Alright friends, family, readers – I need your help!  I have submitted an entry idea to National Geographic’s contest “The Green Effect.”  I am asking that you head on over (http://greeneffect.nationalgeographic.com/idea/2343/) and rate my project idea!  Thanks so much!

With $20,000 I would install an intensive greenroof system on the roof of the new Gloucester County College (Sewell, New Jersey) campus building that is set to be constructed within the coming year. As a student at GCC I have been working this year with my Environmental Science professor to implement this idea. We have given three presentations to students, faculty, and staff explaining the concept and its advantages, collected several signatures petitioning our college’s president to act, and set meetings with the Gloucester County Board of Chosen Freeholders. 

This small step would make a big difference because it would give students at GCC their first taste of green building and their first example of how our environment can be bettered through creative means. 

The construction of the greenroof system would create jobs for engineers, designers, and manufacturers, as well as those who would maintain the garden throughout each year. 

Some positive environmental effects that a greenroof would have on my campus are: 
1) a major reduction in polluted storm-water runoff 
2) the pulling of up to 5lbs/m2 of particulate matter from the air per year 
3) enormous reductions in our heating and cooling needs 
4) the ability to grow herbs and vegetables to be sold locally 
5) an interactive, outdoor classroom for science classes 

My small school needs this! I believe that initiating this idea would set a major precedent in my community regarding conscious building!

The Secret.

It’s all the rage. The book and movie have garnered the enthusiasm of millions. Everyone from Oprah to Montel is extolling Rhonda Byrne’s spiritual juggernaut. The premise of The Secret is simple; The power of attraction. Like attracts like. What we think, what we feel, acts as a magnetic signal, attracting its correlate from the Universe. The Secret says our thoughts and feelings manifest that which we desire. In fact, according to the teachers of the Secret, this works 100% of the time, for 100% of the people who use it. The Universe responds to our wishes, providing whatever we desire. This is because “we create our own reality”, and The Secret says science confirms this.

As with most things, The Secret is a Good news / Bad news scenario. First, the good news. The secret is (partly) true. Our thoughts and feelings are of consequence, and positive thinking and feeling can significantly characterize our experience of reality, even influence the way reality unfolds. The Secret cites everyone from Martin Luther King to Einstein as examples of people who knew -and employed- The Secret. Martin Luther King had a dream. Einstein said God doesn’t play dice. And so on.

The Secret uses valid (but partial) suppositions such as:

Our thoughts and feelings are powerful

and inflates them to a Kosmic (and false) scale, giving us: Our thoughts are the most powerful things on Earth.

The secret takes a statement like

Thought can influence reality

and amplifies it to “Thoughts create reality.” Not just any thoughts, but YOUR thoughts.

(By the way, are you a rape victim? I guess you created that reality with your thoughts. Was your family member killed in Iraq? I guessed you created that experience for yourself so you could learn from it. Wow. You are one sadistic cat.)

The Secret takes a truth like

The Self is one with the Universe,

and then immediately inserts the wrong self; The Ego.

Throughout, The Secret conflates ego (the frontal structure, personality) with Self (an unbounded, unlimited reality which transcends but includes all qualities). In doing so it engineers an unabashed Spiritual Narcissism. Ego is God. The vicissitudes of your ego, its preferences, its unresolved cravings, become the vestments in a regressive ritual. See? It’s MAGIC. You caste a spell, voila’, the Universe responds. Cuz you’re God. Why exactly an entity that IS everything would need more is not clear, why a Divine Being that is all powerful would need to appeal to another power is perplexing, but.. To cement this Kosmic Delusion, The Secret hypnotically repeats “The Universe” and “Your thoughts, your feelings” until the two are braided into a phantasm that places your Ego squarely in the Center of Reality, in control of all that comes in and out of being. What do you want to do with your Divine Power? Free all sentient beings? Awaken every sister and brother from the Dream? Dissolve the source of suffering? No. You want cars. And girlfriends, and boyfriends, and a new red bike and a big new house.

The Secret snags the self by flattering it into masquerading as the Self. As an egomaniac, I can attest to the efficacy of that strategy. And also to its disastrous results.

