One of the first things that is read out at all Alcoholics Anonymous meetings is, “Alcoholics Anonymous will never be organized.”
Boy, is that ever true! I also think that is one reason it WORKS. If you have followed the dialogue between me and Joe, it is often hard to imagine that we were in the same program. No one in AA would DARE refer to new people as “pigeons.” Anyone who says that has forgotten that this is HIS first day, too.
But different people in different places in recovery are like me and Joe, we each have our own version of the program, our own experience of it.
The piece I just wrote said that you let me TALK, so your estimate of me is very important. I spill my guts here, and you are the people hwo can tell me if I swallowed something poisonous.
Everything I say, if it is to do you any good, has to INTERRELATE. What I just said relates to interrogation — let the person TALK — but it relates to just about everything else that has to do with human basic, too. One of the first things it made me think of was the AA or Twelve Step program.
We have all heard of Twelve Step programs but very few of us, like me and Joe, have actually DONE those steps. One of the most dreaded is the Fifth Step. In the Fifth Step you find a person, usually your sponsor, and tell them ALL about yourself, all the way down to your sexual hangups and most dreaded weaknesses. But you don’t do it off the top of your head.
The fifth step follows the very long fourth step, in wich you write down everything you don’t like about yourself, everything you have done wrong. You have to do the fourth step over and over and over because your mind really doesn’t want to do it.
Your sponsor makes you do it over and over because he if he is a good sponsor he has been where you are and he is an excellent, REAL, interrogator. He won’t let you quit until your insides are on the table. This is tricky, because theoretically he can’t know ALL you wrote down, though he does.
Theoretically only the person you do the fifth step with gets it all. Actually, he is the one who gets it all AT ONCE.
I am so deep into the practice that I forgot to mention WHY you do this. The concept of the fifth step is that someone hears everything about you and STILL LIKES YOU. It assumes a de[pendency that no one in The Greatest Generation is supposed to feel. He likes you so you can like yourself.
Joe? Any objection?
I have done a LOT of fifth steps on both ends. People like me go into the fifth step FOR THE FIRST TIME dreading it enormously. But in the end the thing goes on for HOURS, and the LISTENER is the one who has to shut you up.
This is because of a basic. The stuff you have been most ashamed of, the stuff you have been keeping inside you all your
life, makes YOU sick. But we all have our OWN hangups. What makes YOU sick almost never is the hot button in someone ELSE’S soul. So you go in terrified about it. You finally confess and wait for astonished and horrified reaction YOU have to it. The person you are talking to is not that impressed.
Then — and this is hilarious if you get the picture — your EGO switches on. Here you are spilling out the filthiest things in your life and this guy obviously isn’t even LISTENING. You just confessed a horror that has been haunting you all your life and he doesn’t seem to GET it.
If you are listening to fifth step, you find yourself competing with the person doing the confessing. Invariably something is going to come up like, “Well, you did that, but what really bothered me was when I …” The first-timer simply cannot believe that you take THAT as seriously as what HE just said.
Then it gets fascinating. Remember, if you are doing the fifth step for the first time you are talking about the most interesting subject in the world, yourself. Here are things you have not talked to with anybody else, things you have been holding in for years. You have been thinking about them for years. Now you have achance to talk out things about the most fascinating subject on earth — you — that you have never talked about before.
As I say, I have only been in one type of fifth step out of the dozens where the LISTENER was not the one who had to stop it. The only time I have not been the one to call a halt was when I was the “talker” rather the “listener.”
I put the words in quotes because if you LISTEN to a fifth step you also end up DOING one.
I have done my OWN fifth step several times, and each time I wanted it to go on.
So here I am telling you exactly who I am. Your opinion of me, both good and bad, takes a lot of effort on my part.
Emotionally dependent? OF COURSE it is emotionally dependent. How can my genes have evolved for millions of years as a social animal and I were emotinally independent.
An emotionally independent person is a sociopath. If that were a good thing we would all have been sociopaths for at least a million years.
Writing this, I just thought of something. Jews are known for having very, very few alcoholics.
I wonder how many sociopaths become alcoholics? My first guess is “Very few.”
