One man’s adventure beyond good & evil

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Luke Ford

If you can’t read a book without losing your mind, and you’re not willing to do the work to get sane, then you should get a legal guardian who makes all important decisions for you. People love to blame anyone but themselves for their own misfortunes. This attitude reminds me of women who claim they could not help getting into bed with men who were charismatic. If you won’t take responsibility for your choices, please appoint someone who will. Britney Spears did. Be like Britney.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

If I trigger someone and they start drinking, am I to blame for their alcoholism? No. If I trigger someone and they start shit posting, am I to blame for their self-destructive behavior online? No. If I tell you about this great thing called the internet, and you get online and start compulsively shopping, that’s on you. If I tell someone that Amazon.com has a lot of good deals, and then he over-spends on these deals, that’s on him. I believe in taking responsibility for things that are my responsibility and not taking responsibility for things that are not my responsibility.

(Proviso: If I am in an intimate relationship with someone, I am still not responsible for her choices, but I will undoubtedly influence her at times.)

We influence people for good or for bad, but in the end, they are responsible for their own choices. Humans did not evolve to be gullible.

Perhaps I should add trigger warnings to protect those who won’t take responsibility for their lives?

Paul-talk: “A teacher is a leader. If YOU “open a door” FOR someone, you have some responsibility if they walk through that door.”

If I tell a married adult in his 40s with kids and a good job to read a book, what percentage of responsibility do I bear if he reads that book and self-destructs? I would say less than 1%, less than .1%… But I don’t subscribe to your zombie model of information (take in this information and it zaps you and turns into a zombie). I believe in personal responsibility.

Paul: “Your attitude is a cover for irresponsibility.”

Not taking responsibility for things that are not your responsibility is to me the essence of responsibility.

So the responsible path is to never mention anything that people might misuse? To treat adults like children? I am not responsible for anybody else’s choices. I am only responsible for my choices. Apparently you believe that adults lack agency. Nobody can radicalize you. Nobody gets zapped by information and turns into zombies. We can only open doors for people that they then choose to walk through.

Paul: “No one was ever influenced by anyone for good or ill? Should the words “leader”, “follower”, “admiration “, “émulation” be struck from our vocabulary?”

It is all a matter of degree. We do influence people, but in the end, people are responsible for their own choices. If I recommend someone read a book so we can discuss it, and that leads him into self-destruction, that is 100% on him.

Paul: “No, it’s on you too. You play with fire. I’ve gotten to know several ex-luke Ford stream people and your influence seems to have been unhealthy. Behind a facade of intellectual adventure you are toying with the souls of semi-educated people seeking good… Sure you are! You put up a big sign: INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE, and then say anything you feel like to anyone who comes allong, without the least consideration for the state of their souls. There is a reason we go to first grade before second grade, that you don’t go to college without a high-school deploma, and don’t do higher studies without doing the lower first. You are gleefully radicalising people… it seems to amuse you. You are irresponsible. You don’t seem to care what happens to people you’ve toyed with.”

People who blame their problems on others are not impressive. I try to avoid such people. It’s a major sign of being a loser. My show keeps changing as I change. For example, after I read the book, Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality, I made changes. As I grow, I change the show.

I find the human condition hilarious (much of the time). You want to moralize involuntary responses such as laughter. I won’t argue much over how much I care. That seems silly. I am not into public displays of conspicuous caring. I spend dozens of hours on the phone with people who’ve been affected by the show and do my best to be help. Please be specific about my lack of responsibility. What ideas/books/theories should I not discuss to protect the vulnerable?

How has my influence been unhealthy? Given that I am not a perfectly healthy man, I am sure I have been flawed in things I have said and done. I want to have a healthy influence on people, even while not accepting responsibility for their choices in life.

Paul: “Well, at least you know what you want! ☺️Some people don’t laugh at the books you introduce them too; they take them all too seriously. But you know this, so… I guess you think they’re.. zombies.”