Allow me to pause for a confessional tangent. Before you think I am positioning myself as some spiritual fundamentalist who thinks materialism is bad and “spirituality” is good, let me set things straight. Me, Stuart Davis? I LOVE money. I LOVE sex. I want a new house. I’ll take a shiny red bike. I want to be rich, powerful, and successful. And I do not apologize to anyone for that. I think the ego is good, I think it’s games are legitimate and should be engaged. You know what else? I want YOU to be rich. I want YOU to be successful, powerful, and have every wish in the circus of your imagination brought into reality. As long as we’re not hurting anyone else, I say let’s go to town. I am the first to stand up and shout “THE EGO IS NOT EVIL!! THE EGO IS NOT BAD!! IT HAS GOTTEN A SHITTY DEAL FROM SPIRITUALITY! LET THE EGO BE WHAT IT ITS!!!” In fact, the ego is quite literally one of the most astonishing miracles to occur in the history of Universe. No joke. Celebrate it. It’s time we ended the spiritual war with the ego, include it as another facet of the Beauty in our Being. Why would we leave anything out? The self counts. The ego matters.

I also have to say: The ego is not the Self.

The Secret is selling tools that supposedly fulfill wishes, dreams, desires. But WHOSE wishes? What LEVEL of desire? What DEPTH of dream?

Well, here’s what sucks about The Secret: There are many levels of self, but only one which THINKS, and that’s the Ego. Thinking, feeling, thinking, feeling, these two conductors are the hub for all The Secret espouses, and sadly thoughts and feelings (while important and valid) come from an extremely shallow dimension of the self. Because of this, the Secret deeply, sadly, entangles us further into suffering instead of liberating us from it. The source of suffering is delusion -the illusion of separateness. It gives rise to craving, longing, desire. It’s the illusion that we lack something that sends us on the Odyssey of Acquisition.

The Secret gives us a cure that’s worse than the disease. The cure for craving is controlling craving. The solution to hunger is famine. The Secret speaks to materialism, narcissism, and other afflictions of self by sanctifying them, exalting them. Rather than liberate us from the Source of Suffering, The Secret reenforces it. It anchors us in the shallowest level of our self (the Ego) and consecrates its preferences, its fantasies.

When someone asks you what you want, before you answer, ask yourself What level of me are they asking? What level of me am I going to respond from? If I had all the power to wish for anything in the Universe, what would I wish for? Who am “I” anyway?

It is dangerous to insert the ego in the place of the Self -the highest Self, the deepest Self, the one that is without a beginning or end. The ego -the subject- is a boundary. It identifies itself by what is inside or outside of it. Whatever is outside of the subject is an object. The small self is a dynamic aggregate of qualities and preferences, locating itself anew in each moment through a calculus of these subject / object distinctions ( I am this, I’m not that, I like this, I don’t like that, I want this, I don’t want that, this is me, that is not). The self depends entirely on boundaries.

Self, on the other hand, has no boundary. Self has no “other”. It cannot be reduced to any particular qualities or characteristics, but all qualities and characteristics rise and fall within it. Self includes vertical and horizontal coordinates that stretch as deep and wide as the Universe itself. It is true that all Reality arises from and dissolves into the Self. Not the ego, not the personality, not an individual, but the Self -the Groundless Ground of all Reality.

The ego is defined by preferences, identified by desires, determined by boundary.

The Self has no preferences, no desires, no lack, no inside, no outside. It includes all preferences, but is not defined by them. Desire arises within it, but it is not identified by it. Every imaginable boundary forms and dissolves within the Self, but never parses its not-two not-one Nature. This Self -entire seen and unseen Kosmos- is the native endowment of every human being. Our greatest depth is without bottom.

The good news: You can have your cake and eat it too. You don’t have to disown your self to be your Self. You have an ego. You are the Universe. But don’t confuse the two, and don’t let anyone else confuse them for you.