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#1 by Shari on 10/01/2006 - 6:16 pm
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This sounds very organized to me. There is a lot of counciling going on in churches that can be anything from a big mistake to a disaster. What if you don’t have a “good” sponser? Does that still work?
#2 by joe rorke on 10/01/2006 - 7:12 pm
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A piece of trivia for you, Bob. Here in north central West Virginia people who are the sponsors of alcoholics refer to their charges as “pigeons.” I didn’t come up with the term. It’s just the term they use and nobody is offended by it.
I noticed rather early on that AA hadn’t done a whole lot for you. I mean, for example, I could see the self-centeredness oozing out of you. This was perhaps a year ago or six months ago when I first entered the blog. You appear to have grown somewhat since that time but I can still see the ego trying to burst through your persona. And the sensitivity. That’s egotism. “Selfishness, self-centeredness, that, we think, is the root of our problem.” That’s what the Big Book says, Bob. You know that. Abstaining from imbibing alcoholic beverages is merely the beginning of growth. But for most it is all they ask for and perhaps that is enough. In my opinion, that is enough. I just wanted much more. The whole enchilada, as they say. I wanted the spiritual growth and development. That seemed to me to be what it was really all about. But, as I say, most alcoholics and their families (if they have any left) want nothing more than freedom from alcohol dependency. I understand that and I agree with it.
I suspect that you were cheated. I think that whoever took you through the steps was somewhat intimidated by you and wanted to be loved by you so failed to do what was necessary. There are things that were not explained properly to you. Or you failed to take the business seriously. If I had been working with you the first thing I would want to know is whether or not you are serious about the 12 Steps. If you are we would go to work. If not, I would move on to someone who could be helped.
As for the Fifth Step, I was never afraid of it. I had an extensive background in what is found in the Fourth Step and I understood the Fifth Step. What I knew most of all was that it was going to be taken with someone who did not know me personally. That was something I insisted upon and it is perfectly legitimate. I am a great believer in the right to privacy notwithstanding the idea that I am reasonably sure that you would tell me that it does not exist. It exists if I make it exist. I am a private person. If I want you in, you’re in, otherwise you’re out. You have a right to your own privacy even if everyone on the planet says you have no such right. Just don’t give it up and you’ll find just how much you have.
The Fifth Step is a different game. It is not a public pronouncement. It is between you and the person you are taking the step with. That’ as far as it goes. If you want to make a speech at a meeting, go ahead. But you don’t owe it to your audience to tell them your life story. I’ve seen a lot of recovering alcoholics get off on telling a roomful of recovering alcoholics what a piece of human garbage they have been and continue to be. That is unnecessary crap.
I think you got ripped off as to what the Fourth Step is and the Fifth Step definitely isn’t an interrogation. If you took it with me it would be an interview. It would take a good while but I believe I would get it out for you and it wouldn’t even be painful. It doesn’t have to be painful. The only possible thing that can cause it to be painful is the False Sense of Self that you still have. In that case, it must be painful. It is all based on falsehood but it is still painful because of the false beliefs. Somebody did an incomplete job with you, Mr. W. You got ripped off. This can be done by Fellowship members. Actually, it’s done quite often. I am working with someone right now who has walked the same path.
No, it is not necessary for the one with whom you take your Fifth Step to like you. It is not about liking you. Take another reading of the step, Bob. The key word is NATURE. Now don’t say Joe isn’t your friend. I just gave you a great tip. It’s not about the other guy. It’s not about whether he loves you or not. It’s about you, Bob. It’s about YOUR program of recovery. He’s there to help you. That’s his job. Don’t ask him to love you. Don’t even ask him to like you. That’s not what he’s there for. He’s there to guide you. That’s his job.
You may very well have a tight relationship with the person who is guiding you. But it is not absolutely necessary.
I know many people in the Fellowship who have not even taken a Fourth Step. Sober as a judge, many of them. But exceedingly miserable. There’s a lot of phoniness in the Fellowship but when you meet a winner you meet a real winner.
#3 by Alan B. on 10/01/2006 - 7:19 pm
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Real courage is comming to grips with our weaknesses and faults. I too attended AA and I must admit It was hard at first, weakness is something I try to hide or bury away, eventually, it became easier for me to admit I was human like all the rest. Thats what makes you a very unique and special person Bob, your as real on the inside as you are on the outside. In the month since I found your site, I have read all your archives and your site is my first stop of the day. We live in a world where wealth, fame and power equate sucess and respectiblity, in reality its men of your caliber who never sell out their beliefs and work to spread the knowledge they pocess and all you ask for in return is an open mind and its free, its incredible, your incredible.
