belEfan, from be- + lyfan, lEfan to allow, believe; akin to Old High German gilouben to believe, Old English lEof dear -- more at LOVE." The etymology at "love" traces the root further back to the Latin lubEre, libEre to please. What this reminds me of is that there is a certain pleasure taken in the ideas one calls "beliefs." There is an affection toward these ideas, and as I have also noticed, a fierce protection surrounding these ideas.

Tinac asked me if I believe that not breathing would cause me to die. First of all, I take no pleasure in this idea; I have no affection for this idea; and I feel no need to protect this idea. Secondly, I entertain an alternative idea that someday my lungs will be so badly damaged that they will cease to be able to supply my body with the oxygen it needs. In that case, I ardently hope that someone has played with the idea of lungless respiration, i.e., a way to supply oxygen to cells through a more direct method, perhaps intravenously. So in this case, I do not believe that not breathing would cause me to die. However, until I understand that lungless respiration is available, I will entertain the "working hypothesis" that I need to breathe to survive.

This brings us to an idea that I do take pleasure in, have affection toward, and feel compelled to protect. The idea that any mind or system of knowledge is too small to comprehend the universe whole. This idea supports the attitude and practice of intellectual (or spiritual, if you prefer) humility. I see colors, I hear sounds, but I do not know why. But I still enjoy painting pictures and drawing maps of what is going on behind the perceptions that help me explain, predict, and fashion my perceptions into something that is more to my liking.

What does all this have to do with chemical abuse?
What does this have to do with AA?

Over time, I have continued to go to AA meetings. I have observed that my life, both internal and external, have improved when I attend AA meetings. I have also observed that my life quickly becomes unmanageable when I stop going to meetings. Other folks have noticed the same thing in their own lives.

The problem is that many of these folks have not learned the principle of spiritual (or intellectual, if you prefer) humility. They have an explanation for this set of correlations, (quality of life and meeting attendance) and they browbeat and connive against others that disagree with their pet theories. I personally have felt the need to escape these armchair therapists, and I have felt unsafe being an intellectual at an AA meeting.

My task is to make AA safe for the intellectual, the sceptic, and the inherently curious — to make AA safe for me.

Soliloquy

2006-10-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

— © 1991, Troy K Spears

That the center shall hold...
Perhaps any center would suffice to hold.
Hold what?
Perhaps a passion, perhaps a thought.
How can a thought hold without a passion?

The hero and the saint
and the poor creature they ride,
blurring the division,
art and artist physically enmeshed,
god and beast,
nothing and something.

how the emptiness fills the statue
turns mute rock into eloquent pose,
and what the poet didn't say
is what we take away from the poem.

Spirit as art, as résumé? as social function?
as propogation of the bloodline?

God, who does not move, moves the world
as the beloved moves the lover,
but sometimes the beloved blows the lover
to smithereens.

That the beloved shall hold?
That the lover be held?
The world turn for one more day?
The sun, shall it feed tired plants
and not breathe all life away
from this thin atmosphere
into its comic cosmic wind?

Ah dream! Ah blessed moment! Ah perfect!

The razor sings to me from the bathroom sink,
and a fragrant mediterranean breeze blows across my face.
a desire to travel awakens,
a desire to go home.

That the center shall hold...
what delusion!
The center is only center because we devalued the edges.

The only task left is to devalue also the center.

To tell the truth

2006-10-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

— © 1992, Troy K Spears

To tell the truth, preach the apocalypse
dredge the flickers — memory or fancy —
to tell my sorrow, to say I love you.

Many too many games.
The bridge from tender concern to concern for honor
has been crossed by the hollow soul's own gravity.
The will to gutter or glory,
the will to wife.

I have never been so close to such perfection.
Your weaknesses halo you with the light of a lonely god.
Amid the chatter of peers, the chinking of bottles,
turning of pages, droning of tutors...
There lies no meditating sage on your breast,
but the Cross of Christ.

The impossibility of our situation is no deterrent to me —
windmill jouster, bible peddler —
it merely drives me mad,
perhaps to genius.

Only that you know,
I ardently wish to leave off these games,
a healing and end to this unjust vendetta,
too long an unsuccored hurt.

Only that you know,
I pray for our child.

