I came into the late 20th century at the nadir of American industrial dominance, 1971. Both of my parents worked in Chrysler factories, and as I grew up, job insecurity and financial pressures dominated my young life, though in different degrees from year to year.
1979-1982 were probably the roughest; my ma and dad were divorced, and my mother was laid off in ‘79 for at least three years. Food stamps, state financial assistance (my mother received zero assistance from my father, which, if I were to elaborate upon the reasons why would lead us down an avenue of digression I’d rather not take), food boxes from the church, help from extended family, etc… Though we were fortunate enough to have family and friends who could offer help, often there remains a feeling of failure, imposition on others, a sense of inadequacy, on and on. These insidious conceptions, transferred to me through my mother, of one’s self, most likely stem from sordid and varied expectations and demands placed on people through society, and its values, traditions, beliefs and history. For example, my mother and father divorced in 1973 (not long after, incidentally, that my ma had gotten employment at Chrysler). Even at the height of the struggles of women striving for revolutionary transformation of their political, economic and domestic lives, in my world, the raggedy remnant of disdain for single mothers responsible for their children remained firmly in place. Questions from family were often about my mothers romantic life. The implication being, “You find a good man to take care of you and John yet?!” At least, that was my mothers interpretation.
She also felt subtle scorn and disdain for her situation from the church, our church, St. Clements. My mother and I are both born Roman Catholic, and our relationship to the church was always porous and ambivalent, somehow uncertain. It never felt fixed or sturdy, even though I attended St. Clements private Catholic school. And when my mother was laid off from Chrysler and she had to take me out of the private school, our relationship became even weaker and more wobbly. So, my mother and I unknowingly followed Nietzche’s advice and pushed the whole shaky structure over!*
We moved into a mobile home, I started public school in 4th grade, and my father and the Catholic Church moved more and more away in our lives, became less present or vital. My life, our lives, my mothers and mine, also changed. Leaving the house, the neighborhood, my friends and school when my ma was laid off was really difficult, but accepted as inevitable and an unfortunate side of life. And as we grew older, my mother and I moved more and more away from each other as well. As I grew into a teenager, I became more rebellious, and my mother had injured herself on the job, and Chrysler was putting her through college instead of paying her a huge cash settlement, so she was home a lot studying environmental science and what not, she would eventually get a Masters degree in Occupational Health and Safety, and in her 40’s, become an OSHA official at the Daimler Chrysler Tech Center in Auburn Hills, Michigan. In that same time, I discovered punk rock and underground culture, dropped out of high school, was kicked out of my house by my weary and perplexed mother repeatedly, and proceeded onto a long line of building trade and landscaping jobs, while also still spending too much time in parks and libraries, carousing and dreaming.
Today, as years pass, the connecting threads of memory wear away, become worn and thin, and frayed. I feel the pressure to get some things down quick before being completely obliterated. For, like water eroding the rock of chasms through time, so is the tide of time cleaving the ridges and sandscape of my memory, impressions, my experience. And I sit and think, but have no pictures, only the erratic flashbulb pop of an incoherent and strained vision. I do have a language though, one scrawled longhand over every papered surface: receipts, 1/2 full notebooks; too many loose scraps caught in the breathing of windows, the opening and closing of doors, august ochre blood suffuses the entire mindscape, and I sense the push AND pull of time, simultaneously, in opposing directions. And as I’m pulled with more force, the pushing becomes as a small dying birds effort, ephemeral and breathless. And frail, so frail. But this life of mine has rebuked frailty; so many things this life I’ve lived has come to know, yet frailty was it rarely acquainted with. I’ve known more a fear of becoming frail, vulnerable, ineffectual. Am I not also only driven by fear?! O’ so many fears, too many to name or elaborate upon!
Fear is what led to God, and writing, and Alcoholics Anonymous, and a wrestling with reality that I had not attempted previously in this life. The wrestling was really only an investigation, an investigation of myself, this world I came up in, and into it all, thoroughly immersed, a conscious deep diving into a certain unattainable divinity. That divine treasure ended up to be wisdom, but only in retrospect. What led to the present can be lost, or worse, degraded, but then, uncovered. But if not careful and discreet, what can be uncovered, like the misguided archaeologist tends to uncover, are the bones and artifacts of an entity we never really knew, but mistook for one we did.* With error there’s remorse, weariness, so much to do about weariness. There can be resentment at injustices poorly conceived or understood; and others, opportunists all, may use this for ideological purposes, reconfigured, reformists with an agenda! There is much to navigate in the ever increasing complexity of the world, and if one follows a route to maturity through socially reputable institutions such as colleges, universities, trade schools, government programs of all sorts, then one can often become mired in the sullen trenches of capitalist ideology, and this indoctrination is a subtle and pernicious process which ultimately results in the aforementioned archaeological errors.
