CONSEQUENCES REVISITED
By David Young
Published by David Young at Smashwords
© David Young. 1998
Cover Artwork by David Young
eISBN 978-0-9870726-6-5
1 Alcohol. 2 Drugs. 3 Recovery. 4 Co-dependency 5 Self Help. 1. Title
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 4. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
CHAPTER 15. SEEING IN THE DARK
CONSEQUENCES REVISITED
My first three books were published in 1994 as the Consequences Trilogy. They were written as I was coming out of a very bad place and written in a very New Age style. Since then the New Age has come and gone.
Many of the concepts have been revised, updated and have morphed in my Alternative series of books. I decided to go through the Consequences Trilogy to see if there was anything left worth salvaging. After removing everything that had been updated or dumped what I was left with was the material relating to recovery.
Consequences Revisited is the recovery material rewritten to link properly though the gaps left by removed stuff.
The concepts give background to the standard concepts anyone working at recovery will come across. I trust it will be of use to you. If not it has two saving graces. It is not very long and it is free.
There are two diseases that usually go together but can exist as separate diseases. The first is chemical dependency. This is the physical addiction that keeps the addict coming back for the next fix. The only cure known for this disease is abstinence.
This is self-imposed abstinence, not the imposed abstinence of legally imposed prohibition. Prohibition has not worked and has probably caused more problems than it has cured.
The second disease is alcoholism, which does not seem to vary with the drug of choice. Instead of inventing new labels for each drug of choice it is easier to call it all alcoholism. The basis of alcoholism is best explained by how I came to understand it.
Some thirty years ago I was working in a major recovery program as a group facilitator in the co-dependency program. I was working in co-dependents program because not long before I had ended a sixteen years marriage to a double winner (alcohol and gambling) and co-dependency was my background. I grow tired of listening to the same lectures at the beginning of each program so I sat in at the back of a dependency lecture.
The lecture started with “Today we are going to talk about a higher power. But its no good talking to you barstards about God. If you want to see God all you have to do is look in the Mirror.” And that is alcoholism in a nutshell.
Alcoholics (all addicts) are God in there own mind. The way they achieve and maintain their status as God is the continuously shifting reality. No matter what happens they have the ability to instantly shift reality around so nothing is their fault and as befitting there status as God they are always right.
The active ingredient in the AA twelve step program is the line ‘Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.’ The thrust of this is not to turn people into religious fanatics but to impress on addicts that they are not God.
To be fair the mobile reality exists through out our society. It is just that alcoholics have elevated it to an art form.
So this is the problem. The cure to alcoholism is the understanding by the addict that they are not God. With this comes the unthinkable. Addicts have to accept their new status as being merely a human demand they accept responsibility for their actions. Something a God would never have to do.
So this is the problem for anyone wanting to overcome addiction. They have to come to understand that they are not God, merely human. And as humans we are responsible for our actions. If along the way you find the other God that’s OK too. But that is not the focus of this book.
Just being human does have a lot going for it once the need for personal responsibility is accepted.
We all live with paradox. Nothing is as it seems and if it is then it is an illusion.
paradox |ˈparəˌdäks|
noun
a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory
New Offord American Dictionary (on-line edition)
The reason for the contradiction we live with is that information can come from two separate sources. The first is external information about the physical world, and the second source is what comes from within.
External information from the five senses would be correct if we did not judge it. As soon as we apply judgment the external becomes whatever we think it should be rather than what they are. This is particularly dangerous when we listen to all judgments about who we are supposed to be and how we are supposed to behave.
Then we add our ever-changing judgment (except for the immovable judgment that we are God) and reality becomes whatever we need it to be.
The other source of information comes from within. This is the self, and what I will call ‘inner knowing’ for no other reason than I cannot think of any other way of describing it. When external information is not in line with inner knowing there is conflict. Nowhere is this more evident than when we are told what we should be doing and our inner knowing says something different.
Often our inner knowing seems senseless, logically unacceptable and self-contradictory. On top of this there is often sometimes extreme sanctions imposed for not doing what the external world expects of them. There is extreme pressure in our physical world to conform to what society or others expect of us. Having earned the status of addict it is expected that addicts will always be addicts and to relapse at any moment. The fact that you have once been in a bad place once means to our society that you have never really left and could return there any moment.
There are two sides to addictions. There is the physical side and psychological condition. Whilst it may be physically true that the physical disposition may always be there a change in psychological outlook will ensure you need never go back there.
Often the only way out of the problem of the problem of other expectations is changing friends and situations. This will probably happen anyway as part of the natural process of evolution.
Anyone who is serious about seeking answers about the human conditions and who wants to make changes will come to understand what I mean. The path for anyone seeking something better that the world we live in will be difficult. There will be any number of people who will want to force you into conforming to the image they have about you.