I have an ego, and it has desires, and it’s healthy and appropriate for that level of my being to seek fulfillment. My thoughts are powerful, and my feelings matter. But the Universe does not reconfigure reality to accomodate the personal preferences of my ego, my frontal structure, every time an impulse comes through my reptilian brain stem. That is not just narcissism, its KOSMIC narcissism, and that is what the Secret is selling. Kosmic narcissism, spiritual materialism of the WORST kind. First, by ensnaring me in my own ego with the promise of release, liberation from desire (while addicting me to it) and second by getting me to forfeit my Self for my self. Since my ego is now Divine, since my frontal structure is now Infinite -Stuart Davis is God- why on Earth would I ever bother with finding my Self? Actual awakening requires real development, years, decades of practice and evolution. Continually moving my Subject through ever-expanding, ever-inclusive transformations takes TIME and TROUBLE. Of course there is no such thing as time, but authentically realizing that takes time. Of course there is no such thing as suffering, but profound recognition of that Fact is exquisitely painful.

Authentic spirituality is not a vending machine that spits out cars, lovers, and shiny red bikes. It is not a wand we can wave to avert discomfort, or acquire power. Actual awakening increases intimacy with all suffering (and bliss), everywhere, without exception. It does not remove struggle, but increases our devotion to and stewardship of all Reality.

Again, to be clear: I, Stuart Davis, want to be rich. I want to be comfortable. I want lots of Prada shoes. Hell, as long as my cravings are satisfied, I want that for everyone. That’s not bad. I do not apologize for that, and this is not hyperbole.

But call a spade a spade. I work with my ego, but I don’t presume the Universe is reinventing itself moment to moment in order to comply with the minutia of my needy personality. There is the self, and then there is the Self. I go to my therapist for one, I go to the Point of All Places for the other.

I, the Self, which also includes Stuart but is not defined by him, was here before Stuart was born, and will be here after he dies. The Self is the end of Suffering, and operates through all discrete agents as a means to Awakening to Reality as it Is. I am that Self. I am radical, absolute freedom. Incorruptible. Immutable. Every imaginable thing is that Self, equally without exception. But not all things equally realize that. Not all beings are equally awake. There is development. There evolution toward what already Is.

The Self is absolute freedom. The self is relative delusion. The Secret is appealing to the relative self and pretending its the absolute Self.

The Secret crowns the Ego as God (I mean, YOU create Reality, isn’t that amazing? YOUR THOUGHTS are INFINITELY influential), then makes two disastrous leaps.

#1, Now that you know YOU create your own reality through the spiritual enterprise that is “thinking, feeling”, what do you, the Creator, want to create with your thoughts? Wealth. Money, power, influence, status, and the luxury afforded the elite who amass fortunes. The Secret will teach you how. Odd, isn’t it, that your self is so spiritual and powerful, but what it chooses to Attract with its Law is money, houses, lovers. Not the liberation of all sentient beings, not relief for every creature, not the cessation of that which is the Source of Suffering (clutching, desire, greed arising from the illusion that there is an “other”), but a refinement of the Source of Suffering. A manipulation of it. The Secret turns Desire and Clutching into a technology you can wield, AND its Spiritual! The cure is worse than the disease.

#2, Since YOU create your own Reality (Oprah went to pains to stress and emphasize this point, and had Rhonda explicitly confirm precisely that phrase “we create our own reality”) you are responsible as the Source of whatever arises in your Reality. Every thing in your experience, you created (merely using thoughts and feelings! Wow). Many of you reading this right now may be astonished to finally understand you gave yourself cancer. You caused yourself to be raped, robbed, murdered, stricken with every malady in the canon of illness, beset with each kind of strife imaginable. The Holocaust? Just something Jews brought on themselves, as they each apparently created their own Reality. The Rape of Nanking? Bad Chinese, with their bad thoughts and feelings, simply created their own reality and thus caused the unspeakable murder of 350,000 innocent children, women, and men. Weird, the Reality people create for themselves, ain’t it?

Of course, it’s hard to overstate how cruel and insulting such a notion is. The impossibly sick premise that people in such situations create their own Reality is so obviously wrong, so self-evidently false to our basic intuition, that we can almost laugh it off. I mean, we could if Oprah -perhaps the most influential woman in the Western World- hadn’t gone to pains to repeatedly emphasize and confirm it with Rhonda Bynre to an audience of tens of millions. Tens of millions of people who literally orient their lives according to these sorts of “discoveries”.