#4 by Al Parker on 10/02/2006 - 12:07 am
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I just listened to Bob Twain with David Duke from last year and his follow up interview on Sept 29th of this year. Good stuff. Also listened to Duke and Bob Whitaker from Feb 11th, 2005. It sounded like Duke wanted to get more words out of you but you shut down his talking points with short answers — for example, when you pointed out the Jews’ hatred for white gentile societies.
On that same blog page I saw you had about five interesting points about Alan Dershowitz. Do you know why he chose to represent Matt Hale?
#5 by Ian Santiago on 10/02/2006 - 8:52 am
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My family is Galician Spanish so not drinking is not an option!:)
Viva La Raza Blanca!!
#6 by Bob on 10/02/2006 - 11:22 am
Joe, I will put this here for now because I want people to see my “Read the Comments!” piece for the time being. Besides, talking to someone in the program about my program is largely for my own benefit.
In general, program or not, you are an irreplacable sparring partner.
Everything I say should interconnect. I am willing to take some bruises when I try to make too much intercooect, and commenters, especially my sparring partner, are supposed to inflict those bruises. So here goes:
On a point more relevant to our seminar, your observation is on target. A person who had really absorbed what I often understand the twelve steps to be about would do what you do: step back. Go with the flow.
Above all, get rid of the kind of ego drive that makes you take the world on your shoulders.
I heard that wisdom for over three and a half decades before I ever got to AA.
This program subtext says don’t worry about things you can do nothing about. Get rid of the Bob Whitaker who already had an FBI file when he entered college at sixteen, determined to deal with the world’s problems. I was told I couldn’t do anything about them.
I DID something about them, Joe. We can’t all stand back. There is a subtext in the program that I don’t consider healthy, at least for ME. I think it represents hiding from yourself.
This INTERCOONECTS with my theory that very few sociopaths, like very few Jews, are sociopaths. I can’t see how the twelve steps could help a soiopath. The reason I drank and drugged was to dull the pain.
There are two ways to deal with pain. One is deal with it and the other is to avoid it.
When I first got into the program my drugs and alcohol were gone, and all those feelings I had as a kid came back to me. If there is one thing that will cure you of wanting to be young again, it’s going off your substances. You suddenly REMEMBER what it FELT like to be a kid and feel EVERYTHING.
But as consciousness returned, I realized that the Old Timers were giving me the same crap I got when I WAS young: STOP putting yourself in the line of fire. STOP feeling it.
That is a part of the program I hope I NEVER get. For me, getting out of hte line of fire would be death, whether my heart was still beating or not.
Let’s use this time for you to give me some feedback here, Joe.
And try to keep in mind that I MAY have at least a PARTIAL point. In sparring, both the sparor and the sparee must absord some punches.
#7 by Pain on 10/02/2006 - 12:21 pm
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I spoke to a psychologist a little while back about sociopaths and alcoholism, and she said that there is a high incidence of alcoholism and drug abuse among sociopaths. It is one of the indicators.
The reason for the alcoholism is exactly the opposite among normal people than it is among sociopaths. Normal people who descend into alcoholism do it to drown out their feelings. Sociopaths on the other hand embrace alcoholism to simulate feeling.
They sense that something is missing. For them alcohol and drugs give them sensations to fill the void of their empty world. This is also why they are thrill-seekers, risk-takers, and sexual deviants; they try to achieve something of a sensory experience. They try to use the physical sensations of alcohol and drugs to give them the illusion that they are alive.
The lack of alcoholism among Jews might be for other reasons or it may be that no researcher is allowed to peer into Jewish liquor cabinets. I don’t know; I look forward to more on this from you.
#8 by joe rorke on 10/02/2006 - 6:52 pm
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“Above all get rid of the ego drive that makes you take the world on your shoulders.” That is excellent advice and, oh so difficult for people like you and I to take.
