In alcohol and drug recovery, each convention is filled with vast amounts of literature. People in the Twelve Step Recovery program write books about how how, following The Program, they learned the way to make money, the way to be successful in life, the way to be happy, the way to have good “relationships” with the opposite sex.
There are gay recovery groups and I am sure they have books on how to have good relations with the same sex, though I’ve never seen one.
Meanwhile my whole picture of The Program is embodied in times when I had to knock a guy out cold on the way to the emergency room, when I had to take a gun away from a woman who was threatening to shoot herself or anybody else, when a guy was naked and jabbing himself with a needle in his genitals in a bathroom filled with blood screaming, “I can’t find a vein, I can’t find a vein!” , and a number of times when I had to clean the vomit out of my car after taking somebody to detox.
Back to books on “How the Program Made me Healthy, Wealthy and Wise.”
When the average person reads advice of the kind I give he generally expects three subjects: 1) how to healthy, wealthy and wise, 2) how to be moral, and 3) how to think straight.
My advice is only on 3) because 3) is all I really know about.
So let me repeat why my writings are not the sort of thing great columns or best-selling advice books are made of.
A successful advice columnist tells his audience three things:
1) How to be successful;
2) How he should conduct himself personally;
And
3) How to think straight.
You may find some advice on 1) and 2) SOMEWHERE in the archives of Whitakeronline, Bob’s Blog, my articles or the books I have written.
But you shouldn’t. If I ever told you how you should act personally to be moral paragon, those were the silly writings all us mere humans stoop to.
But I don’t think you will find a word of this preaching about personal behavior in all I have said.
My advice is on how to THINK straight.
Sainthood I leave to saints. I have not achieved sainthood and I never will.
This is not like The Confessions of Saint Augustine where he is talking about the sins he committed BEFORE he saw the light: He kept praying, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet.”
Even when I discuss stupid thinking, I am not talking about things I have overcome. I am talking about things I am still doing.
Some of the people writing the books about that show up on the stands at AA conventions, the ones about to be happy and successful and how to do sex right, are probably also carrying unconscious overdosers into the emergency room.
God bless them if they are. They combine perfect theory with perfect behavior.
But I never checked to see if they practice what they preached. I had my own work to do.
And even if such a perfect peson existed, he couldnot perform one role a sinner like me was perfect for.
Very few people in a Twelve Step Program want to do their fifth step with a saint.
I wrote about the fifth step before. It is where you tell one human being ALL about yourself, I mean ALL, including the sexual stuff, and learn that that person can like you despite the things you are most ashamed of.
The huge number of people who asked to their Fifth Step with me came to me precisely because I am NOT a moral paragon and never claimed to be. If I have one proof that I nonjudgmental it is the number of people who decided, or were even urged by their sponsors, to do their fifth step with me.
You do NOT go to a judgmental person for that one.
BUT, there is always a BUT, I am not good because I am nonjudgmental.
There is a lot to be said for judgement.
All those big name rock stars who tell how they overcame drugs sound great. But they give people, and not just young people, the idea that drugs are OK because you can do them and become a success and then overcome them.
No way. Look at the list of rock stars who died using drugs.
St. Augustine and the Emperor Constantine delayed their baptism because baptism was believed to wash away all sins. So Augustine got baptised after he had done his sinning.
This may be good theology, but it is an AWFUL example.
I have led an AWFUL life. I am now a lonely old man. Nietzsche said that one leads the same life over and over. That is my worse nightmare.
I have a lot to offer. I can tell you how to argue, how to get things done.
Which is all I talk about.
But very often people assume that because what I say is good, I am good.
I have left a trail of very disappointed people behind me all my life. And I’m sick of it, because I don’t deserve that extra burden.
I am one of those who give warnings I do not heed.
I am the one who cleans the vomit out of his car. I am the one people come to to spill their guts out in the fifth step. I am the one who was out there on six continents fighting the fight no one else wanted to dirty their hands with.
I stood up to the enemies of my race while all the people who beat their chests about how Moral they were deserted me the moment the word “racist” was mentioned.
I am sure there were moral paragons in there side-by-side with me the whole time.
I just didn’t see them.
Maybe I was drunk.
#1 by Jimbo on 10/20/2005 - 11:03 pm
Bob,
You do provide thoughtful ideas, which is why I return to read your blog often. But you are a mass of contradictions. Now, I assume you will say that you have already admitted that in this post. But it doesn’t seem like you see it like it comes across.
You help the twelve steppers and fought wars in hell holes all over earth because you were doing what you saw was the right thing to do. You believe that people shouldn’t mutilate themselves with needles, because you know people weren’t made to do such things, that they are much more valuable than that.
