Newsflash: Asshole of The Month Writes Puff Piece About Greatest Asshole of the 20th Century

In a relatively recent typical bit of Huffington Post 12X12 fluffery (for those of you who can stomach this kind of substance-less crap: AA: The Magic of Bill Wilson — no fucking kidding, that’s the post’s actual title), author Jeff Witzeman prattles on about the ‘magical’ wonders of Bill, Bob, the 12X12, and the modern day miracle that is Alcoholics Anonymous.  Witzeman leaves no cliche unturned, no baseless quote uncited (the apocryphal Aldous Huxley quote about Bill being the “greatest social architect of our time” which — oddly enough — can’t be found in any of Huxley’s writings or published or recorded interviews), and no line of absurdist logic unapplied.

And why not?  Mr. Witzeman is by his own account is a ‘former’ (i.e., failed) actor, musician, a patent holder (for a ‘putter’), and a freelance writer.  Oh yeah, he has a blog, too … which will go unlinked to on this page.

Now those are some qualifications, huh?  He’s no doubt a true-believing member of the AA tribe as well, but we here at Stinkin Thinkin respect the principle [/snark] of anonymity and so will leave that character defect alone.  Being someone who can construct a sentence in the English language and has a soft-spot for all things AA and 12X12 appears to be more than enough for ardent step proponent Arianna Huffington and her faux-liberal bit of WWW real estate.  ’Freelance writer’ Witzeman has a basic grasp of grammar and syntax and the decidedly non-medical credentials to digress on the ‘disease’ of alcoholism.  That’s more than enough to ring the Pavlovian bell of the editors at Huffington Post.

The Grouch And The Brainstorm

To paraphrase my man Jay-Zee: I got 99 problems but a blog ain’t one.

Yep, I’m back … here to do ’service’ for those sick and tired of hearing the phrase,”do service”.  And I’ll keep it brief … for now.

Until FTG and/or MA decide to take the reins back here at Stinkin Thinkin, you can think of this as Speedy’s house.  The House Rules (subject to addition, amendment, subtraction, whatever at any H[ocus] P[ocus]-damned time I feel like it):

1. I do not view this blog as a ‘recovery’ site; frankly, I find that term at best meaningless and at worst divisive (as I opined in a recent comment post, the use of the word when talking about alcohol and/or substance abuse was a calculated maneuver by the 12X12 movement to instill an ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ [e.g., 'real alcoholics' and 'normies'] mentality among the faithful; you want to recover — do it on your own and shut the fuck up about it … or go to a meeting
2. While dialogue and debate are still encouraged on the blog and in the comments section, trolling, flaming, bald-faced stupidity and agenda-driven chest-thumping is going to get the hook right quick; put simply, any meathead who wants to know what “my solution is”, plays games about ‘consenting adults’, gets on a soap-box about “real AA”, prattles on about how they’ve never seen X behavior in all their time in AA, or any other such stupid shit (and that’s my call) is going to get bounced, if necessary banned, and worse if the situation calls for it; you want anonymity?  go to a meeting; this is the WWW and you leave plenty of footprints behind when surfing and commenting; fuck with this blog and this blog will not hesitate to fuck with you right back … and right hard
3. Blog posts may be sparing for the immediate future, but I expect the blog to get back to its earlier vitality soon enough; I don’t have access to the e-mail account listed in the “Contact Us” link but will have a new one up by the end of the week; if you’ve got contributions, send ‘em in — keeping in mind that all submissions are subject to editorial approval, revision, or outright rejection
4. Stinkin Thinkin is not about ‘building bridges’ with the 12X12 community and its (in this author’s opinion) stunted, infantile, ever malleable philosophy; this blog is about critiquing 12X12 in all its forms and incarnations — about forcing transparency on an institution that has spent its entire existence dodging any larger sense of accountability; if that critique offends you or your sense of ’spirituality’ … I don’t give a fuck; you want apologies, get a sponsee
5. Stinkin Thinkin is about lending a forum to voices who felt they were marginalized within the confines of 12X12; it is about building a ’safe place’ for those voices to air grievances and argue viewpoints that were almost certainly throttled within the confines of (whatever) ‘program’; it is about listening and responding to one another as caring, mature adults — sans the context of irrational thinking and vacuous calls to heeding ’spiritual’ precepts [???]; cross-talk is encouraged — baiting and step-inspired shenanigans will be dealt with harshly; time spent in AA was emotional insult enough for most who frequent this blog and post in the comments section; any fool who feels like channeling his or her inner Bill Wilson and acting like an asshole will get hammered
6. You don’t like any of the above then don’t come back — the rhetoric is not about to get any softer, fluffier, ’solution-oriented’, or ’spiritual’

That’s it for now, boys and girls.  Back soon with copious amounts of that “dubious luxury of normal men”!