A few months ago a person near and dear to me was feloniously assaulted and robbed and left for dead by three thugs. A West Virginia cop came to the scene and declared that no crime had been committed. Big mistake. Law and law enforcement happen to be right up my alley. But I got my education in a different state. I deeply wanted to get involved in this case and set a landmark case if need be. A friend of mine who is a retired NYC cop consulted with my concerning this matter and he advised me to “let it go.” I told him the cop was a criminal compounding a crime, he was dirty and I wanted to nail him to the cross for this alone.
I could feel the egotism enveloping me. I could stand back and look at it. I have learned to do that. It’s called detachment. I knew my cop friend/acquaintance (he has since been reduced to the status of acquaintance) was right but I also knew that he didn’t know (at least in my case) why he was right. Bob, I couldn’t afford to let the egotism kick in. “I’m the best! I have kicked many asses and I can certainly kick this criminal rookie’s ass! I’ll nail him to the cross, take his shield and have him working at McDonald’s where he belongs!”
See that, Bob! It’s all pure egotism even if the guy is guilty and he is guilty. But I cannot afford to get into this game and you know why. Nothing would give me a greater thrill than to nail this crooked cop but the whole procedure would envelope me in egotism. It would be strictly an ego trip for me. I KNOW this to be true so I “let it go.” You know what they tell us, Bob, “let go and let God.” Those are the instructions. You either do it or you don’t.
“Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” That all CONNECTS just as you were saying with regard to CONNECTING. It’s also BASICS for us. We can never let go of the BASICS if we hope to grow in this spiritual program of recovery.
“I was told I couldn’t do anything about the world’s problems. I did something about them, Joe.”
I understand that completely, Bob. I always basically came from the same place you’re coming from. “Don’t tell me what I can do and what I can’t do you pack of cowards! I came to town to kick some ass!” If that’s the boat you were or are in, Bob, that’s exactly the boat I have been in. You can develop an awful lot of contempt for folk who won’t get into the ring. That’s what the Serenity Prayer is for, Bob. You don’t want things disturbing your serenity and you don’t want things disturbing your spiritual development. Assuming, of course, that you are a serious practitioner of the 12 Steps of AA. It just depends upon how serious you want to get. I always thought Doctor Bob was more serious than Bill W. because Bill W. was willing to let sexual indiscretions pass while speaking about spiritual development. No doubt I’m being too critical of Bill. It’s not fair. He’s done far more for the Fellowship than I ever have or ever will.
The Big Book makes it very clear that sociopaths are not candidates for recovery from alcoholism and it does it in a very gentle and understanding way. Sociopaths have no capacity for honesty and without honesty there can be no recovery worth attaining. Without honesty, spiritual development is not possible. There must be total honesty in the Fourth Step in order for the Fifth Step to have any positive value.
I’ll give you the best feedback I can, Bob, but I will never lie to you. I am not a sycophant. I am not looking for praise and I fear no criticism. The most important thing to remember is that I won’t lie to you. Also, I don’t get off on beating people up.
#9 by joe rorke on 10/02/2006 - 7:03 pm
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I don’t agree with the psychologist. Sociopaths, in my experience, are not alcoholics or even drug dependent. Their sociopathy is, in my opinion, their drug. But that is mere speculation. Historically, psychopaths are not alcoholics. At least not according to the Big Book’s definition of what an alcoholic is. Lots of folks today are called alcoholics just because they drink a lot. That is not necessarily an alcoholic. The Big Book tells you that too. If you care to read it.
#10 by joe rorke on 10/02/2006 - 7:27 pm
Shari, your intuition is correct. AA is a lot more organized than Fellowship members might be inclined to tell you. It’s just a different type of organizing that goes on.
There are all kinds of sponsors in AA. Some are on ego trips and some are doing a much better job than those on ego trips. A sponsor who shouldn’t be a sponsor can cause a recovering alcoholic to walk out the door and never come back. My experience is that too many people become sponsors who haven’t even walked the path themselves are not qualified to be sponsors.
I have high standards, Shari. I tend to be overcritical. I am sure there are many people acting as sponsors in AA that are doing a good job. But to answer your question honestly, yes, a bad sponsor can hurt a recovering alcoholic. His main job is to take the recovering alcoholic through the 12 Steps of AA. That’s his purpose.
