Not-God (39 page)

The Alcoholics Anonymous understanding, although “modern” in its use of twentieth-century insight, remains infused by its ancient Pietist root. A.A. embraces and incorporates the insight of modern psychology that interprets the alcoholic’s dependence upon the chemical alcohol as in service to his infantile quest for grandiose omnipotence, although A.A. literature simplifies the concept by calling it “playing God.” Given this insight, however, Alcoholics Anonymous proposes as the remedy for alcoholism thus understood not the elimination of dependence but its shift to its proper object. Human dependence, A.A. proposes, is not to be denied. The problem of the alcoholic lies not in the
fact
of dependence, but in its
distortion
. According to the A.A. vision, to be human
is
to be dependent, but upon ultimate reality outside the self rather than upon alcohol inside oneself. Accepted ultimate dependence is the essence of the experience of bottom. It is both the cause and the result of surrender, both the inspiration to and the term of conversion. Accepted ultimate dependence is, in a word, salvation, at least for the alcoholic.
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The implicit response of Alcoholics Anonymous to the accusation that it panders to immaturity by fostering dependence consists in the insistence that to be human
is
to be — existentially — an infant, that is,
ultimately
immature. The problem of being human lies not in dependence, but in the denial of dependence through the claim to omnipotence. The problem of the alcoholic is not “infantilism,” but the collision between the contradictory claims of existential and psychological infancy, the dissonance inherent in the quest for total omnipotence launched from a situation of total dependence. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous resolves this intolerable tension by conscious and explicit choice of one side and rejection of the other. True to its deeply religious insight, A.A. requires the abdication of
all
claim to omnipotence while willingly and even enthusiastically embracing
total
dependence on an omnipotent ultimate reality.
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In the modern demand for absolute independence, in the modern denial of absolutely all human dependence, Alcoholics Anonymous locates the era’s root misapprehension of the meaing of “human.” A.A.’s message proclaims the
integrity
of dependence, if this dependence be upon an ultimate absolute outside the control of human experience. The human as not-God, the fellowship announces by its own example, derives wholeness from limitation — if limitation is rightly,
wholly
understood.
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Alcoholics Anonymous locates its deeper diagnostic understanding of the dis-ease of modernity as illuminated by the metaphor of alcoholism in the demand for domination, for
absolute
rationalization and control. Frustration of this modern demand for absolute control is inevitable, for the quest for such rationalization and control is intrinsically insatiable — doomed by its very nature as absolute to an ever emptier and ever more destructive craving for “more” and “again.” In a burst of insight that unites “the religious” and “the medical” far more profoundly than the fellowship ever realized in its self-conscious reference to these twin roots, Alcoholics Anonymous points out that the “modern” quest is, on the one hand, the claim to infinity, the blasphemous equation of self with God; and on the other hand, the ultimate manifestation of the immaturity of which the culture accuses the fellowship itself. It is the infant, after all, who perceives and insists upon all reality being an extension of the self.
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Alcoholics Anonymous thus reintroduces into modernity the concept of “sin.” After Heisenberg, the claim to possess the absolute is as much scientific sacrilege as it is religious blasphemy; and the accusation of infantilism is, in the post-Freudian era, the ultimate diagnostic epithet. In a stunning reversal of assumptions that derives from its own experience and practice, Alcoholics Anonymous not only suggests that alcoholism itself is not sinful, but indicts the modern society that would implicitly call it such by the manipulation of psychological terms of the real “sin” — denying the
meaning
of the
human
. To be truly human, the fellowship insists through its program, even the modern human must accept that he is not-God as
affirmation
as well as not God in appropriate surrender of all claim to any absolute.
³⁵

