Doing What I Want To Do

Society:  A long standing group of people sharing cultural aspects such as language, dress, norms of behavior, and artistic forms.

Individual: A person considered alone, rather as belonging to a group of people.

I've learned a lot about these two constructs from my time in AA.  I spent my drinking days in a state of fierce independence.  I was my own group.  I did what I wanted to do.  Although I paid lip service to considering the well-being - mental, emotional, physical - of other people I always defaulted to doing what I wanted to do.  I didn't want to hurt you but if I did?  Oh, well.  Better luck next time and I would have been appalled and offended if you had suggested this to me during that era.  I considered myself thoughtful and caring.  My intentions were to be thoughtful and caring but my actions suggested otherwise.

Then I joined Alcoholics Anonymous.  Here I've found a unique melding of individual freedom and social responsibility.  I'm given the freedom to do whatever I want to do with the unspoken implication that what I want to do probably hasn't been working or I wouldn't be looking for a new way of doing it.  The Steps are suggested.  You don't have to do The Steps.  You're free to do whatever you want and if it doesn't work out - if it continues not to work out - that's not the fault of AA.  AA isn't going to punish you by consigning you to more misery - your ignoring spiritual principles will accomplish that.

That being said we also have The Traditions, a set of suggestions that help us govern the behavior of our individual groups.  Here again AA allows each group to do whatever the fuck it wants to as long as it doesn't hurt other groups or AA as a whole.  From time to time over the years I've contacted our central office to ask a question about some aspect of group behavior I've found troubling or offensive and each time the phrase " . . . of course the actions of your group are only governed by the will of that group as a whole."  In other words do whatever the fuck you want to do.  If it doesn't work out, if the group doesn't thrive or breaks apart into venomous warring factions, it won't be the AA structure dishing out the punishment - it will be a failure to adhere to The Traditions.

Individual AA members come and go and individual AA groups come and go (although the later is less common because we make better decisions as a group of individuals - crazy ideas are tossed out more quickly).

So here we are as a society dealing with the first serious pandemic in 100 years.  There is a ton of discussion about respecting society as a whole, especially our more vulnerable members, and respecting our individual rights.  As with most aspects of my life I can see extreme positions on each end of the spectrum meeting in a big gray area somewhere in the middle - a middle where I usually find a reasonable answer.  On the one hand it's preposterous to suggest I can do whatever I want to do: I can't drive my Very Expensive Car 140MPH on the freeway or discharge a clip of ammunition in the direction of some whiskey bottles I've set up on a wall in my back yard or blast Black Sabbath at volume 11 in the middle of the night.  On the other hand it's preposterous to suggest that some entity can give me minute directions as to how to live my life.

Again, I say - Balance!