Personal Transcendence of Astrology,Science, and Other Systems of Magic

2006-10-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

After all, truth IS still stranger than fiction!
Truth is just the fiction you can't escape.

i.

watch this line
as it traces its blocks upon a path,
along a direction
that falls on it from

It Knows Not Whence.

and a child's fingers will blend them
into a world
that denies blocks and all
isolated units of color.

ii.

is the uncarved world
better than

The World Of Blended Blocks?

or is too late to discuss

Such Things?

late and early
fracture the Stream.
blend them, bend them,

send them on their way.

iii.

In the beginning of segmented time, (i.e., time as segment) was the Block, and the Block was the head of God, (even as Christ is the head of the Church) and God was that verily same Block that was his head.

All things (qua blocks) came into being through that Block, and apart from 'him' (the Block as masculine) nothing, no thing, came to be.

iv.

turning to the stars as

Brothers in Pattern,

we find blocks of directions, signs;
we find blocks of energies, planets;
and we find blocks of our lifetime, houses.

blend them, bend them,
and you will discover yourself
before you turned to the stars...

v.

you will be behind them...

vi.

they bleed —
selfish suction to accumulate dust —
they bleed

the Horror...

and spin
with no ground to plant their feet,
no feet to ground their space —
they spin

the Centrifuge...

and the blood divides
as they spin (the blood is cut)
and we behold plasma and corpuscle.

all One in the beginning.

and our brothers bleed,
and our brothers spin,
and still...

Good and Evil.

vii.

words as block,
ideas as block,
people as block,
brando as block.

too far!
this speech is unclean.

and the consecrated block
was carved into a god.
and the block bled with the blood
of rams, and of bulls, and of angels.
and the people carved their initials into the block,
and offered their beer cans there...

the block bore their sins
as blocks are wont to do.

viii.

as the people of the tribe named it,
it began its descent into a city.

ix.

i carved a block
into the shape of a poem...

it has never forgiven me since.

Tetralemma

2006-10-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

Everything is either true
or it is not true
or it is both true and not true
or it is neither true or not true.
That is the Buddha's teaching.

When I say I disagree, it does not mean that I think you're wrong...
and it certainly doesn't mean that I think that I'm right. It means I am not willing to sign on to any particular side in a discussion.

What is the difference between an idea and a belief?
An belief is an idea that is looking for a fight.

What is the difference between knowledge and belief?
Knowledge is belief with some evidentiary support for belittling its opponents.

Both knowledge and belief are intellectual bad manners. When we think, we entertain a variety of ideas and a variety of observations that both support and refute the claims we are discussing. As soon as someone asserts belief or knowledge, the discussion is over and politeness is ignored.

Some may find the sceptic rude when the sceptic argues points that others have already decided. However, the believer is actually the rude person because the believer has decided that the discussion is over — and worse — that anyone still discussing the matter is pigheaded, dense, or is patronized as being naive or unlearned.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

The sceptic wants to allow others to enter the discussion and to be allowed to present unpopular opinions. The sceptic is not looking for agreement or resolution; the sceptic wants to be the host to a good discussion.

More about the first meetings...

2006-10-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

At our Briggsmore Beach meeting, one of our opening readings is from pages 159 to 160 about the first meetings of AA. That reading suggests that the first meetings were generous and inclusive, "open to anyone and everyone interested in a spiritual way of life." I would like to share a little more about those first meetings — this from pages 218-219 in Pass It On:

A.A continued to grow — a book sold, a member added, a message passed. But there was no money, no prospect of money, no real evidence that things were changing. Indeed, all during the summer of 1939, "things" got steadily worse. The situation in Europe was darkening daily; Hitler's aggression was spreading; war looked imminent. At home, unemployment remained widespread, and for the tiny band of sober alcoholics, there was continued financial destitution. Their loyalty to one another, to their newfound sobriety, and to their leader, Bill W., seemed to increase as their circumstances declined. And everywhere, through acts of commitment, they buoyed themselves and one another, and kept their courage and confidence high.
Their courage and confidence were bolstered daily by the meetings themselves. Ruth Hock [Bill W's first secretary] described them: They were "structured to the extent that there was always one speaker and Bill — maybe half an hour each — and then a long coffee session, a real get-together. We were often there till 12 o'clock, started at eight." She also said, "At that time, we did not go into Step work. Didn't have 90 day requirements. No birthdays — no recognition was made if you were sober a week or a year. If you felt you would like to speak in a year or in a month or in two weeks, they let you get up and speak, and they didn't throw you out if you got there drunk, either. They felt it was encouraging, hoping some word would stick." —Emphasis mine.