The need of others that Alcoholics Anonymous teaches to be essential and fulfilling of the human in and of its very being
is
“dependence.” The dependence implied by and accepted in the Second and Third Steps of the A.A. program is clearly first dependence upon ultimate reality — “God as we understand Him” or as “Power greater than ourselves.” But the dependence of the admitted alcoholic does not stop here. Other human beings, and especially the A.A. group, are also understood as
needed
. Individualistic as the program of the Twelve Steps may seem at first glance, it reveals on closer examination another facet as well. The implied subject in each Step is “We”: indeed, in the earliest version of the Steps, the “We” was explicitly stated in each. Not vainly nor merely rhetorically, then, does Alcoholics Anonymous insist that it is “fellowship.” A.A.’s fundamental creedal statement of not-God-ness expresses limitation, and this limitation in turn — if accepted — implies
need
, for it is of the essence of being human to quest beyond individual limitation. The Steps make clear that this need is two-faceted even if its aspects may not require actual separation. The need is for
both
a “Power greater”
and
for other alcoholics with whom to utter that first “We” and then to take all the other Steps.
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The essence of not-God-ness is revealed to be needing others, and needing them in a mutuality that accepts that
every
human being needs others both to give to and to receive from.
Need
is not, within Alcoholics Anonymous, a dirty word. The inability to say “I need” — the
denial
of need — was what characterized the drinking alcoholic, who denied with special vehemence his very need for alcohol. A.A. began the restoration of the active alcoholic to sanity by enabling him to say, “I need.” Admitting the
need
for alcohol — and so implicitly for transcendence — was the First Step toward recovery. Accepting the need for others as the
real
route to transcendence was the rest of the A.A. program — and the foundation of the A.A. fellowship. It is this enthusiastic embrace of the continuing reality of each not-God needing others that distinguishes Alcoholics Anonymous from the other therapies, in other respects similar, that in its time have briefly flourished only to quickly pass away and soon be forgotten.
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+

Alcoholics Anonymous clearly proposes the need for others as an essential component of the alcoholic’s not-God-ness. The fact that most criticism leveled against Alcoholics Anonymous has been aimed at precisely this aspect of its message alerts to the possible larger significance of the insight. It is all too human to attack most sharply that which threatens most acutely, and the instinct of the modern mind here is accurate. If Alcoholics Anonymous has a contribution to make to modernity, that potential contribution will best be located by a careful analysis of the specific need for others that A.A. teaches by its practice.
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The style as well as the content of A.A.’s invitation to live out the need for others is clear. The invitation is founded in the individual alcoholic’s sure awareness that if he, as an alcoholic, is not-God, then neither is any other member of Alcoholics Anonymous “God.” From the beginning, an essential aspect of the story-telling format that carried the A.A. message lay in the admonition: “Identify, Don’t Compare.” This injunction reminds the alcoholic to be especially attentive to his similarities with other alcoholics and their experience rather than concentrating on contrasts, searching for differences that might hinder shared and saving identification. “Identify, Don’t Compare” encapsulates the program’s understanding of both alcoholism and its treatment. The sin of the active alcoholic had been to
identify
with “God,” an endeavor reinforced by his tendency to
compare
(contrast) with other humans. The A.A. prescription cures this penchant. It suggests that differences among alcoholics are superficial and to be valued as
enriching
of the individual’s vicarious experience and so of his identification as alcoholic. That one relates on the deepest and most helpful level to other alcoholics from weakness, from limitation, from one’s own alcoholism, teaches and implements the message that human strength is rooted in human weakness. It inculcates by practice the awareness that one gives of oneself most effectively not from the overflowing richness of superfluous abundance, but from the yawning emptiness of acutely felt defect. If it be a function of authentic religion both to make comprehensible the human experience of suffering and to open human sufferers to each other in a healing way, Alcoholics Anonymous qualifies well.
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For want of a more available term, this welcoming with enthusiasm of the sense of the reality of needing others in enriching mutuality may be called “joyous pluralism.” The word “pluralism” unfortunately limps; this is inevitable, for it signals how deeply this concept speaks to modernity’s problem. The modern age does not even have a word for the essence of what Alcoholics Anonymous suggests and offers as remedy for the dis-ease described by the metaphor of alcoholism. We must, then, half-borrow and half-construct a new term. “Joyous pluralism” denotes the idea that those who accept themselves as limited and who find in their very limitation the glimmer of wholeness as well as an invitation to that wholeness can welcome
difference as good
— as fundamentally enriching rather than threatening, enhancing rather than diminishing.
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Appropriating the term “pluralism” is meant to distinguish this acceptance from both absolutisms and relativism. In baldest caricature and within the framework of philosophical and theological concepts most appropriate here, absolutisms claim that
something finite
can adequately grasp ultimate reality, while relativism asserts that there is
no ultimate
reality. The first assumption and fundamental assertion of the pluralistic point of view is that there
is
an ultimate reality, but that it lies
utterly beyond
the self and so cannot be totally comprehended by any finite entity. The finite may and indeed does participate in ultimate reality, but it cannot comprehend it — totally embrace or claim possession of that ultimate reality. The first intuition of pluralism is that the only absolute in the human experience is that no human experience can be absolute. Immediately derived from this flows the acceptance that since every human experience participates in the ultimate of being not-absolute, all human experience can enrich all other human experience.