I thought I would give you the bad news first so that if the reader is only playing with the idea of finding a better way to live their lives then they can stop now and do something different.
The reason for the pressure not to change is that the most dangerous person in the world is the person who thinks for themselves and makes their own decisions. Such a person cannot be controlled. And that is what you will become if you learn to listen to what comes from within. You will be a person who thinks for them self and makes your own decisions, and a very dangerous person in a world that runs on control and manipulation.
Please don’t misunderstand me on this. I don’t means dangerous in the sense you might get a gun and shoot people. I mean dangerous in the sense if you are told to do something you will think about it and decide if you want to or not. And then you must be able to withstand the pressure of not doing as you are told.
The fact that you are reading this book probably means you are coming from a bad place and want something better. Maybe you are coming from a place of addiction or someone else’s addiction. Maybe you just have the feeling that there needs to be more to life.
What I do know is that if your life is all sweetness and light and you are content with things as are then this book might be an intellectual exercised but nothing more. It is written for those who want something better.
I hope that it is a book to be felt as well as read. If what I write triggers what is within then I will have achieved my aim. It is not my intention to write a ‘how to’ book, but a book that encourages the reader to think for themselves and listen to what comes from within. Then you will understand the paradox.
Reasoning and logic are to each other as health is to medicine, or better as conduct to morality. Reasoning refers to a gamut of natural thought processes in the everyday world. Logic is how we ought to think if objective truth is our goal and the everyday world is very little concerned with objective truth. Logic is the science of the justification of conclusions we have reached by natural reasoning.
(Jaynes, 1976)
You are going to be told over and over that what you are doing is illogical and wrong. But what is this logic that is used as a higher power to prove what you are doing is wrong?
Engineers use logic in a valid way when they start with pre-determined prejudices such as ‘Buildings should stand’, ‘Airplanes should fly’ and ‘Electric lights should work’. As a result, buildings usually stand up, aircraft fly and lights work when the switch is turned on. Logic is applied to predict the behavior of the materials knowing how those materials usually behave. But the logic does not answer the question ‘Why do those materials behave in that way’. Go deep enough into any subject and the final answer on a material level can only be ‘That is just the way it is’.
An engineer who wants to design a building that stands up will start from the end. The engineer will startwith how much the finished building will weigh, what the forces (wind etc.) are, and the ability of the site to withstand these forces. The engineer starts at end. From there the building is designed in greater and greater detail unto the engineer has a set of drawings the builder can work with. The builder then starts at the beginning the engineer has found by working backwards, and the building is built.
But suppose the engineer is designing a building for an action moving where the building has to fall down? The engineer will start from the end but with a different pre-determined prejudice. Logic can produce opposite outcomes depending on that you want the outcome to be.
The engineer is acting correctly in both instances and has used logic correctly in order to bring about a desired outcome. But logic cannot be used to prove anything, only bring about outcomes.
And so it is with the people who bombard you with logic. They will start from where they want to finish to find out where they must start to prove they are right and you are wrong. There is no defense against the misuse of logic because it is not logical, only prejudice. The logic of the engineer can be checked and shown to be correct or incorrect, but prejudice is nothing and it is impossible to prove or disprove nothing.
Logic has the same characteristics as paradox. It appears to come from the opposite direction.
So what can be done against prejudice re-labeled as logic? You can walk away. Don’t get into it. If you try to argue against it you will only end up using your own prejudice in a attempt to fight prejudice. That is not going to work.
De Bono (1987) wrote that once a thought is thought, it cannot be un-thought. I would like to add that once something is seen as logical we cannot un-logic it. We will always end up with what we want to prove.
I hope engineers continue to use logic correctly so that buildings doesn’t fall on me or a plane I am might fly in continues to fly. But any answers that will provide real answers to the things will want or the changes we want to make in our lives will not come from logic, they will come from within.
We seem to live in a world where everyone is looking for answers, always looking for the answer to this and that. And yet answers seem hard to come by. Humanity looks for the meaning that will make life worthwhile, or that is the way it seems.
The system works this way: decide the answer in advance, work backwards logically to find the question that can only lead to that answer, and then ask the question. This method works well if the only reason to ask a question is to support a pre-judged position.
Try watching television interviews to see this system in action. How often does the interviewer ask questions that prevent the interviewee from expressing any view contrary to the interviewer's. Try listening to any discussion on politics, religion, economics or any other subject, and most of the time the so-called answers will be no more than a statement of a particular set of prejudices.
When we ask questions it is import to be certain we really are looking for the answer. Many people claim to be looking for truth when they are really looking for a truth they will like. Finding a path out of a hell we have created into a place we want to be will throw up truths we do not like.
When this happens please remember the reason you are asking the question. You want to learn a new way, a way that works for you. If you had all the answers in the first place you would have already been in the place you want to be. And having all the answers would be the end of everything. All progress would cease. The reason for asking a question is that you do not know the answer.