Many ideas and practices have been added to AA since its inception, such as counting time since one's last drink and celebrating sobriety "milestones." There are many people who like to share about how long it's been since their last drink. There are meetings where sobriety time is celebrated in countdown fashion or with a show of hands. But is this useful? Perhaps it is another cult tool for shaming the relapser into complying... or leaving. Think about it: the chronic relapser is an annoying reminder that the cult doesn't work for some people. Why not shame them out of the rooms by constantly reminding them of their "failure," especially if we can do it with a clean conscience by only speaking in terms of our "success"? After all, my mentioning my years and years of sobriety is only an expression of gratitude — or is it?

Might it not be an expression of smug self-satisfaction?

And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men [are], extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as [his] eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified [rather] than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
—Luke 18:9-14.

Al-Anon Sixth Step

2006-10-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Humbly asked God to remove all these DEFECTIVE characters.

He who fights with monsters...

2006-10-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

must beware that he does not become a monster himself. And when you stare long into the Abyss, the Abyss also stares into you.

- Friedrich Nietzsche.

You can always hire half the poor...

2006-10-02T16:08:00.001-07:00

to kill the other half.

I love my country...

2006-10-02T16:08:00.000-07:00

but I think we should start seeing other people.

Bumper stickers...

2006-10-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

What the American public doesn't know...

2006-10-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

is what makes them the American public!

Protest, evasion, merry distrust...

2006-09-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

and a delight in mockery are symptoms of health:
everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

- Friedrich Nietzsche.

Double Blood's Golden Drippings of a Dirty Mind

Money, Beginning Thoughts

Bill Wilson, light & loose with the truth

Secular Recovery comes to Modesto!

Post-modernism is gibberish.

There is a barbarism that is stalking America...

Buddhism...

Boundaries, boundaries, all round!

The "Politics" of Twelve Steps

My recovery hiatus...

DoubleBlood in the news...

Forgiveness...

What the American public doesn't know...

Original closing of How It Works

Another thoughtful review of Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure - A MUST READ!

To become the person you want to be...

AA: Cult or Cure? Posted at Briggsmore Beach

Went to a Christmas marathon meeting this morning...

The Bible says "Love thy neighbor."

Ferguson's story

Prayer for Understanding

A friend thought "psychotic" was too strong a word to describe the religious...

On any given Sunday... or Sabbath...

Anonymity - Enabling the Dishonesty of AA for 72 Years

Going to any lengths... including reading outside materials

AA DoubleSpeak: How AAs misuse the word "drink"

12 Step Horror Stories: Amazon Customer Reviews

Appeals court says requirement to attend AA unconstitutional

Just about done with this AA business...

So lets say you're immortal... now what are you going to do?

What you leave behind...

Non-membership has its privileges

Higher Power! Who you callin' a Higher Power?

The Universe has no lessons to teach us...

Democracy doesn't mean I'm as important as you...

Recommended Reading

The Kooky Evasion of "My Truth"

What can be asserted without evidence...

What is "Spirituality" anyway?

New Briggsmore Beach Post: The Problem with Evil

Don't go to bed angry...

AA, Stay Out Of My Bathing Suit Areas!

Preoccupation With Growth As An Indication Of Cult

The Argument Over Personal Preference

What's Good About AA?

Powerless over my beliefs...

From the pamphlet A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous

Science versus Spirituality

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

The best revenge...

Analysis of therapy suggested at AA meetings

Sobriety without Big Book or Higher Power

A REAL Einstein quote...

New Briggsmore Beach Post: The Euthyphro

Critics Say Washington AA Chapter Is Cultlike

Rethinking childhood...

Quotes from the Great Lumberjack, Eric B from Montclair

Why Grace is Bullshit

Why Reincarnation Is Bullshit

Stop marginalizing atheists. We're more honest than you.

My favorite e e cummings quote (at this moment)

Jesus Chrysler, part I

Compassion and kindness are too rare...

WWTD?

Pedal to the metal, balls to the wall, flat out...

Thinking Your Way Out Of Thinking

Authority

"If" is the middle word in "life"

Waiting to blog

Those who can make you believe absurdities...

Poem Before Breakfast in Oakland Jail

The Abyss of Perfect Knowledge

If This Is

To Be With You

Sleep Sweetly

Post-Modern Thoughts On Tradition Ten...

Post-Modern Thoughts on Tradition One

Guardians of the Traditions...

It's a good sign the relationship's over...

Sometimes my low self-esteem...