Self-righteousness, the very thing we had contemptuously condemned in others, became our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability . . .
Self-righteous: Characterized by a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior.
After the leveling blow that definition delivered to my head I'm going to have to spend some serious time getting up off the carpet. And I love the addition of "phony" to the definition.
Phony: Represented as real but actually false; intended to deceive.
I'm going to have to stop looking up these definitions or I'm going to end up in the hospital. The brilliance, the touch, it's so amazing that many of us use the phrase "divinely inspired." I don't know about the divinely part but there does seem to be a touch of the otherworldly in the text.
As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic.
Defiant: Showing a disposition to challenge, resist, or fight; proudly refusing to obey authority.
Ever wonder why we have no leader in our meetings who can compel anyone to do anything beyond following standard social niceties like not peeing on the floor or playing rap music loudly on a boom box while someone else is talking? No one comes in to The Rooms eager to listen. We come in eager to shoot holes in anything anyone says that we don't like, which is pretty much everything. We don't do what any member says until we've tried - and failed at! - absolutely everything else there is to try.
Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.
Self-centered: Preoccupied with oneself and one's affairs; to be self-centered is to believe that everything is about you without giving due consideration and attention to others.
Yeah, there aren't any self-centered people in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not a one.
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