There are not just many levels of smaller self (the ego is but one), but different spheres, or dimensions. The Secret is not only selling a shallow dimension of self, but it is also only acknowledges one aspect of self.

The Secret is working in one realm (interior individual). And it actually does a useful thing in that realm. Positive thought is important. We can change the way in which our thoughts and feelings symbiotically produce healthier behavior. That’s good. But there is so much more to the story. We have an inside, and an outside. We are individuals, and we are also social beings. These realms are all part of who we are. All four realms come together at once, they tetra-arise as Reality. No one domain “creates” the others. Each is indispensible. The interior of an individual (where thought occurs) does have correlates in the exterior of the individual (manifest as measurable biological change). We are beings with an inner and an outer worlds. But Reality is not composed of individuals. We are also collective beings, with shared interiors, or inter-subjective domains. Such as culture, collective consciousness, and all that goes with the inner Word of We. That shared inner world is complemented by the outer world, the inter-objective domain of Nature, the biosphere, and all that can be seen and observed in corporeal form. These FOUR domains:

*The Interior of an Individual (where thought occurs, for instance)
*The Exterior of an Individual (the body, what can be measured and seen objectively)
*The Interior of the Collective (Culture, invisible features of mutuality, inter-subjective social)
*The Exterior of The Collective (Biosphere, planet, infrastructure, the inter-objective realm)

While The Secret promotes itself as the magic wand for everything, it actually deals with one part of one realm, and misrepresents itself while doing it (by substituting self for Self).

To claim any one of them “creates” the other is a disaster, and unfortunately fairly common occurance. Any time you find a discipline which FOCUSES on a particular domain (which is good) you find it is tempted or seduced into claiming that ONE quadrant is the only “real” one, or the only “true” one, or the only important one (which is bad). That is another of The Secret’s defects.. It takes one realm, one perspective (The Interior of an Individual) and claims it creates all the others. Wow. YOU, your thoughts, create your body. And the biosphere, and the entire culture, and history of the planet, origin of species, all the cities you could visit, all the planets in the Galaxy, all the Galaxies, all the… and so on. And its wrong. Sorry. Your thoughts, your feelings, while being important and valuable, are but two coordinates in one Quadrant.

Your thoughts and feelings are not the Source of Reality, but two of its features. You do not “create” your reality, you participate in it, and in certain circumstances, under particular conditions, you can influence it. And it is good and useful to cultivate that influence, to positively nurture those portions as much as possible, in the interest of love.

Rhonda Byrne’s Secret is bad Self-Help masquerading as mysticism. Broadly, “spirituality” can mean anything. So when we say spirituality, what level of spirituality are we talking about? What altitude of awareness are we coming from, what level of “spirit” are we referring to? I’m not saying The Secret is not spiritual. I’m saying it’s a very low-level of spirituality masquerading as a high one. What it uses as enticements (become wealthy, get a better job, get a lover) are very telling. It is appealing to a person’s desire to attain, acheive, and better their personal station. It is promising you a better STORY. And that is indeed one altitude of spirituality. But it’s the bottom, and inflating it can end up keeping people stuck in the cycle of suffering even longer. Because the self is addicted to its STORY. The Self is the end of all stories.

Now contrast The Secret with The Mystery. The Mystery, to me, includes all four domains (inner, outer, individual, collective) and does not privilege one over the other. It engages them as tetra-arising. It includes them as inextricably inter-woven, yet distinct in important ways. The Mystery includes every altitude in every domain, and values each of them, but also understand their differences. The Mystery includes every methodology, every ontology or Way of Knowing, but at also understands what they do, and what they don’t do. The Secret is but a method, and it will not set you free from The Story. In fact, it will probably suck you deeper into it. It promises money, power, increased attraction, and tells you it is “spiritual” practice. Your story could become so comfortable, why would you ever forfeit it?

