"A.A., as such, ought never be
organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible
to those they serve."
WHEN Tradition Nine was
first written, it said that "Alcoholics Anonymous needs that least
possible organization." In years since then, we have changed our minds
about that. Today, we are able to say with assurance that Alcoholics
Anonymous--A.A. as a whole--should never be organized at all. Then, in seeming
contradiction, we proceed to create special service boards and committees which
in themselves are organized. How, then, can we have an unorganized movement
which can and does create a service organization for itself? Scanning this
puzzler, people say, "What do they mean, no organization?"
Well, let's see. Did
anyone ever hear of a nation, a church, a political party, even a benevolent
association that had no membership rules? Did anyone ever hear of a society
which couldn't somehow discipline its members and enforce obedience to
necessary rules and regulations? Doesn't nearly every society on earth give
authority to some of its members to impose obedience upon the rest and to
punish or expel offenders? Therefore, every nation, in fact every form of
society, has to be a government administered by human beings. Power to direct
or govern is the essence of organization everywhere.
Yet Alcoholics Anonymous
is an exception. It does not conform to this pattern. Neither is General
Service Conference, its Foundation Board,* nor the humblest group committee can
issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let alone mete
out any punishment. We've tried it lots of times, but utter failure is always
the result. Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished have come back
to sit in the meeting place, saying "This is life for us; you can't keep
us out." Committees have instructed many an A.A. to stop working on a
chronic backslider, only to be told: "How I do my Twelfth Step work is my
business. Who are you to judge?" This doesn't mean an A.A. won't take
advice or suggestions from more experienced members, but he surely won't take
orders. Who is more unpopular than the old-time A.A., full of wisdom, who moves
to another area and tries to tell the group there how to run its business? He
and all like him who "view with alarm for the good of A.A." meet the
most stubborn resistance or, worse still, laughter.
You might think A.A.'s
headquarters in New York would be an exception. Surely, the people there would
have to have some authority. But long ago, trustees and staff members alike
found they could do no more than make suggestions, and very mild ones at that.
They even had to coin a couple of sentences which still go into half the
letters they write: "Of course, you are at perfect liberty to handle this
matter any way you please. But the majority experience in A.A. does seem to
suggest . . . " Now, that attitude is far removed from central government,
isn't it? We recognize that alcoholics can't be dictated to--individually or
collectively.
At this juncture, we can
hear a churchman exclaim, "They are making disobedience a virtue!" He
is joined by a psychiatrist who says, "Defiant brats! They won't grow up
and conform to social usage!" The man in the street say, "I don't
understand it. They must be nuts!" But all these observers have overlooked
something unique in Alcoholics Anonymous. Unless each A.A. member follows to
the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost
certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not
penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal
disobedience to spiritual principles.
The same stern threat
applies to the group itself. Unless there is approximate conformity to A.A.'s
Twelve Traditions, the group, too, can deteriorate and die. So we of A.A. do
obey spiritual principles, first because we must, and ultimately because we
love the kind of life such obedience brings. Great suffering and great love are
A.A.'s disciplinarians; we need no others.
It is clear now that we
ought never to name boards to govern us, but it is equally clear that we shall
always need to authorize workers to serve us. It is the difference between the
spirit of vested authority and the spirit of service, two concepts which are
sometimes poles apart. It is in this spirit of service that we elect the A.A.
group's informal rotating committee, the intergroup association for the area,
and the General Service Conferences of Alcoholics Anonymous for A.A. as a
whole. Even our Foundation, once an independent board, is today directly
accountable to our Fellowship. Its trustees are the caretakers and expediters
of our world services.
Just as the aim of each
A.A. member is personal sobriety, the aim of our services is to bring sobriety
within reach of all who want it. If nobody does the group's chores, if the
area's telephone rings unanswered, if we do not reply to our mail, then A.A. as
we know it would stop. Our communications lines with those who need our help
would be broken.
A.A. has to function, but
at the same time it must avoid those dangers of great wealth, prestige, and
entrenched power which necessarily tempt other societies. Though Tradition Nine
at first sight seems to deal with a purely practical matter, in its actual
operation it discloses a society without organization, animated only by the spirit
of service--a true fellowship. *In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc.,
and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office