Working from a position of inner knowing, we are open to answers, and valid answers are always there for us when we ask valid questions. Valid questions are those asked from a position of openness, with a desire to learn. Not only are valid questions asked from a position of openness answers are accepted with openness whatever that answer may be.
If we work from the external world with all its prejudice we will always find reasons why we are right and have always been right. And nothing changes.
There is the mistaken belief that some people are creative, and some are not. Artists are creative, accountants are not. This is obviously invalid to me since I know several accountants who are extremely creative. I know one accountant who can make the same set of figures add up to two entirely different answers. It all depends if the answer is required for the tax department or to apply for a bank loan. A very creative gentleman.
All material that I have seen on creativity centers on some form of ‘encounter’. But the question of what the encounter is with is never answered. The question is well stated by Rollo May:
We arrive finally in analysing the creative act in terms of the question ‘What is this intense encounter with?’ An encounter is always a meeting between two poles. The subjective pole is the conscious person in the creative act itself. But what is the objective pole of this dialectic relationship?
(May, 1985)
So being creative requires an encounter.
In the Gulf War the world was shown missiles that could fly six hundred miles to destroy a single pre-determined building in the centre of Baghdad High Street. Weapon after weapon showing enormous creativity became known to the world in that war. The reporting of the war was also very creative. Who ever thought of presenting the war on the same lines as the coverage of a football match, complete with commercial breaks and interviews from both sides?
But was this creative? Surly there is an element to creation that adds to the whole? Can destruction ever be creative? I would say that finding new ways of destroying more completely is very clever but creates nothing. Destruction does not create. It reduces something to nothing.
Cleverness does not require an encounter. It only requires a new or enhanced way of doing the same old thing. Blowing things up has been around for a while. All that has happened is that cleverness has created enhanced bangs and enhanced methods of delivery.
We used to kill each other face to face. Now only just post-pubic ‘gamers’ are recruited to fly drones over Afghanistan from Seattle and kill at a great distance before going home for tea.
This is not creative. And the only difference between the ravages of war and the way the individual behaves is one of scale. There is no difference in essence between a military attack and an acrimonious divorce. The warring parties may be very clever in their weapons and tactics but as clever as it all may be it is not creative.
To build a new life, to create something better there is the need to stop being clever. If you are in a bad place being clever, as you have always been, will just keep you going around in circles. We need to create new ways, not just clever variations on what we have always done.
To be creative we need that encounter. The person we think we are, the person we are told we are supposed to be, does not have that encounter. That person can only interact with the external world that way it has always interacted. For there to be an encounter the person within must become known. Our inner knowing must have an encounter with the external world and decide what we want.
Who is this ‘we’? We are the person who becomes visible when we listen to our inner knowing. The person who decides what that person wants rather than what they are told what they are supposed to want.
Discover that person and you will become very creative. You will find many new ways of interacting with the world. New ways that add to life not destroy it.
This may not make you popular with the people you used to know but you will move on. The world needs less clever people and more creative encounters.
Despite the fact that we can improve our intelligence to some degree, it remains radically limited by our physical and emotional environment. There are also metaphysical limitations which are even more interesting. Each of us was born into a certain family in a certain country at a certain historical moment, all with no choice on our part. If we try to deny these facts like Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby we can blind ourselves to reality and come to grief. True we can surpass to some extent the limitations of our family backgrounds or our historical situations, but such transcendence can occur only to those who accept their limitations to begin with.
(May 1985)
In the previous chapter I said something like that we need to accept the truths we don’t like. We also need to accept our limitations. We all have plenty of both. But by accepting both our truths we don’t like and our limitations we can transcend them. The thing about accepting them is that by doing so we come to understand them. Until we understand we can do nothing.
Try sitting at a computer to write a story. What happens? Nothing. Nothing, because we have no limitations. Now sit at a computer and write a story about a Tortoise and a Hare. Now we can write because we have limitations. We have a framework to work with. That is what human limitations do. They give us a framework to work with.
Working with our limitation requires very creative answers and when we can be creative instead of clever the results can exceed our wildest expectations. When we understand and the temptation to be clever comes up we can say ‘No, I will not be clever, I will be creative instead.’
Time is an invention of humanity that cannot be defined in the physical world and need not exist in the spiritual world.
The only definition of time I have heard that makes any sense is the one given by Professor Julius. Sumner Miller on the TV series Why is it so? He said ‘Time is that which is measured by a clock.’
Time is the sequential ordering of events. The human brain needs to put things in sequential order so that it can make sense of them. That is, the logical part of the brain needs sequential order so that it can use logic. The movement of a clock allows a series of sequential events to happen. It then displays how many sequential events have taken place. We do not actually measure time; we measure how many sequential events have taken place within the clock between other events outside the clock.