Yes, there is a lot of “counseling” going on in churches and many other places that is anything but a good thing.
#11 by Mark on 10/02/2006 - 9:52 pm
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“The lack of alcoholism among Jews might be for other reasons or it may be that no researcher is allowed to peer into Jewish liquor cabinets.”
Have you ever drank kosher wine, Peter? YEECCKKK!!!!
#12 by Bob on 10/02/2006 - 10:08 pm
Yes (Shari), there is a lot of “counseling” going on in churches and many other places that is anything but a good thing.
Comment by joe rorke
Shame on you, Shari!
Shame on you, Joe!
How can you doubt the church’s counseling on subtance abuse after their runaway success in dealing with child abuse?
#13 by Shari on 10/03/2006 - 9:31 am
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I have no direct knowlege of AA, but I do think that many get help there as well. Never the less, what I react to is the idea of putting all your guts on the table. To maintain some privacy is important if you hope to do any thinking for yourself. Heaven knows we are encouraged to turn everything over to a professional somebody, all our lives these days. But it seems obvious that Bob Whitaker still thinks, in spite of having hit the wall in his life. I have sympathy with not being able to ” let go” of things that I think are important but I can’t actually solve. ” Found that true in my own life” as the cliche goes. Don’t think that is ALL ego either.
#14 by Bob on 10/03/2006 - 12:26 pm
Shari, in AA you do not turn it over to a professional somebody. You turn it over to another drunk and junkie.
The worst thing that happened to recovery was that it became a source of cash for profess
ionals. I could SEE the program go downhill as more and more recovery clinics got into the act.
Joe?
#15 by joe rorke on 10/03/2006 - 7:49 pm
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Yes, Bob, I heard from a few old timers that were friends of mine (they are gone now) that the treatment centers were causing AA major problems. I didn’t know exactly what they meant by that so I inquired further. They told me this in 1987. Then I understood the whole thing. You couldn’t do the 12th Step properly anymore. People thought that after 28 days in a treatment center they had completed the steps all the way through and including the 4th Step. So the people were ripped off. That’s asking far too much of a serious alcoholic. I later saw how much of a failure that attitude was and, I admit, I publicly decried it.
#16 by Elizabeth on 10/04/2006 - 8:06 am
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Sociopaths may get off on other things than drinking and drugging. My mother is one: her
thing is her personal soap opera, Poor Misunderstood __________, Who’s Had SUCH A HARD LIFE.
She’s been Mrs. Dr. Somebody since she wss 20.
Her mother was an alcoholic who never ever admitted it. (She died in 2001.) I was
roundly condemned for pointing that out to various relatives — and for begging
them to get the woman some help for her very obvious, very acute depression. I don’t
know exactly what the deal was with her father: he was very passive.
I’m just not into suffering and I got as much criticism before I was 10 as most people get
in seventy years.
#17 by Alan B. on 10/05/2006 - 1:38 am
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Bob isn’t a socopath, think about it, he was standing up to a corrupt and distructive idealism that was infringing on the peoples right to govern their own lives. I see Bob in a different light, he is unique, he a member in a class of human beings that changed the world. Bob is not a conformist nor was the inventor of the wheel, the telescope or any other amazing things that we see around us. I would hate to think they were all socopaths. A conformist never invented a damn thing.
#18 by Trager Smith on 10/05/2006 - 9:47 am
I was an alcoholic and got started at a university that would not be ranked among the drinking colleges, on the grounds that it was a professional drinking school and the others were all amateur. (It was U.Va., which is nowadays no. 2, just behind Berkeley in the U.S. News rankings of public colleges.)
What cured me was not AA or will power or shrinks or medicines but running. It induced brain changes so that I couldn’t drink more than an ounce and a half of pure alcohol without getting a hangover, to a stage where I didn’t enjoy even the pleasant side of drinking, to today where I simply do not want those pleasant effects.
This is the best way to cure a problem: reduce the demand to zero. Alas, there are many pathways to booze-ism and so taking up running is not at all a panacea. Oddly, I didn’t give up pipe smoking.