Apology and New Administration

Dear Stinkin’ Thinkin’,

I apologize for dropping the ball on this blog so unceremoniously. There really was a convergence of personal tsunamis that prevented us from updating regularly. Speedy and I are both self-employed, which is an enormously time-consuming pursuit. Speaking for myself, I was overwhelmed and working on things that were way over my head. I do not multitask very well.  M.A. is back at Harvard for graduate work, and is commuting there — a 6 hour drive, one way, twice a week.

So, we have a new arrangement now, which is simply that Speedy is in charge.

Thank you, Speedy!

ftg

Old News

I thought yall might find this exchange interesting.

There was a story on the Huffington Post about a Scientologist who stormed out of an interview, and in the comments, someone said:

One of the first thing Scientology orders new members to do is write all their “transgressions,” i.e., sins, into how ever many notebooks it takes. Then they lock your reportage into a safe where it will be kept for all time. That’s when I said, “Uh, no, and I’ll be leaving.” You can bet that leverage is in the back of the minds of all dissenting members, especially celebrity members whose public personas could be destroyed by the leak of such information. Scientology is run by some truly rotten bastards.

Someone responded:

That’s what Jim Jones did as well in People’s Temple.

So, I said:

And it’s also the core of Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 Steps, starting with Step 4 (Fearless moral inventory).

And got my ass kicked. I didn’t respond, because I’m obviously not responding much lately:

Wrong. No one stores that to use against you. Completely different organizational structure.

And:

Yes, but in AA or other 12 step groups, you are not REQUIRED to turn it over to anyone, not even your sponsor. You can write it out and keep it or destroy it. It is the intent and the act of enumerating that is important. p.s. Love your icon; I miss Linda B.

Because I haven’t  had the time to hassle — and I do love to hassle — and because I thought the off topic hassle might get scrubbed, I didn’t respond to these. But I thought it was pretty interesting that no one had my back there. Or, if they did, they were deleted.

Yet Another Open (However Stupid) Question

H[ocus] P[ocus] save me, but it seems I’m a glutton for punishment.  So here I go again, chumming the 12X12 waters with more troll-bait.

If the crux of the AA/12-Step solution is:

A) We were alcoholic & could not manage our own lives

B) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism

C) That [g]od could & would if [h]e were sought

(Alcoholics Anonymous, “How It Works”)

Then why the insistence that new-comers get all the phone-numbers they can?  Doesn’t that sort of suggest that cell phones work better than a direct, ’spiritual’ connection to god?  Or does god only answer calls after 90 days (perhaps even years) worth of meetings?  Or that talking with another AA is preferable to talking with god … at least initially?

Or maybe — and I’m just going off the cuff, here — it’s a tacit acknowledgement that people (and their darned, intractable ego’s/selves) are better at communicating with, sharing ideas & learning from & with other people (and their own darned, intractable ego’s/selves) than they are in getting divine inspiration when it comes to the question of, “To get loaded or not to get loaded?”  Maybe the formula of people helping other people do collectively what felt impossible to do in isolation (or even with the aid of an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, beneficent figment of their imaginations [hat tip to Splicer]) is one every AA knows holds up better than Chapter Five’s anachronistic pie-in-the-sky syllogism.

I could have it all wrong, here.  [g]od could’ve created cellular communications in anticipation of the coming alcoholic apocalypse and is channeling the good word through his human hand puppets every time one drunk calls another — to just ‘check in’ or wail about being a half-an-inch away from getting shit-faced.  H[ocus] P[ocus] sure is crafty — planting him/her/it-self in all those human beings yet still somehow manifesting as “no human power”.  (To be fair, H[ocus] P[ocus] does bestow onto him/her/it-self the “probably” out — liability laws perhaps extending all the way to heaven, I guess.)

So, what’s the deal?  Why collect phone numbers when a prayer doesn’t require any signal & doesn’t count against your monthly minutes allowance?

Let the enlightenment begin … .

My Name’s Roger And I Have No Sense of Irony

Opening line from Roger (recently self-outed AA-bot) Ebert’s review of the movie “Zombieland”:

“There’s no getting around it: Zombies are funny.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

ADDENDUM: A zombie apocalypse would be another alternative to AA.  Or zombie AA’s wandering the world searching for ‘alcoholic’ souls to save & brains to eat.  That would kick ass.

An Alternative To A.A.

Not A.A.

Not meetings.

Not sponsors.

Not steps.

Not Big Books.

Not drinking.

Or drinking in moderation.

Or pharmacological and/or psychotherapeutic regimens.

Or any of a million ways to approach life as a responsible, caring, concerned, involved person … that doesn’t involve Alcoholics Anonymous in any form whatsoever.