Time is a very useful invention in the physical world. It enables humanity to order events, so that events that need to happen together can happen together. Apart from ordering external events, there is no correlation between the ordering of events for one person and for another. Each of us has our own method of ordering events internally. Suppose there were two people. Each lived eighty years, measured externally. If there was any way to measure the internal clock of each, according to the number of events in their lives, then we might find that one had lived a week and the other a thousand years.
Events are only events, nothing more. Our reality is the interpretation that each of us places on those events. Interpretation of events has two basic components: quality and quantity.
Quality is a value judgment ‘There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’ (Hamlet, William Shakespeare). The event itself is not good or bad. It is how we judge it that is our reality.
The quantity of events also involves value judgment based on how many events we are comfortable with. Hence ‘Isn't it peaceful here’ can co-exist in the same space as ‘Nothing ever happens around here’.
In the same way that we create the reality of our lives according to our interpretation of events, we create the frequency of those events by our belief about time. If there is the belief that there is never enough time, then that belief will ensure that there never is enough time. If we believe that there is always enough time, events will happen smoothly, in sequence and in full within the space allotted for them.
What has this to do with finding a new life, even if it in the same physical space.
Time is the ordering of events. That is all. We can ‘control’ time by ordering events to our needs. There is a time for action and a time for quiet. And this control of time may or may not correspond to the ordering of time in the external world.
There are times we need quiet. We may think we are doing nothing but if we heed the need to be quiet all sorts of internal sorting out may be taking place. It takes time to process new ways. We learn things and then we need to assimilate them into our Spiritual being or they will be lost.
What does spiritual mean? It is a word that has become mystical for some and a source of derision for others. Things that are without are external and things that are within are spiritual. That is all it means.
We all have our spiritual life even if for some people it is buried under so much garbage they do not know it is there. Our inner knowing is the voice of our spiritual being.
Time does not matter to our internal self because it will process what needs to be processed when it needs to be process with out being ruled by any external clock. Sometimes it will need to assimilate at the most inconvenient time. You might be really pushed to get something done or fulfill obligations and the inner self suddenly wants quiet.
It is possible to allow the physical being to do what it needs to do in keeping with the need of the physical world whilst the inner self take time out to do whatever it needs to do. And when the inner self has done what it needs to do there will be a spontaneous changes to the person.
Probably the changes will be only small. They may be so small that they are invisible but they are there, and will build on all the other little changes that have gone before.
The timing of the inner self is totally independent of any external reference. You may read books, follow recovery programs, seek help from professions and so on, but one thing you can never do is put a time limit on recovery. The inner self will make changes when it is ready and only when it is ready.
This leaves the person in a very awkward position. Knowing comes from the head but understanding comes from the heart. Permanent change comes from the heart. It comes from within.
So we will learn many things. We will know in how heads what needs to be done but can feel like total fakes until knowing moves from knowing to understanding. This is so hard. Knowing what we need to do but not really understanding why.
But there are many people who have done some very bad things and the desire to take revenge can be very strong. There are still people who I would be happy to see burn in hell forever. I am certain you could think of a people to add to that list.
And there are all the things we have done. There are probable people who would be happy to see us burn in hell.
If we are to move to a better place we need to also look at our responsibilities. What have we done that has been less than perfect? The pain and anger that we feel is natural. We cannot move past it just because we ‘know’ we should. It will usually pass slowly as we find that little bit more understanding. Each little internal change will make it a little easier.
So what can we do? Pretend. Act as if we understand. Understanding comes from experience. It is the chicken and the egg. We will never understand a new way of being until we experience it. Until we experience it remains a intellectual exercise.
The only thing we can do is to act as if we understand and live the changes even if it feels false. When we live the changes our lives will improve and we will experience the changes and the inner self will assimilate. The changes will then be real.
Recovery cannot be a full time activity if the inner self is going to have time to assimilate changes. We need a separate, neutral focus. This is usually in the form of a hobby or interest that has nothing to with recovery. What this useless activity does is give us something to do outside of recovery whilst the inner self processes and assimilate changes. Far from being useless our little hobbies have a very practical reason for being.
Over time there is the need to move away from the old life, and to move away from recovery. Hobbies and interests give us the opportunity to got to places and meet people who have no idea of our background. Hobbies take us to places where our past problems do not need to follow whilst allowing our inner self the space to assimilate.
As addicts clear out the garbage from their minds the empty spaces need to be filled so that the old way don’t have the space to return.
Just don’t get addicted to your new hobby.
There is no correlation between what we perceive as time in the external world and the timing of our inner self. In the external world we are ruled by the clock, but with our internal clock things happen when they need to happen. Not before and not after.
There is no need to give our self a hard time because things are not happening according to the clock.
Control and manipulation are mistaken for power. The paradox is that the more control and manipulation, the less power there is.