Nope. I don’t think they’re zombies. I think such people are unbalanced. Most people who spend a lot of time on Youtube are failing at real life. Radical politics or trolling are just symptoms of a deeper problem just as for the porn addict, porn is not the problem, just a symptom. If people read the Koran or Mein Kampf and it leads them in a bad direction, that has next to nothing to do with those books and everything to do with them. No German not disposed to Hitler’s point of view had his mind changed by Mein Kampf.

If I model bad behavior and flawed thinking and disrespectful speaking, and other people imitate that, then that is on me to a degree (maybe I bear something like 20% responsibility for their choices of following my bad behavior).

I find the human condition endlessly amusing. Laughter is an involuntary response. One should not apologizing for finding humor in something that others feel is appalling just as one should not apologize for an involuntary sneeze (though one should take steps to not infect people through your involuntary behavior).

Just because one laughs at a circumstance does not mean that that is your only response. You can laugh at something and then cry about it. You can giggle and then sniffle. Laughter may be just one of a whole panoply of reactions you have to a single event.

Paul, perhaps we just come from different traditions. I come from the Anglo-Saxon tradition which values free speech. You seem to come from a paternalistic tradition that believes that people should be shielded from free speech in case it hurts them. I view adults with IQs over 100 as adults, you view adults who don’t come up to your standards as children who should be coddled. You believe that you know what is best for people, I believe in allowing people as much freedom as possible to decide this for themselves. You fear books and ideas and discussions that may hurt people, I fear thought police more. I fear no book, no idea, no theory. You are filled with fear for discussions you can’t control lest they hurt the vulnerable.

Paul, I don’t understand why grown men use emoticons in a serious discussion and I don’t understand why grown men can’t be bothered to spell and punctuate correctly in such circumstances. If you believe what you are saying, why do you relay your beliefs like an eight year-old girl? Do you truly believe that such sloppy shoddy girly writing makes your case more powerfully? If I am playing with people’s souls as you assert, why are you writing like a child?

Paul: “You can just say stuff if you want ?.
You don’t teach people to laugh at the book; you yourself have deplored that certain people can’t handle the stuff you hand them. You can toss hot potatoes to people if you give them gloves first. And then, some people are zombieish, as l suppose you are aware. Do you think no one has ever zombified anyone? The author of the book did a fine job of that. Those influenced have responsibility, but the influencers do as well.
Your attitude is childish.”

Thank you for this discussion. I am learning from this. My show is not primarily about teaching, it is about sharing things I am learning while trying to be clear about my generally low level of expertise in the matter. I deplore that people can’t handle certain things I discuss and I place the responsibility with them to grow up, not on me or society to coddle them. If it is not me triggering them, life will. The solution to alcoholism is recovery, not necessarily prohibition (I have no opinion on prohibition). You want to stop involuntary reflexes to laughter, I think that is foolish. Nobody has been zombied. Mein Kampf did not change any minds. Please provide evidence that it did? My attitude is that adults with above average IQs are responsible for their choices. To you this doctrine of personal responsibility is childish. We differ. I’ve bounced the point of view you articulate off every intellectual I talk to from Paul Gottfried to Stephen Turner etc, none have your attitude. Your thinking, however, seems prevalent among babysitters.

If I introduce someone to alcohol, and they become an alcoholic, what moral responsibility do I have? I say none. If I introduce someone to gambling and they become a gambling addict, I take no responsibility. If I mention a porn star and as a result, someone becomes a porn addict, I take no responsibility for that. I only take responsibility for that which is my responsibility — my behavior and words. I am not invested in your life. Your ups and downs are not my responsibility. I want you to flourish, but that is up to you. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and one of those things is you. I can’t control anyone but me.

One does not become a righteous man by taking responsibility for things that are not your responsibility.

Paul: “Yes it does; people are influenced by people, books and so on. This is how there is cohérence in a society. We are influenced by each other. Your approach and self justifications are not particularly original for example, but typical of a certain 20th century vulgar neitszhean notion of free thinking which is now thankfully somewhat out of style. @Luke Ford Livestreams l could never learn to spell, but l did manage to learn to think, and l like emoticons (l’m a painter, l like stuff like that).
Take some more cheap shots – this interaction is public. ?”