Not A.A. — It’s at least as effective (if not more so) as A.A.

Let the trolling begin … .

ADDENDUM: Oh yeah, crosstalk encouraged.  Butt-loads of cross-talk.  Lots of ego, too — whether it’s a delusion (Buddha) or an inescapable part of our psyche (Freud) or just the end product of neurons firing (neuroscience), the idea of “crushing it” is just antiquated goobledy-gook.

Get up with your bad self.

The Grapevine Gives Me The Kiss-Off & An Open Question

If you’re anything like me (and H[ocus] P[ocus] save you if you are), you’ll be both shocked & amazed to know that ‘The Grapevine’ (The International Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous) gave me the official “thanks, but no thanks” on my  submission for publication, “12 Rights For AA New-Comers” (12 Rights For New-Comers To AA/12 Step):

Thank you for your e-mail submission to the AA Grapevine.  While I don’t think we’ll be using it, we are grateful for your interest in the magazine and hope you’ll feel free to send us more material in the future.  As you can imagine, we receive hundreds of manuscripts every month and many good manuscripts must be turned down because of space limitations. For more information about the Grapevine, its related items, including subscription information, guidelines for submitting articles, and current Calls for Articles, please see our Website: www.aagrapevine.org.

Best wishes,

The Editors 
The AA Grapevine magazine

If you’re wondering what the smell coming off the ’shock & amazement’ expressed earlier is, that’s sarcasm.  I really was under no illusion that The Grapevine had any interest in publishing anything that might actually empower individual AA members.  Still, a man’s gotta do … etcetera, etcetera.

I am curious as to why “The Editors” used the singular ‘I’ followed by the royal ‘we’ in offering up ‘their’ rejection of the material.  There go my dreams of conquering the publishing world starting with a by-line from The Grapevine.

In other news …

I went last night to hear author Eric Maisel speak on his new book, “The Atheist’s Way: Living Well Without The Gods”.  The talk was sponsored by the local Center For Inquiry chapter and — while a little too top-heavy on the snarkiness toward theism & religion in general for my personal tastes — it was still two hours well spent.  You can listen to Maisel talk about his work here: www.pointofinquiry.org.

My ears perked up when Maisel talked about the linguistics of ‘belief’ and how as early as the 19th century academics had identified that it wasn’t the content of the language that was important so much as its ability to be memorable & easily repeated.  After all, what does, “God is good” really say about the probability of the existence of [g]od or an objective understanding of ‘goodness’?  It’s just a good catch-phrase — kind of like, “Utilize, don’t analyze.”  Language and its malleability within the 12-Step experience has long been a hobbyhorse of mine.

One very interesting part of Maisel’s presentation was his suggestion that atheists (existentialists, secular-humanists, non-believers, [fill-in-the-blank]ers) purposefully re-cast mystical language when they are confronted with it.  Specifically, he challenged his audience to ask of someone who claims to have had a ’spiritual experience’, “What made that experience meaningful for you?”

The substitution is subtle but does, I think, greatly shift the terms of the discussion.

So I offer an open question to steppers, non-steppers, and all those somewhere in between: Is meaningful experience a fair substitution for spiritual experience?  If so, why, and if not, why not?

All input is welcome.

ADDENDUM: All input may indeed be welcome but irrational input will be ridiculed relentlessly for exactly what it is.  Now back to our regularly scheduled trolling … .

ADDENDUM II: Thanks so much for all the effluvia, kids.  It really was terribly invigorating reading all the commentary on this post … that never actually addressed anything in the post (yes, Cuda, I’m thinking of you).  But playtime’s over.  Go troll YouTube or ‘help’ people out in Colorado (again, Cuda, it’s all about you).  This post is officially closed for business.

This Is Pretty Hilarious …

if a bit snarky.

Ask Ms. Bad Advice

Finally, a higher power for the rest of us!

“Resistance Is Futile” … Or Not (Part II)

Interesting listening for those of you inclined to examine alcohol & substance abuse:

pointofinquiry

Renowned cognitive science researcher Dr. Keith Stanovich talks about his book “The Robot’s Rebellion” and things like ‘Universal Darwinism’, genes, memes,first & second level rationality (e.g., the “examined life” in terms of working with addiction), and other fun, fun, fun egg-headed stuff.

Steppers will almost certainly repond with the canned circular rhetoric straight out of the Bill W. playbook (much like that esteemed academic Roger Ebert).  Still, those of us who haven’t yet given up on rationality — or have recently made a conscious decision to turn our will and lives back over to it in lieu of 12X12’s invisible uber-dad — will find lots of thought provoking ideas in this hour of talk.

Key quote from Dr. Stanovich on the subject of ‘parasitic memes’: “A good idea would be to avoid memes that resist evaluation.”

Sound familiar to anyone?