My drinking was unusual. I took it, not to be euphoric, nor to relax, nor to drown my problems, but to concentrate, to stay awake. I have had odd brain patterns as far back as I can remember (high school). Whenever I take a nap, I know the nap was a success when I go into a light dream. I think I dream all night long, for I have never been awakened by something external when I was *not* dreaming. So it’s not just a matter of my coming out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which is associated with dreaming, as most people know.
Actually, lots of people think that because of this association that dream sleep equals REM sleep. I’ve been told that I cannot be dreaming all night long. I have undergone two all-nighters at a sleep clinic and was told I had normal amounts of each of the stages of sleep.
I went to these clinics 15 years ago iirc. After I stopped drinking I developed depression (no causal connection, I don’t think). Took all sorts of pills, the last of which was Prozac. It helped better than the others, but it seemed to have stopped working. My psychiatrist (a pill man, not a shrink) said sometimes patients find that, for reasons we don’t understand, going of Prozac for a couple of weeks and staring up again allows it to kick in. Well, I went off, felt no worse and never took at again.
Problems with concentrating kepts growing and the need to take naps three or four times a day. That was later on. I took medications for that, too. Finally, I started Provigil, the first new medicine for narcolepsy in forty years. Worked okay but I found that going off it didn’t make things worse. Visits to sleep clinics, including one outside Kaiser, my HMO, to one see one of the country’s top specialists. She said that she gets the bad cases, so someone who goes into dream sleep immediately is not unusual in her practice but mine was the first time she hear of anyone drinking to stay awake. (No, drinking now would not help me.
I went back on Provigil but at a much higher dose, 200 mg., when I get up, after my late morning nap (I still have to take them, but they are shorter) and then after my later afternoon nap. I lost several pounds, not something I need to do, since I’m 5’8″ or 5’9″ and weigh 125 pounds (I have the same body type was Jesus, based on paintings–artists know about the correlation between physique and personality, even if the connection has been “discredited” (expect this to be reversed)–and now have a muscleclature that is outstanding for someone 61 years old. Nearly everyone my age is fat or falling apart or both.
So, never AA for me. I did, however, go to another twelve-step program, Adult Children of Alcoholics, for two years. Dad was mostly a great father, except that he’d get drunk and obnoxious every Wednesday and Saturday nights. Why I didn’t just say, like my brother and sister did, “Bye, Dad, I gotta go,” I don’t know. (Bob, you could be this way during your early stages of drinking.) It was wonderful to be with others who had similar psychological problems, though I was never, ever able to connect my problems with my being a child of an alcoholic. The connection would be genetic, not environmental. Still, I got a lot out of these meetings, even though I was vastly smarter than anyone else there. This was very true in the public meetings in Montgomery County, Maryland, which has just about the highest percent with graduate degrees (no laughing here, Bob, about the value of graduate school or about how experts can be fools: it’s just a statistic). The other meeting was for government employees that met at noon.
#19 by Trager Smith on 10/05/2006 - 10:45 am
I started getting a message saying I reached a limit. Anyhow, I was smarter than those folks, too, even if most of them had higher grades in the Civil “Service.” Ny problem is a combination of hearing impairment, which makes it hard to follow the latest policy twists, but also a morbid attachment to reality, in what combination I don’t know. One evening, I suddenly realize that I heard everything over and over too many times. I was just bored. I left and never went back. I remain grateful for it.
We didn’t take the steps seriously, and I could not swallow the higher power rumble-bumble since I’m a devout atheist. One fellow said to think of a higher self, meaning I think the self you’d like to be. This is much more reasonable.
So no step 5. Bob, you once told me how passionately you were opposed to the Roman Catholic idea of confession, that you were fundamentally a Protestant, though at the time you were an agnostic. It was a racial (subracial) difference for you. (This is worth looking into. My understanding is that there is a pronounced difference in confession going by *latitude*. This means that the Russian Orthodox don’t have confessions, as well as the Protestants, while the Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox do. This is in fact the case. Now, the Greeks, the ones in Greece now, are not of the same “cluster” as Europeans. They are grouped with this whole belt that runs from North Africa, the Near East, the Middle East (WHAT is the difference), and the Steppes, mostly Mahometan country and which the late Dr. Pierce called “mud people,” but he’d throw in Latin Americans for good measure. All this for Cavall-Sforzi, et alia, _History and Geography of the Human Genes_. Jews are bright mud people, in case you are wondering.