As a remedy, there is some sort of vital importance to remembering. Individual lines drawn across a collective map, and the destinations reached after the scribbled zigzag of the route taken, which is never straight! Time moves us through the world of our lives and we discern those lines fading, blurring, degraded and translucent scrawl; and voices become garbled and incoherent, lose a certain yearning, and urgency, and grace. The reason for meaning becomes too distant, becomes too indeterminate, and this is due to the ceaseless pull of history, and the weak defensive push of our memory that counters the trauma of an unbridled inhalation.
I cannot abide this now, so I, too, shall scrawl. Lets begin with Alcoholics Anonymous, and this scrawl will unfortunately require a preface, for in writing this, I’m hoping to get at something in AA, something useful to a project of social and personal transformation, something useful to revolutionists working to move beyond party politics and capitalist reform and management.
In trying to think of a reason why I believe AA is of value, historically, to a revolutionary movement, I mean, think of a truly relevant and insightful theory that would convince anyone (and now I’m thinking of academics and intellectuals here) of the hidden potential, or the kernel of truth, contained in the maligned tradition of AA, I’ve thrown myself as many times headlong into a stubborn mile high bulwark that seems impossible to scale, as come to anything worthwhile in a theoretical sense.
I would begin by saying that, what aspects of AA that I find the most to contain some conception of revolutionary spirit, are the 12 Traditions. While the 12 Steps guide the individual, the 12 Traditions guide the group, the collective that all the individuals depend upon for support in sobriety.
The 12 Traditions are as follows, I’ve included the Long Form:
1.) Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward.
2.) For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority–a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience.
3.) Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
4.) With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also, those groups ought to be consulted. And no group, regional committee, or individual should ever take any action that might greatly affect A.A. as a whole without conferring with the Trustees of the General Service Board. On such issues our common welfare is paramount.
5.) Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose–that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
6.) Problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. We think, therefore, that any considerable property of genuine use to A.A. should be separately incorporated and managed, thus dividing the material from the spiritual. An A.A. group, as such, should never go into business. Secondary aids to A.A., such as clubs or hospitals which require much property or administration, ought to be incorporated and so set apart that, if necessary, they can be freely discarded by the groups. Hence such facilities ought not to use the A.A. name. Their management should be the sole responsibility of those people who financially support them. For clubs, A.A. managers are usually preferred. But hospitals, as well as other places of recuperation, ought to be well outside A.A.- and medically supervised. While an A.A. group may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or implied. An A.A. group can bind itself to no one.
7.) The A.A. groups themselves ought to be fully supported by the voluntary contributions of their own members. We think that each group should soon achieve this ideal; that any public solicitation of funds using the name of Alcoholics Anonymous is highly dangerous, whether by groups, clubs, hospitals, or other outside agencies; that acceptance of large gifts from any source, or of contributions carrying any obligation whatever, is unwise. Then too, we view with much concern those A.A. treasuries which continue, beyond prudent reserves, to accumulate funds for no stated A.A. purpose. Experience has often warned us that nothing can so surely destroy our spiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money, and authority.
8.) Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or hire. But we may employ alcoholics where they are going to perform those services for which we may otherwise have to engage nonalcoholics. Such special services may be well recompensed. But our usual A.A. "12th Step" work is never to be paid for.
9.) Each A.A. group needs the least possible organization. Rotating leadership is the best. The small group may elect its secretary, the large group its rotating committee, and the groups of a large metropolitan area their central or intergroup committee, which often employs a full-time secretary. The trustees of the General Service Board are, in effect, our A.A. General Service Committee. They are the custodians of our A.A. Tradition and the receivers of voluntary A.A. contributions by which we maintain our A.A. General Service Office at New York. They are authorized by the groups to handle our over-all public relations and they guarantee the integrity of our principal newspaper, the A.A. Grapevine. All such representatives are to be guided in the spirit of service, for true leaders in A.A. are but trusted and experienced servants of the whole. They derive no real authority from their titles; they do not govern. Universal respect is the key to their usefulness.
10.) 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 whatever.
11.) Our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity. We think A.A. ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as A.A. members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion. There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.
12.) And finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities; that we are actually to practice a genuine humility. This to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of Him who presides over us all.
The Traditions weren’t conceptualized, drafted and decreed by Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, the co-founders of AA. No, the Traditions, like another revolutionary document, the US Constitution, was born through the cooperative and collective effort of a sublime human will, the Group Conscience. I suppose Consensus is another name. Regardless, this conscience is the driving metronomic pulse of the group, yet it is understood that the power derived from this is of a higher power, expressing itself through the disciplined and tireless striving of each member in a labor of necessity and love. It is a building and bonding, a reconfiguration few drunks, let alone “normal people”, have much acquaintance with. So by that measure, it is a great school as well, almost an “Alcoholic University”.