Paul, yes, prior to Nietzsche, nobody believed in adult responsibility. Of course we influence each other, but only you are responsible for your choices. I am responsible for trying to be the best influence I can be but taking responsibility for things that are not mine is silly, not righteous.

To you it is a cheap shot to inquire why someone makes the public choices they do in a public discussion of serious matters. You treat me as a child who does not realize that this is a public discussion. You keep saying I can do what I want as though that is an important point nobody had ever considered. You seem to hate responsibility. You claim, “I could never learn to spell”, and yet you spell perfectly when you choose to. So rather than take responsibility for your words, you claim disability and artistic license. A man, in my view, stands behind his words or he apologizes for them. Your lack of character is revealed in the way you, a man beyond 50 who has published a book, make excuses and flee from responsibility. You allege that I play with people’s souls. That’s a serious allegation. And yet you make it in the writing of a child. I find it curious. I’ve never engaged with anyone in a comments section like this (that I remember). I do so because this is important. We can never say anything but what we are. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

If I tell a woman to suck off a dog and she sucks off a dog, I have no responsibility for her choice (unless I am in an intimate relationship with her, and then I’d place my responsibility level below 50% but above 1%).

According to Paul Little, he was earning about $120,000 a year before he read Kevin MacDonald’s book Culture of Critique. After that, he quit his job, started driving for Uber so he could talk to people about the JQ. I find that hilarious and I find it sad. That I think it was a bad choice on his part doesn’t mean I can’t also find it funny. Perhaps the truly righteous man is not amused by such acts of self-sabotage. I am not that righteous.

There’s been a great deal of media discussion about Alt Right radicalization leading to massacres. Even going by ADL and SPLC figures, we only get to a couple of hundred victims, about 1% of the number of dead from the Ferguson Effect. All told, mass shootings in the United States over the past 54 years have killed an average of 20 people a year, about 10% of those killed annually by falling furniture.

I’m intrigued by the theory that humor depends on hostility. From the New Yorker in 2012:

In fact, that view goes back to before Shakespeare to—who else—the Greeks. Plato stated that laughter was a “mixture of pleasure and pain that lies in the malice of amusement.” According to him, we feel delight instead of pain when we see even our friends in misfortune. The humorous corollary of this is Gore Vidal’s quip that “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” Of course, this sentiment does not preclude the humor that arises from an enemy’s downfall.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes formulated what became known as the “superiority theory” of humor when he stated that “the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others.” Sudden glory was undoubtedly what the Right Honorable Ed Miliband felt when he disparaged the Right Honorable David Cameron’s budget as a dishonorable “omnishambles.”

While Miliband’s supporters felt quite suddenly glorious, the opposite was the case on Cameron’s side of the aisle. This scenario is in line with a wrinkle on the superiority theory known as “the dispositional model of humor,” which hypothesizes that “humor appreciation varies inversely with the favorableness of the disposition toward the agent or entity being disparaged, and varies directly with the favorableness of the disposition toward the agent or entity disparaging it.” In other words, it’s funny when people we admire make fun of those we don’t, but not the other way around. The idea is that something malicious and potentially harmful must happen, or, at a minimum, the inferiority of someone or something must be implied before something can be funny.

Freud, naturally, thought there was more to it. In “Jokes and Their Relations to the Unconscious,” his goal was to look for the underlying motivation behind jokes. His great insight about laughter was that “strictly speaking we do not know what we are laughing at.”

…But the real source of the pleasure, according to Freud, is not this clever jokework—that just serves as a distraction that permits the hidden hostile or sexual content to be released. Of course, it’s not an either/or choice between hostile and sexual. When it comes to jokes and insults, hostility and sexuality are not strange bedfellows, but boon companions. And when it comes to the type of invective that Malcolm Tucker spouts on the British sitcom “The Thick of It,” the sexuality and hostility are hiding in plain sight: watch Tucker threaten, berate, and verbally castrate a journalist so that he won’t leak a story.

