Ken Ragge <ken@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:Fv2dnWqqEJwjiS7fRVn-vw@comcast.com...
> stuart wrote:
>
> > "Ken Ragge" <ken@nospam.com> wrote in message
> >>>>Your healthy is, yes, difficult to define by science, because it
doesn't
> >>>>exist in science. According to what you are writing here, Elie Wiesel
> >>>>never got healthy. Instead of getting over the pain and anguish of
the
> >>>>holocaust, he used what happened to him (and all that "negative
> >>>>energy")to make his life's work doing everything he could to see that
it
> >>>>doesn't happen again. And he did great work. But that wasn't healthy,
I
> >>>>suppose. He didn't come from love as an intellectual abstraction.
> >>>>
> >>>>Ken Ragge
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Ken good work aside, nobody forces us on what to think and feel. Where
I
> >>>direct my mind is up to me. You don't seem to understand that fully.
> >>
> >>No, I certainly don't understand that fully and never will. Certainly,
it
> >>makes perfect sense in an authoritarian ideology but nowhere else. Can
you
> >>stab someone with a knife and then tell them that if they feel pain they
> >>"chose" it? It is no different if you kill someone's child in a car
> >>accident. Sorry, but if the parent feels pain, it is the fault of
whoever
> >>killed the child. They did not "choose" it.
> >>
> >>Of course, this "you choose what you feel" is a perfect way from someone
> >>to avoid responsibility for the terrible things they do to other people.
> >
> >
> > No you don't understand me. Sure, you stick someone with a knife, they
feel
> > pain, both acutely, and to a lesser extent chronically. Where it becomes
> > unhealthy is to relive the incident in maudlin stimulation 30 years
later.
> > Someone re-feeling that pain is "not well"
> >
> Stuart,
>
> There is a _big_ difference between "maudlin stimiulation" and actively
> working to make things better, even a lifetime later. But if I am
> missing your point, you are missing my point. Maybe if I put it in a
> bigger context.

I agree with you. I think you understand what I was trying to suggest. I
think I understand you as well.

>
> The "spirituality" you speak of has been around for many decades. In my
> lifetime, the biggest proponents off hand were "spiritual giants" like
> Carl Jung, Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham. It was all from the
> relgious right, although I don't believe they were termed it such until
> decades later. Of course, Step groups were around but they were for all
> purposes invisible to the general population. But even before that
> there were others.
>
> In the 20s and 30s "everyone" in Germany was getting spiritual. The
> same was happening here to a lesser extent. Frank Buchman and Sam
> Shoemaker were two of the big names. Frank Buchman was encouraging
> Germany's neighbors to "make butter, not guns." Apparently they did,
> because they were defenseless when the Nazis drove in.
>
> While these two didn't directly preach modern-day "feel good" theology,
> they promised that all you needed to do was rid yourself of "the bondage
> of self" to be "happily and usefully whole." Same idea, different
> language. But whatever language, it left Germany without anyone to
> stand up to the Nazis. Fortunately, in the U.S. such ideologies were
> rejected big time. When Buchman, the founder of the group that Dr. Bob
> and Bill Smith were members of and got their "spiritual principles"
> publicly praised Hitler, it was the beginning of the end and time for
> name changes.
>
> And the saddest thing, is that such ideologies don't produce happiness.
> Certainly, they'll produce lots and lots of people who say how happy
> they are though. I don't know how many times I've heard those with time
> share about how "happy, joyous and free" they were because of the
> Program. Of course, once you got to know them away from meetings they
> were anything but. Even at after-meeting coffee, if there were no
> "newcomers" present, it'd be, "Things are really awful, I just didn't
> know what to share for the newcomers." Or, once I heard at a late night
> meeting, "Something they don't tell you . . . I have seven years . . .
> I've been walking around suicidal all day."
>
> How many of the people who go to AA looking for help end up committing
> suicide under the pressure to adopt your "spiritual way of life"?

Oh certainly, I have seen suicide occur in long term members also, and it is
indeed very tragic. I have also seen numerous members in my own community do
extremely well with AA. I have also picked up a dead drunk who didn't get
help in time too.
It has been really good to discuss back and forth with you Ken. Please
understand my barbs and points at you were to stimulate ideas. I do agree
that perhaps there is a better road to recovery available, but wholesale
slaughter of AA won't produce it. I personally have lots of bones to pick
with the program, starting with the exclusive use of the male gender in the
BB, a literary and social style prevalent in the earlier part of that last
century, but members are loathe to change anything. They will have to change
things eventually or go the way of the dodo bird. I mean, even the bible
changed its language over time.
I guess what I really wonder about is, what I see is a lot of AA-bashing,
but not really anything earth-shatteringly cutting edge to replace it as a
means to recover from the drinking problem. If there's something to be
developed, hey, I'm in..


>
> Ken Ragge
> http://www.morerevealed.com
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