A liberal would fight for their right to mutilate their genitals in public restrooms, and for it to be taught as an alternative lifestyle in schools. They don’t believe human beings are more valuable than that.
Likewise you fought battles most wouldn’t because you believed it to be the right thing to do. You were fighting for your people. You might say it is merely biological determinism to fight for your race, but it is doubtful anyone could honestly reduce it to that.
Hypocrites take the easy way out. The word means “actor”, and they want to be seen as something they aren’t. Your twelve step buddies are also hypocrites, being as they have to be made to go through confession to someone just as bad as they are. Why is it hard for them to confess what they are otherwise?
We are all hypocrites. Jesus’ most important sermon was on hypocrisy. But those that try to destroy themselves, as your twelve steppers most certainly are doing with such behaviors, are more honest than the hypocrites who want to keep their hands clean. That part of your story I can buy.
They are trying to destroy themselves because they hate what they see about themselves, because deep down they know they aren’t meant to be that way. They are more valuable than that.
Again, liberals would fight for their right to be that way, and to be treated as valuable for being that way. “Liberal Jesus” loves everyone just as they are.
The real Jesus wasn’t so accepting. In fact, beyond CS Lewis’ “Lord, lunatic, or liar” alternatives, is the fact that Jesus is either Lord, or He is the most glaring example of what you are calling a hypocrite. He said that people were made to be something more than they are, and came down here to give them the means to do so. If you think it was nasty going to third world hell holes, (and no doubt you are correct about that, Detroit is more than bad enough for me), imagine coming down from Heaven to go into the Palestine of 2000 years ago, or even the finest place on earth! No doubt the sights, smells, and behaviors of the third worlders you met made you want to puke. Imagine what our Lord had to endure, on a relative scale!
Why would He do such a thing? Why would He come and tell people to “go and sin no more”? Liberals wouldn’t do that! He obviously expected people to act on a much higher plane than we do, and told us so. He said that He would give us the power to do so. Either He meant that, or He came down here to put on the biggest act the world has ever seen!
He didn’t lighten the load of the Law of God by telling people it didn’t matter. He came to lighten it by giving people the power to actually live by it.
You didn’t fight in third-world hell holes so that people back home could mutilate themselves in restrooms. You had a sense of justice, of meaning and purpose. You just don’t follow the chain all the way back.
Liberals and athiests want to say that suffering proves God doesn’t exist, or doesn’t care about us. But like everything liberals say, it is nonsense. The fact that people can do such horrific things proves that there is a God, otherwise we wouldn’t have any standard by which to judge anything anyone does as anything but just what is. Liberals believe in some standard, and athiests all go on about how much more “moral” they are than religious believers, so they are claiming a standard as well.
People were made for a purpose, a valuable purpose, and like a fine tuned machine, perform marvelous things when running smoothly. Most of us have fouled plugs, or need a head gasket, or whatever, and are generating more heat than power. Just as science attempts to understand the laws of nature in order to exploit them more efficiently, so the laws of our human nature can be understood, and put in order so that we perform as we were made to do.
You seem to want to quit halfway. That is the contradiction.
#2 by Peter on 10/21/2005 - 7:51 pm
You do talk about moral principles: you say to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, and you say that the little old man is wrong when he log jams the road and makes people behind him late to their families or wherever they may be going. The last one is interesting, because you hold the moral law up to a higher standard, that it is not a mere abstraction that counts, but how we treat others.
#3 by joe rorke on 10/21/2005 - 9:03 pm
Thinking straight. In a world full of falsehood and political propaganda, it is a great service to teach people to think straight. Imagine. Would all the personal and business bankruptcies in America exist if people thought straight? There are thousands of other ideas that straight thinking will apply to on a daily basis. Straight thinking avoids deception. We are deceived every day of our lives in America by the Corporate Media. Your service is invaluable, Mr. Whitaker.
I would have been one of the few that would agree to take my fifth with a saint. I would know that he was honest. Without honesty there is nothing in a 12 step program. People often enough confuse “the program” with the fellowship. The fellowship is a wonderful thing but it is not “the program.” The 12 steps are “the program.” Lots of folks want to forget that.
Jesus said, “there is none good save one, that is God.” It’s in there somewhere. That ought to make everyone feel better. I don’t know what anyone is writing about AA these days but some oldtimers told me a few years back that things were changing, that folks were drifting away from what the folks in Akron had in mind. It seemed to me they were right. In the hill country here the meetings are small, tight-knit, great opportunities to grow …..if you’re honest, if your desire is real.
Look at all that great insight you have concerning yourself, Bob. Lots of folks don’t even know how to go about it. You’ve got a helluva lot to offer us. I don’t see any contradictions. They’re not there.