Here is an important question: What level of YOU wants to get rich? What altitude of YOU wants a new house, a better lover, an improved Story?

Here’s what I feel is a healthier approach. Use the right tool for the right job. The right decoy for the right level. I think it is GOOD to improve our financial station. I think it is GOOD to have an exciting love life. That’s why I have a financial advisor. That’s why I see a therapist. I need to work on my self. I want to improve my relative reality. But I don’t need to invoke “the Universe” or quantum mechanics or magical-narcissistic mysticism to do so. It’s misguided. Want to find your Self? See Swami Sally. Want to get a new house? A blow job? See Suzy Ormand and Sue Johansen. Stop it with the Secret. It’s detrimental to our work in the Mystery.

Perhaps worst of all, until we are truly FREE -free from the Source of Suffering, free from desire, clutching, the assault of our false identities and all their Stories- until we are that FREE, we cannot really be available to help others become FREE. And that my friends, is the hokey pokey.

by Jessica Driscoll

DEPTFORD TWP. Gloucester County College showed its green spirit for Earth Day on Tuesday with information booths, a film festival and a visit by creatures from the Academy of Natural Sciences.

“This is our second annual Go Green day and we decided it would be beneficial to hold it around Earth Day,” said Cheryl Budd, student activities coordinator at GCC and organizer of Tuesday’s event. “We reached out to various outside vendors and a lot of the students got involved. It’s an event to make people aware of what they can do for the earth as individuals.”

GCC held a logo design contest for this year’s event and all participants wore the green design.

This year’s winner Brittany Goetz, 21, of Mullica Hill said she was inspired to draw a “really cool tree” and then wrapped it around the planet in order to commemorate Earth Day.

“I think days like this are important for everyone,” said Goetz. “Everyone needs to go more green and show that they care for the environment.”

Two petitions were also circulating the event, one to get Dr. Davis to join the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment and the other for the installation of “green roofs” on new campus buildings.

“We want Dr. Davis to sign a commitment to make a plan for the college that will reduce emissions and do the right thing by buying clean energy technology,” said Dr. Susan Glenn, a science professor at GCC. “There are 600 college and university presidents already signed up.”

“And the green roofs I learned about from Dr. Glenn,” said Christina Meares, 23, of Pitman. “It’s about having grass and shrubs on the roofs of new buildings which will pull in particulate matter and absorb stormwater so it won’t run off and pollute drinking water. It would also greatly reduce heating and cooling costs and there are a lot of grants out there that would help support a program like this.”

++++

The above article was written about a campus-wide Earth Day event I helped coordinate at the community college from which I recently graduated.  The latter of the two petitions mentioned is one that I drew up urging students, staff, and faculty to get behind the installation of greenroofs on all newly constructed campus buildings.  I collected about 80 signatures (probably a good number for such a small school) and last night finally e-mailed the school president and his secretary requesting an appointment to present the design concept as well as the petition and to answer any questions.

Tell Me More, September 17, 2007 · Nearly 500 protesters held a recent rally outside the Washington, D.C. home of Debra Lee, chairperson of cable network BET. The protesters expressed discontent with what they called the “derogatory images of black men and women” portrayed by the network. BET’s most recent scrutiny stems from a controversial public service announcement (PSA). The creator of the ad, Bomani “D’Mite” Armah, responds to his critics.

LISTEN HERE: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14466377

Studying children’s sense of musical timing has long been challenging. The babies in the study couldn’t even grab their toes, let alone tap them.

Yet brain scans show that these 2- and 3-day-olds could perceive musical patterns and even take note when a drummer missed a beat, the study in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows.

The 14 babies, who were examined under their mothers’ watchful eyes, had similar patterns of electrical brain activity as 14 adults in the study, says co-author Henkjan Honing of the University of Amsterdam. The scans revealed that the infants were following the beat and, like any music listener, began to expect the drummer to continue the same pattern.

The scans recorded the babies’ surprise when the drummer didn’t meet those expectations by stumbling on the downbeat, or first beat of a musical measure, Honing says.

Doctors have long known that a fetus can process sounds even three months before birth, Honing says.