They often look White, Something very, very funny is going on, perhaps that the rules of inheritance operate through the brain and don’t so much confer a phenotype directly but allow or disallow its expression and make the outcomes more probable or less probable. My speculation here is that a Jew will have a potential for blue eyes and some signal from the mother’s brain will cause it to be activated. This sounds either mystical or conspiratorial or both, but we do know about regulator genes, genes that start or inhibit castcades of other other genetic developments. Whatever the case, the distribution of confessions does seem to be geographic. Maybe this is a case where the enviroment does actually matter! You predicted that some day the pendulum would swing so far in the herditarian direction that you’d be urging a swing back. That time may have already begun, outside of sociology and English department. Of course, as a conservative whose motto is Mo–, you won’t notice the change. The liberal sex Mo–
and the cow sez Mo–.
Have you changed your mind and now think confession is good for you? Was it you who condemned Jesus (He deserved it, for He created Hell in the first place. The Jews don’t believe it and don’t regard the afterlife as a burning issue.) for judging us on the basis of our feelings rather than our acts. One who lusteth in his heart hath committed adultery already, and several other references. Don’t know what broader forces may be at work here.
Actually, it’s history as well as geography, since the Prots did have confessions. The Church of the Advent, an Episopalian Church, has a confessional booth, though I don’t know if it’s ever used. What American city is it in, Bob?
I did, however, once spill out to my wife all the things I was ashamed of, most of which had nothing to do with her. She listened very quietly and was wholly understanding and forgiving. She did not once trivialize my feelings. The next day, I confessed to things I had forgotten the day before. Wish I had written them down. Did me a lot of good. Maybe her, too, though not possibly as much.
My older daughter had alcohol problems when she was 16. She went through the steps and asked me to forgive all her transgressions, which of course I did. Whenever my wife is in a bad mood and goes after me for my shortcomings as a father, I point out that my daughter forgave me, even if she did not. WE go through this over and over again, whenever she becomes exhausted, and I just let it ride out. There’s no point in the continual bickering you had with your wife.
I’d have brought up the matter of forgiveness by my older daughter in my wife’s presence, but this will never be, since the daughter killed herself a couple of months ago. Depression, starting in grade school, to alcohol and a half-hearted suicide attempt in high school, which kept her out of school for a semester, to pulling herself together and completing the most grueling major in college, chemical engineering, to a successful job in engineernig, to an inadequate marriage (the guy was pathologically lazy), to a divorce, and then to a desparate clinging to a boy who was 18, when she was 29.
He was a real sociopath and a bully. She went from depression under control to manic-depression, which is a different disease, and for which medicines for depresssion can make things worse, which was what she suspected the last time she spoke with her mother. The bully pushed her over the edge, and she shot herself with a shotgun she bought him as a gift.
What is to blame, I’ve concluded after the shock and most of the grief have worn off it that the Equality business is to blame. She was gifted and here’s a case where society made use of her gifts: she worked in a totally functional place that allowed her the run of the place, whereupon she examined all the machines at her plant and made recommendations for what deficiencies to target and developed formulae that will be used for years. No complaint on that end, though you and I have most assuredly not been rewarded by society, though society may in the long run be all the better for that. Aren’t you glad you never became a Congressman or a professor with a big publication record of Big-Mac journal articles (filling but boring) and devoted your life to your race? What I do complain about, in her case, is that her husband should never have been born (yes, the Fundies, who are making such a blather about aborting defective embryos, are basically reacting to the Liberals.
If the liberals said the sky is blue, the Fundies would find some verse in scripture saying otherwise. Actually, the Fundies have no verses about abortion, or about suicide for that matter.) And if our education system were geared to the gifted instead of:
Uplifting idiots to imbeciles
Uplifting imbeciles to morons
Uplifting morons to dull normals,
none of which are going to amount to anything measurable only with refined tools. If instead, the educational system were geared to the gifted–there’s a certain amount of evidence that their brains–your brain and mine–are wired differently, that we can negotiate in meta-mental mapping, that is move freely among different persepctives. If the education system had been geared to the gifted, the a cure for manic-depression would already have been found and my daughter would still be living.
That’s the hidden cost of the Equality racket: the things that might have been but are not.