Imagine a military dictator. On the surface he may appear to be a very powerful person, controlling and manipulating thousands, even millions, of people by military force. But how much power does he have?
Power is the ability to act. Our military dictator can only react. He is always on guard against the knife in the back, the assassin's bullet or a coup. Surrounded by bodyguards, he does not even have sufficient power to take a walk alone. To mistake controlling and manipulation for power is to be constantly watching others and reacting to their every move, factual or imagined.
How can anyone whose every move is dictated by others have any power? To live a life of controlling and manipulation is to live a life devoid of any personal power, love, joy or oneness with humanity. Every motive of every person must be questioned, and the most negative answer must be assumed correct to live a life from this position. Relax just once and assume the best, and that will be the time when the assassin's bullet strikes.
So who has the power: the controller or the controlled? If there is a prisoner who needs to be guarded twenty-four hours a day who has the most freedom, the prisoner or the guard? What must the guard do to gain freedom?
To have power, a person needs the freedom to act. That freedom is not present if others need to be guarded. To have power it is necessary to accept powerlessness over others. We cannot act for others. To act requires free will and, although we might use force or manipulation in an attempt to control the actions of others at any time, those we attempt to control can exercise free will, and there is nothing we can do about it.
To accept powerlessness is to accept personal power. I may have no power over others but I do have total power over my actions. Personal power is the ability to act and to accept responsibility for my actions. Since I have power over my actions but none over others, no one has power over me, and my actions must be my responsibility.
Power, or the gaining of power, is often seen as a goal in itself. The ability to act is only of use when we have goals to attain. Action for the sake of action is totally pointless, and this is where many of us become lost. In Australia we have a basic two party ‘Westminster’ style government. The sole goal of the opposition party of the day is to gain ‘power’ and the sole goal of the government is to retain ‘power’. Neither party appears to know what to do with the ‘power’ once they have obtained it, and the country somehow staggers along in spite of the government of the day. Such is life when power becomes its own goal.
To be of any benefit power must be used to obtain goals; it has no intrinsic value in itself. If it is to be of any use to anyone, power needs direction, focus and clarity. To have the power to create the life we want we have to know what we want.
Knowing what we really want does not come from slick advertising, society norms or peer groups. It comes from within. It takes time and effort to find out what we really want from life, what the meaning of life is for us, but the rewards are far greater than anything that can be obtained by listening to others telling us what we should want.
What is your very special place in humanity? What is it that your special talents and experience direct you to do? These questions, and many others, need to be answered to find that very special place that you alone can fill. Your special place may not be ‘grand’. It may be very simple. But whatever it is, it will involve service to others. Since there is a special place that only you can fill, it follows that humanity would be poorer without you. If you fill your special place in humanity it serves humanity.
This is not a particularly ultraistic place to be. When we die the sum total of our lives will be one of three things. The first is that humanity will be richer for our having lived. The second is that our presence has been destructive and the third is that we have done neither and we might as well not existed.
We have been to the destructive place. Having read this far into this book I am guessing that you want something different. By deciding you want something better you have automatically moved to the group how can add value.
Not because you are going to change the world but because it is impossible to improve our lives without improving the lives of those around us. Nobody is an island. What we do does changes our interaction with others. We can use that change to destroy or create. Maybe you have had plenty of experience of destructive behavior, both our own and others behavior. We cannot change others but we can do something about our own behavior. We have that power.
Thus personal power is the power to serve others in the very special way only you can, while allowing others to serve you in their special way. The result of serving each other is to give power to humanity so that humanity can be of service to each of us.
Controlling and manipulating can never empower humanity or any part of it. It renders humanity powerless and at the best produces hatred, jealousy and conflict. At the worst it could destroy us.
Every step of learning involves a paradox: looking from within rather than from without. The paradox here is that to have power it is necessary to serve. The destroyers of history are known only for the havoc they caused; the servers are known for themselves and the love and joy they brought to humanity.
The Edisons and Einsteins of this world are remembered as much for the ideals and attributes they held, for their basic humanity and caring, as they are for their discoveries. They live forever in their writings and quotations, while the Hitlers are remembered only as a series of historical dates associated with death and destruction.
Personal power is embodied in two words: Yes and no. If we say yes to what we want and no to what we do not want. There is no force outside of nature that can resist those two words.
It is a very sad paradox in this world that so much evil exists because so many people oppose evil, thinking that is the ‘right’ thing to do. Evil needs opposition to survive.
Science gives us knowledge; knowing comes from within. Knowledge is the ‘how to’ we need in the physical world; inner knowing is the ‘why’ it is so.
Science gives the impression of answering ‘why’ when in fact true scientific inquiry does not attempt to answer ‘why’. The argument that continue between science and metaphysics is a ridiculous argument. Science asked how, and metaphysics asks why. These are two separate questions and when science attempts to answer why and metaphysics attempts to answer how both misunderstood the questions.