These findings, however, may change the way that doctors think about children’s musical abilities, says co-author Istvan Winkler of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. Many researchers have believed that babies learn about music by listening to adult speech and lullabies, he says. Earlier experiments, using less sophisticated technology, found that babies could begin to tell only one rhythm from another at 4 to 6 months.

The new results suggest that rhythm could be an innate ability, hard-wired into the human brain, Honing says.

Following a beat is a vital part of cultural activities, from following the rhythm of a conversation to dancing or playing music with another person, Honing says. It’s possible that babies are born with a musical sense because it helps communication.

Other researchers say the young music critics in Honing’s study were made, not born.

Babies may learn about rhythm from hearing music in the womb, feeling the rhythm of a mother’s movements or listening to her heartbeat, says Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Yet rhythm seems to be a uniquely human talent, Honing says. Our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, aren’t able to sense a beat — even though they must hear their mother’s heartbeat in the womb as well, he says.

“If you listen to music, we can all clap along,” says Honing, who says the question deserves much further study. “What is special about something we see as so very simple?”

Affluenza is a one-hour television special that explores the high social and environmental costs of materialism and overconsumption.

Through revealing personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, dramatized vignettes, and “anti-commercial” breaks, Affluenza examines the high cost of achieving the most extravagant lifestyle the world has ever seen.

Last year, Americans, who make up only five percent of the world’s population, used nearly a third of its resources and produced almost half of its hazardous waste. Add overwork, personal stress, the erosion of family and community, skyrocketing debt, and the growing gap between rich and poor, and it’s easy to understand why some people say that the American Dream is no bargain. Many are opting out of the consumer chase, redefining the Dream, and making “voluntary simplicity” one of the top 10 trends of the ’90s.

Affluenza travels across the country to show you men and women who are working and shopping less, spending more time with friends and family, volunteering in their communities, and enjoying their lives more. A brief sampling:

In Colorado Springs, religious conservatives worry about the impact of materialism on American life, advertisements invade the local school district, and a family struggles with a potent case of Affluenza .

In Seattle, Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, authors of the best-selling book, Your Money or Your Life, help others get off the work-and-spend treadmill to find more meaning in their lives.

In Vancouver, Canada, activists known as “Adbusters” design humorous “subvertisements” that expose how advertisements manipulate us.

In Redmond, Washington, two teenagers create an award-winning play that spoofs the materialistic life of Barbie dolls.

Affluenza is hosted by National Public Radio’s engaging Scott Simon. It was produced by John de Graaf and Vivia Boe, the team who produced the critically acclaimed PBS special on another American epidemic, Running Out of Time. Affluenza is a production of KCTS/Seattle and Oregon Public Broadcasting and was made possible by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts.

But I’ve never wanted a drink more in my life than when I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

My uncle BD regularly attends AA meetings. I was told, on the day I agreed to accompany him to one of the meetings, that he hasn’t had a drink in over 18 years, so I thought, well, why is he going to AA if he hasn’t had a drink in so long? Sounds like he’s kicked it.

I started wondering what the statute of limitations was for alcoholism. BD’s been dry eighteen years and still considers himself an alcoholic. Can’t you finally doff the moniker “alcoholic” if you’ve been sober twenty years? Thirty?

Never?

If you’ve stopped smoking, you don’t still consider yourself a smoker. You’re an ex-smoker.

I’ve yet to hear anyone describe themselves as an ex-alcoholic. They’re all “recovering alcoholics”.

Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Sounds like a raw deal to me, a scarlet AA burned into your liver for eternity.

The only reason I accepted the invitation was because so far my trip had been rather tame, filled with accompanying my cousins – three girls between the ages of 7 and 12 – to the local swimming pool each day, sitting through impromptu living room talent shows, and getting to know the family dog rather well – a rat-like concoction of claws and tongue who had yet to learn the human word for “No.”

We arrived at the West Austin Community Center thirty minutes into the hour-long meeting. Before joining, BD and I detoured into the coffee room to juice up. A large man cradling a styrofoam cup stood reading a bulletin board.