…The so-called “misattribution theory of disparagement humor” formalizes Freud’s idea by stating that, “we can allow ourselves to laugh and display amusement at the debasement or embarrassment of someone who we don’t like if there are incongruous or peculiar aspects of the situation to which we can (mis)attribute our amusement.” Laughing at the embarrassment or humiliation of even someone whom we dislike is a no-no. Pure dislike is not funny. To say yes to this kind of laughter we need an excuse, something unusual or unexpected in the situation to pin it on. We let that peculiarity take the blame to avoid the shame of our naked emotion. Our annoying neighbor backs out of his driveway right into his mailbox which wobbles a bit from side to side and eventually goes kerplunk right on the sidewalk and spews out mail, which then gets picked up by the wind and is blown right into the neighbor’s face as he gets out of the car. And that’s what we attribute, or as the theory would have it, misattribute our laughter to.

I remember in 1999 attending a talk by Steve Allen at the Center for Inquiry West. There were about 150 people in the room but I was the only one who laughed when Allen criticized Howard Stern for saying about the Columbine killers, “Why didn’t they at least rape the girls first?”

Possessing a dark sense of humor is not a moral defect. It does not make one a monster. It’s an involuntary reflex that one can sometimes stifle.

The SDA prophet Ellen White taught that one should not laugh at anything that does not have a moral purpose.

Philip Daniel comments: “Luke’s complicit in radicalization and he knows it… Through his online activities, he’s arguably done more to harm the interests of both Jews and European-Americans than most, and it seems fitting that his audience and influence are now on the decline.”

Philip, why do you keep watching the show then and joining the chat? Why did you just subscribe to my channel, lukefordlivestreams18? Or is this personal pique disguised as moral indignation? It’s weirdly self-destructive when people simultaneously want to belong to a group and pronounce themselves above the group.

This may be what happens when you tell a composer you don’t enjoy the dissonance in his music and then you become a threat to Western civilization.

I am intellectual gigolo. I fall in love with every comely idea that comes along but ultimately stay loyal to none. I do make behavioral commitments, but not so many ideological ones. I love exploring ideas with smart people, but my real life is marked by routine.

The New York Times published this article in 2017: “When Gangs Killed Gay Men for Sport: Australia Reviews 88 Deaths”

Apparently, gay men enjoy anonymous sex in the park beside the Sydney Harbor cliffs and roving gangs of homophobes in the 1980s and 1990s would seize them and throw them off the cliffs. A person may well find that story both hilarious and heart-breaking. There is no mandatory emotion that one must experience when reading the news.

The idea that books or Youtube videos radicalize people is absurd. All they can do is influence people to go in directions they want to go. Books and videos are not zombies zapping people and turning them into automatons.

I had an Orthodox Jewish friend who as part of her graduate school training, had to spend a week reading anti-Jewish materials and a few days into the experience, she was beginning to hate Jews. So human beings are weak, complicated and vulnerable. But the anti-Jewish materials aren’t salient in this story, rather it is her own lack of self. It’s on her to get well.

People who yearn for a magic key to life — for one simple explanation for everything — are childlike. They need to grow up. If they refuse to grow up, that’s on them.

The book Mein Kampf did not radicalize Germans. Adolf Hitler did not radicalize Germans. He was loved by people who agreed with him and hated by those who disagreed. Mein Kampf resonated with those who wanted a magic key and was despised by those who despised that approach. When Hitler took power and implemented policies, he was popular with those who benefited from his policies and he was unpopular with those who did not. Trump is popular with those who feel he benefits them and he is unpopular with those who do not feel such a blessing.

Penn State political scientists Kevin Munger and Joseph Phillips wrote in 2019:

A prominent theme in theories claiming YouTube is a radicalizing agent is the recommendation engine (“the algorithm”), coupled with the default option to “auto-play” the top recommended video after the current one fiinishes playing.4 The algorithm tends to recommend alternative media (the theory goes), leading users down a “rabbit hole” into which they become trapped, watching countless hours of alternative media content and becoming hardened opponents of liberal democratic values and mainstream knowledge production institutions. Even if we accept the premise that YouTube is an important space for radical politics, we argue that a model of YouTube media effects that centers the recommendation engine is implausible, an unfortunate update of the hypodermic needle” model of media effects that enjoyed some prominence in the 1930s and 1940s but which has been consistently discredited ever since (Lasswell, 1927).