Scientific inquiry relies on two tools: observation and modelling. Observation is just that: observe and see what happens, observe and see if it happens again, and if it does then find a way of making it happen at will. So now we have an observable event that can be reproduced. How can we pass on the knowledge of ‘how to reproduce the effect’ to others?
In the tradition of the world, scientists make up little stories that explain to others how to reproduce the desired effect. These little stories are called ‘theories’. In true science, theories are never right or wrong: they are valid or they are invalid. A valid theory works and an invalid theory does not. There is no judgement as to the truth of the theory, and no attempt is made to explain why. The scientific definition of a good theory is one that works.
Valid or invalid is a beautiful concept in that it allows for any number of valid solutions for any observed effect, and also allows for a theory to be valid in some circumstances but not in others. An example of how a theory can be valid in some circumstances and not in others is Newton's universal laws of motion. Newton made up a very elegant set of stories to explain how to predict physical motion. For some time it was thought that these could explain the whole motion of the Universe. We now know that Newton's theories are only an approximation of physical motion. However, within the limits in which most human endeavour operates, Newton's theories are perfectly valid since they do explain ‘how to’ within these limits.
The point of the above is that Newton's theories are perfectly valid for most conditions humanity operates in. However, they are not valid as humanity reaches into space. We need Einstein's theory of relativity for that.
If any theory could be proved right the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then all scientific inquiry would cease at that point. How can anyone progress past the point of being right? Progress in all scientific areas relies on the concept of validity, allowing that there may be a better answer later, but this is the best that we can do for now.
This is the problem. As soon as we introduce right and wrong, true scientific inquiry goes out the window. As soon as we claim that science is right, ‘how’ becomes ‘why’. As soon as we make a claim that we are right about anything progress stops at that point. Nothing can progress past being right. Right becomes true. As soon as we hold anything to be true it becomes the reason ‘why’ instead of ‘how’.
Listen to any argument on any subject at any place. Listen to all the reasons ‘why’ based on what is supposed to be ‘true’. Each claim to be right becomes a truth and each truth the reason ‘why’.
The basis of all arguments about ‘why’ is the concept that something is right, therefore true. As soon as we can see past the fallacy of right and wrong we can see that there is only what is. How do we do something? This is how we do it. Why? Because this is the best we know at the moment. Science gives us how, but not why.
Science is seen as the answer to ‘everything’ and anything not seen as scientific is discounted as superstition or opinion. Science and logic are seen as the same thing, and the same arguments are used for both, even though science can be quite illogical at times.
The perfectly valid scientific approach of observation becomes totally invalid as soon as we try to assign ‘why’ to those observations.
Science, like law, medicine and bureaucracy, has a language of its own that maintains the mystique of the scientific world. Not only does esoteric scientific language confuse outsiders, it also often inhibits scientists from seeing ‘the wood for the trees’.
Psychology is often promoted as a science. It is not. Psychology cannot establish a unique hypothesis and a unique null hypothesis and so has no basis to claim to be a science. An example the hypothesis that men and women think differently cannot be distinguished from the hypothesis that men and women have been taught to think different.
One of the world’s greatest quantum scientists, Richard Feynman, said in one of his lectures said that ‘just because something is not scientific does not mean it is wrong, only that it is not scientific.’ It also works the other way around. The cross over comes form science to non-science comes when science pretends to answer ‘why?’
Psychology (and Psychiatry) suffers from the same problem. They pretend to be a scientific way of answering ‘why’. Science may be ably to predict human behavior to some degree based on past statistics. But that relies on the herd instinct and everyone doing the same old things the same old ways.
Richard Feynman also said that Psychology is at best inspired intuition, and at worst witchdoctory.
This is why the person who thinks for them self is the most dangerous person in the world. Such a person does not follow the herd. They are unpredictable. They do not follow statistical norms.
If someone is to make a recovery from addicts, whether the addiction is their own or another’s, they need to think for themselves and become unpredictable. Statistical norms will mean nothing. This is going to upset many people who want you to behave the way you always have.
The unpredictability of a person who thinks for them self is not the unpredictability of random behavior. Their behavior is entirely consistent with who they are from within, and on the end that is the only consistency that matters. But to the external world it will appear to be random and unpredictable.
Without a unique hypothesis scientific methods cannot be used. This means that any claims that something is scientific in addictions other than the physical aspects of chemical dependency need to be treated in the same way as logic.
I am not saying that someone in recovery should not seek help from a psychologist. I am suggesting that if they do the first thing to find out if the psychologist understands the problem. Unless the psychologist has the experience of recovering from addiction or has suffered from someone else’s addiction they may know, but they will not understand.
Psychologist seem to have a certain capacity of predicting herd behavior based on statistical study of past behavior. In this they are on a par with successful advertising agencies.
