Bill W and Doctor Bob founded Alcoholics Anonymous. The movie showed the life of Bill W. Doctor Bob died early. But Doctor Bob’s last words to Bill W are the most quoted in AA.

Doctor Bob’s last words were “Keep it simple.”

Those three words stopped AA from becoming a form of psychology or a religion or some kind of Wordism.

Confucius and Buddha were both practical atheists. Yet there are church services regularly in the name of each of them. Neither Buddha nor Confucius understood the tendency of so many peoples toward making gods. So they ended up BEING gods.

When you die, a lot of people start quoting you for their own purposes. The way the Mantra is going right now, which is GREAT, I may be quoted within the movement after I am finally hanged or put in the dingaling ward.

If I do gain any lasting repute, I want to be less like Buddha and Confucius and more like Dr. Bob.

If I do manage to get a group of people thinking in my own, Keep It Simple Terms, I do not want it to end up like Pythagoras or others whose names were used towards building religions, like the Trinity, or the Holiness of Numbers.

I am old and tired and have had to spend my life introducing the most thorough kind of common sense, basic arithmetic, to political discussion. I do NOT want anyone to make a RELIGION of this, I want you to go on to developing your own algebra, your own Calculus.

You don’t need complication for its own sake. My wife was impressed by the black board full of Calculus equations I was criticizing as the Discussant at the presentation of professors’ papers in economics. I LIKED to impress my new wife and at the time I didn‘t want her thinking anything but how smart and complicated my mind was.

But those equations were all based on the implications of supply and demand. Boards full of Physics equations are based on a few principles everyone knows.

In fact, the reason math is so essential to Western peoples is because we are rigidly calculating BASICS, not inventing new realities. What is grandly and rightly known as the basis of Western Science is Occam’s Razor which can be translated into one sentence:

No Bullshit.

As those blackboards full of equations demonstrate, “Keep it Basic” is not the same thing as “Keep It Simple.”

But with that distinction in mind, Mister Bob’s legacy should be very similar to that of Doctor Bob’s.