Yet all that is but abstract philosophical musing. Pluralism is best seen in its pragmatic effects. The pluralistic insight issues in a “tolerance” that
actively welcomes
difference. The sense of incompleteness shared leads to ready acceptance that the partial completenesses of others complement rather than destroy, enrich rather than diminish, one’s own partiality. And since in the pluralistic assumption others share this sense and this acceptance, one’s own partiality — limitation — can be embraced as of value, cherished rather than regretted, lived rather than concealed. These implications of the philosophy of joyous pluralism are evident at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Joyous pluralism invites to and enables the true opening to others in honest mutuality that takes place at these meetings. The assumptive acceptance that each alcoholic is present out of need both to give and to get issues in the sense that each person is enriched rather than diminished by the participation of every other. In the realm of “the spiritual,” there exists no sense that “the good” is limited. Like the religionist’s “salvation,” the A.A. member’s sobriety becomes richer rather than poorer as more share in it.
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Can such “joyous pluralism” exist outside of Alcoholics Anonymous? How far can even A.A.’s attenuated sense of “the spiritual” be extended without destroying it? The problems of the modern age, after all, hardly spring from agitation over the difficulties of sharing in “the spiritual” — or so it would seem. The question is a difficult one; and to claim insight here for Alcoholics Anonymous, even within the understanding of alcoholism as disease-metaphor, may seem to claim too much. Yet given even the possibility that that metaphor might contain wisdom rather than be mere figure of speech, A.A.’s presentation of pluralism hardly allows settling for less than an effort to unfold and explore this insight. Often, at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, some member will voice the wistful thought: “If only the world was like an A.A. meeting.” That eventuality is surely unlikely and probably impossible, but exploring the sense from which this fancy derives may somewhat facilitate the contribution that Alcoholics Anonymous may be able to offer to its culture — the modern America of the twentieth century.

Our historical analysis has discovered the core dynamic of Alcoholics Anonymous to be “the shared honesty of mutual vulnerability openly acknowledged.” But there is a step necessarily prior to this honest sharing in vulnerable mutuality. The individual alcoholic’s first contact with Alcoholics Anonymous takes place within the context of at least exploratory readiness to admit in a relationship of
mutual honesty
the
vulnerability he shares
with other alcoholics. One first attends an A.A. meeting, that is to say, only if at least wondering about “a drinking problem,” and with at least some confidence that others one might meet there share at least the same wondering. This openness, however small, to mutual honesty
about
shared vulnerability necessarily precedes the capacity to participate in the shared honesty
of
mutual vulnerability, especially as openly acknowledged. Awareness of this sequence highlights an important point about A.A. therapy and points up what is perhaps A.A.’s most specific contribution to the modern dilemma concerning limits: the acceptance of a philosophy of pluralism such as A.A.’s — the capacity to accept difference as enriching rather than threatening and the ability to flourish within the context of the shared honesty of mutual vulnerability openly acknowledged — requires that the
basis of sharing be weakness rather than strength
.
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