But if a person is to make a successful recovery from their addictions or the addictions of others they must break away from herd behavior. They will not follow the expected path. There will be pressure to conform to the norm. The words ‘Scientific’ and ‘Logical’ need to be treated very carefully when dealing with recovery.
Not everything labeled scientific or logical needs to be rejected. Just look at it carefully to see if it has any value. Above all ask your inner self if it needs it.
Religion is a vehicle, not a destination. If I wish to drive to a destination, it really doesn't matter if I drive a vehicle made by Ford or by General Motors. Both will get me there. No religion is superior or inferior to another. It is only a matter of which is the most comfortable for the individual. The destination is spirituality, being connected to the source of our humanity.
Religion has largely become prostituted to a series of man-made observances, followed through by the fear of terrible retribution from some force ‘out there’; a force that somehow keeps count of all our wrong-doing for the express purpose of making us pay at a later date.
The words of an old Blood, Sweat and Tears song go ‘I know there ain't no heaven, and I pray there ain't no hell’. The purpose of religious observances for many people is not to know God: it is to make certain that God doesn't catch up with them.
Religion has become for many people an insurance policy, followed out of the fear that there might be ‘something’ out there after all. In order to avoid whatever is ‘out there’, organized religions have formed an unholy alliance with science.
Science is in a very awkward position. Quantum physics has reached a place where the Metaphysical has to be considered. Science has fulfilled Kane Popper's requirements for scientific proof, that in order to prove that something exists it is necessary to prove that it is impossible for it not to exist. Science has proved that God exists by proving that without God nothing could work.
Religion appears to attack science on the question of the existence of God. Religion does not attack science at all; religion provides the focus to move the existence of God away from science so that science can continue to deny its own proof. In return, science gives religion the image of being off with the fairies, divorced from ‘real life’. This image of being divorced from real life is very important to organized religions.
The purpose of organized for many people is that of an insurance policy. We hope it doesn't happen to us, but just in case it does we'll go to church each Sunday. Always there is the fear of the half-remembered power that denies us our desire to be god.
To use religion to keep God at bay is not valid. The only person you are fooling is yourself. And that cannot last forever.
One of the functions of organized religion is to remove God from the person. The self is the unconscious and the source of our inner knowing. To deny the connection with the self, religion invents a mythical entity ‘out there’ that is separate from our being. The God of religion is a mythical entity because there is no ‘out there’ entity: the connection with the Universe is within.
Many recovering addicts find organized religion. Often because some of the more unscrupulous religions use a technique called ‘love bombing.’ The technique is simple. Love Bombers usually work in pairs. They seek out the week and vulnerable and give them comfort and support and a parody of love before introducing them to the church. It does not take long for the church to get the recovering addict hooked. Recovering addicts are just waiting to get hooked on something.
God and religion are not related. I have never subscribed to the view that God needs lawyers to make its presence known. My view is that while being in a quiet safe place can help no ritual can replace the knowing that comes from within.
You might find yourself attending a church to find God in your own way, but as soon as the church starts dictating how you will act, what relationships are allowed and generally start controlling your life it is time to find another place. One of the essential requirements of the places you go in recovery is that they are safe.
Recovering addicts are very vulnerable. They often need to belong to replace the place they used to belong. There is no problem with that provided they are aware of the pitfalls and are prepared to walk away if all is not as it first seemed.
Does God exist? Yes and no. Whether or not God exists for you depends on the answers you get from within.
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend towards each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: I feed on your energy.
(Herbert, 1986)
There is absolutely no correlation between the law of the land and justice. Laws can be formulated by law makers with the highest ideals in mind, but once a law is enacted it is there to be used in any manner that anyone cares. There are of course, many lawyers with high ideals, who use the law as best they can to obtain justice for their clients, but the law is available equally to those who wish to use it for the most unjust cause.
It's the old right and wrong thinking problem again. As soon as we make a law based on right and wrong it is open for someone to use a ‘right’ law to excuse a ‘wrong’ action.
The written word can be prostituted without mercy by those who wish to do so. Sentences can be analyzed word by word and definition by definition until it is ‘proved’ that our law makers meant exactly the opposite to what they intended.
Legal procedures can be used to extend cases so that, even if at the end an appearance of justice is obtained, the injustice of the procedure is greater than the original injustice. Is it any wonder then that many people give up before they even start to pursue justice through the legal system?
So where, then, is justice to be obtained? The concept is that if we make a mistake, there is some outside force that will somehow come along and correct it. This concept removes the responsibility for actions from the individual. Humanity makes mistakes: that is the way humanity learns. If all our mistakes are made right by an outside force, no learning can take place. The mistake is made over and over again.
The second part of our misconception of the law is that an outside force can define the limits of acceptable behavior. The law does not define acceptable behavior. At best the law can define what is totally unacceptable behavior.