“Skip!” exclaimed BD, giving him a hug. He motioned to me and continued: “I want you to meet my nephew Ben. This is is first visit to AA.”

I shook Skip’s hand while BD ran off to use the restroom. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

“Welcome,” he said. “So, this is your first time, huh?”

“Yup,” I said, making my way to the coffee machine.

“Well, we’re glad you’re here. You’ll find that you’ve got help here whenever you need it.”

I didn’t try to correct his assessment of me, as denying I was an alcoholic would firmly cement in his head my reason for being there. Admittance is, after all, the first step. So I just smiled politely and pulled a cup from the shelves.

“Is the coffee any good?” I asked.

BD rejoined us and said, “Skip’s my sponsor. Been trying to get him to be my sponsor for a long time, and he finally said yes,”

“I said yes just so you’d leave me alone,” Skip chuckled. BD laughed at this, an inside joke apparently.

“Yeah, Ben here’s a normie,” BD said.

“Is that so?” Skip asked. “You sure he’s related?”

The three of us shared a quiet laugh, then made our way into the meeting room, where Arlene was talking about how her faith in God keeps her sober.

We took a seat in the back, well away from the single table lamp illuminating the room, and listened to the various stories.

“Hi, my name’s Brad, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi Brad.”

Brad went on to tell us how he’s been sober for five years, which elicited supportive applause from the group. He apparently found the drink in college, and realized he was an alcoholic when he woke up one afternoon in a puddle of vomit on the front yard.

I thought hell, I’ve done that before.

Brad and Arlene’s stories were your basic stories of “this is how I became an alcoholic, this is how I realized I’m an alcoholic, and this is how I keep from drinking”, and I wondered if they tell these same tales each week.

Seems like that would make for some tedious meetings. The same people telling the same stories over and over and over. Like visiting Grandpa in the old folks home except with less urine smells. You just smile and nod and feign interest in the story though what you really want to do is scream “we’ve heard this one before, we get it already, Jesus Christ!”

A few more people related their stories of woe and hope, strength and faith. Each one unique, each one exactly the same.

At the end of the hour, it was time to call this meeting adjourned. After an induction of two new members, everybody stood up, grabbed each other’s hands, and arranged as much a circle as they could in this dark, L-shaped room crowded with desks and chairs.

I sat back in mine, outside of the circle, and listened to the group prayer which was topped off by what appeared to be the AA vision statement in rhyme. Something about trusting in Jesus to help the drunks get through life one day at a time, yadda yadda yadda.

I thanked Jesus myself for not letting anybody notice I wasn’t participating, and afterwards gleefully watched as everyone scrambled to the front porch for a cigarette, chuckling as I imagined the Smokers Anonymous members throwing back a few pints after each one of their meetings.

Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Talk about having no hope at all for recovery. It frightened me to think of all the bad habits I’ve had over the years, and how someone might still be able to identify me as that habit today even though I’ve kicked it completely.

Hi, my name is Ben and I’m a thief.
Hi, my name is Ben and I’m a liar.
Hi, my name is Ben, and I pick my nose in church.

You see what I mean? I don’t need this following me around. I don’t want to be standing at the altar and have a priest say “Do you Ben, nose picker, take you Kerri, passive aggressive ice queen, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

But this is what Alcoholics Anonymous is doing. They’re supporting an ideology and culture which states that even though you’ve been sober for over twenty years, you’re still a fucking drunk. What sort of fucked up co-dependency is that?

I say if you haven’t had a drink in a year, you’re no longer an alcoholic. Forget about it and get on with your life. The only person worse than a drunk is someone who thinks it’s by the grace of God they don’t get shit faced each night. We understand you used to have a problem, Brad, but get out of the bar, you’re bringing everybody down!

You don’t want to drink anymore? Go see a movie, read a book, or better yet, don’t go to these meetings every two weeks where you’re constantly reminded about how fucked up and awful your life used to be. Leave that to your parents, they’re quite good at that.

Goddammit I need a drink.

propz: http://theshoeboxgallery.blogspot.com/2004/11/why-i-hate-alcoholics-anonymous.html

NVC w/Marshall Rosenberg