Murder is considered by most people to be totally unacceptable behavior, but even in this the law attempts to define degrees of acceptability. It goes even further than this: law attempts to find ‘reasons’ why it will allow unacceptable behavior to become acceptable.
‘My client admits that he committed the crime, but he was drunk at the time of the offence and did not know what he was doing.’ The client was responsible for getting drunk, and was responsible for every event that followed as a result of that drunkenness. Addicts can always give reasons and excuses why it was not their fault. Lawyer love this because it keeps the legal profession in work.
If a recovering addict breaks the law there is nowhere to hide without going back to whence they came. They did it. That is their responsibility and no amount of excuses will take that responsibility away.
It goes much further than that. You now have this little inner voice that tells you what is acceptable and what is not. Go against that and the crime is against self, even if it is legal. That little voice within needs to be listened to. If it is not the things you do will make you feel all the same old feelings that made you an addict in the first place.
Being legal is not enough. The justice you give yourself is the only thing that matters.
B. L. Whorf, a student of American Indian languages, translated ideas from one Indian dialect to another. In many cases, he was incapable of carrying out the translation. One Indian language made no distinction between nouns and verbs; another had no term to distinguish events from the past from those in the present or the future; still another used the same word for different colours. From this experience, Whorf formulated a controversial thesis: Thought is relative to the language in which it is expressed. The Whorfian Linguistic-Relativity Hypothesis concludes that:
1 The world is conceived very differently by those whose language is different;
2 The structure of the language is the cause of these different ways of conceiving the world.
(Restak, 1979)
Context will vary according to language groupings. Context is not readily translated from one language group to another. The same words can imply different concepts to different people within a language group. Oscar Wilde told the story of an actor playing Hamlet in a ‘Wild West’ town. After the performance he was approached by one of the locals. The conversation went something like:
Local Who wrote that play?
Actor Hamlet was written by one William Shakespeare.
Local I want to meet him.
Actor William Shakespeare has been dead now for a number of years.
Local Who shot him?
Language reinforces the concept of right and wrong. Language is judgemental in context: the words are judgemental and its use is largely judgemental. One of the difficulties in writing this book is the limitation of having to use a judgemental language.
Add to this the imprecise nature of language and the problem becomes monumental. The same word can have several vastly different meanings. The word ‘wrong’ can mean that an answer is not in accordance with a standard textbook answer, or that the person is somehow ‘wrong’ defective in some way.
Addicts have their own language. The same words can have different meanings addicts and none addicts. If an addict want to make the transition from addict to non-addict they will need to learn a new language. The words may be the same but the meaning will be different if they want to be understood in the new world of sanity. Even sanity will have new meaning.
Bet you didn’t think of that one when you decided to give up the booze or the drugs.
There are widely differing opinions as to the part the mind plays in health. The prevailing attitude in the medical profession is the ‘motor mechanic’ attitude. If something is not working, cut it out. If the part cut out is essential for survival, replace it with another and hope the body does not reject it. This approach works very well and is valid if you are working on a motor car but really doesn't work too well when applied to the human body.
Yet to today's medicine, grounded in advanced technology, such imprecision that ‘nobody knows’, ‘it's as if’ and ‘cancer's a funny thing’ appears lame. The medical student is encouraged to find in the mechanical model of disease a more exciting career, with more confident explanations and more powerful procedures than those of Auden's tentative Dr Thomas. Such a doctor becomes a figure of fun, a Straw Man by comparison with the incisive Tin Men of medical technocracy, who now control the health services of all advanced nations, and increasingly developing ones too. What this technocracy believes about cancer one of its gravest problems is, crudely, that the mind cannot turn against body as self and generate the disease because (in Gilbert Ryle's terms) this is a logical absurdity, flying in the face of good scientific principles. This is today's orthodoxy. However, it is now beginning to be undermined from within the citadel of medicine itself. For a wind of change is emerging from the medical research laboratories, and is blowing us nearer to the notion that personality, imagination, emotions and other subjective factors are, indeed, causal influences on the disease of cancer.
(Blake, 1987)
One of the difficulties with medicine is that the medical profession actually knows very little about how the body works. It knows even less about the connection between mind and body. If the profession admitted that it knew very little there would be the opportunity to learn. But the medical profession has to be right, so it pretends that it has all the answers. Mechanical solutions are a cop-out. The medical profession has such a problem with the connection between mind and body that it pretends no connection exists. I am not saying that in all cases medical procedures are unnecessary, but the insistence that they are the answer to everything is a cover-up for lack of knowledge.
Gilbert Ryle's view that body against self is an absurdity is shown to be ridiculous by chemical addiction. Addicts often know they are going to die or do serious injury to them selves. An alcoholic business partner (another story) was told that he would die from liver failure if he didn’t give up drinking. He didn’t give up drinking. It was up to others to sort out the mess he left behind.
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