New cultural contexts demand new metaphors, so in place of the hypodermic needle, we call this the “Zombie Bite” model of YouTube radicalization. The reference is to Ribeiro et al. (2019)’s working paper (the most comprehensive quantitative analysis of YouTube politics to date) which deems people who comment on videos produced by figures associated with the “Alt-Right” as “infected,” and that this infection” spreads.

We think this theory is incomplete, and potentially misleading. And we think that it has rapidly gained a place in the center of the study of media and politics on YouTube because it implies an obvious policy solution|one which is flattering to the journalists and academics studying the phenomenon. If only Google (which owns YouTube) would accept lower profits by changing the algorithm governing the recommendation engine, the alternative media would diminish in power and we would regain our place as the gatekeepers of knowledge. This is wishful thinking that undersells the importance of YouTube politics as a whole.

The rollout of cable television and the development of partisan television media was the most politically important development in communication technology in the second half of the 20th century (Arceneaux and Johnson, 2013; DellaVigna and Kaplan, 2006; Martin and Yurukoglu, 2014; Prior, 2007). The primary reason is that there were more channels and thus more partisan news consumed in the aggregate…

Beginning with Bridle (2017)’s viral essay about horrifying content auto-recommended to children and extended to the realm of adult politics with journalistic enterprises like Nicas (2018) and Tufekci (2018), a single narrative has emerged: YouTube audiences are at risk of far-right radicalization and this is because the YouTube algorithm that was designed to maximize the company’s profits via increased audience time on the platform has learned to show people far-right videos.6

A working paper published online by Ribeiro et al. (2019) in August 2019 is by far the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of YouTube radicalization to date. They need compelling evidence of commenter overlap between videos uploaded by the three ideological communities: the “Alt-Lite,” the “Intellectual Dark Web,” and the “Alt-Right” (we discuss this typology and propose an alternative typology below). The paper demonstrates that many of the commenters on “Alt-Right” videos had previously commented on videos from the other camps. This is valuable descriptive information, and it enables the scholarly community to better theorize about causal relationships of interest. However, this is not itself evidence in favor of any given theory of the underlying causal process that explains Alt-Right viewership. Ribeiro et al. (2019)’s conclusion admits as much: Our work resonates with the narrative that there is a radicalization pipeline…Indeed, we manage to measure traces of this phenomenon using commenting users.”

The status of the “radicalization pipeline” is indeed best characterized as a “narrative,” rather than a theory. The chronological fact of people watching and commenting on Alt-Lite videos before moving onto Alt-Right videos is undeniable. But what model of the world does this call into question? Presented with the descriptive fact of “Alt-Right” creators with sizable audiences on YouTube, did any theorize the existence of some kind of ideological discontinuity in the media that audience had previously consumed?

Indeed, the most plausible mechanism by which a viewership discontinuity might occur is the recommendation engine. But despite considerable energy, Ribeiro et al. (2019) fail to demonstrate that the algorithm has a noteworthy effect on the audience for Alt-Right content. A random walk algorithm beginning at an Alt-Lite video and taking 5 steps randomly selecting one of the ten recommended videos will only be recommended a video from the Alt-Right approximately one out every 1,700 trips. For a random walker beginning at a “control” video from the mainstream media, the probability is so small that it is difficult to see on the graph, but it is certainly no more common than one out of every 10,000 trips.7

In short, the best quantitative evidence available demonstrates that any “radicalization” that occurs on YouTube happens according to the standard model of persuasion: people adopt new beliefs about the world by combining their prior beliefs with new information (Guess and Coppock, 2018). People select information about topics that interest them; if political, they prefer information that is at least some what congenial to their prior beliefs (Stroud, 2017). Persuasion happens at the margins when it does happen. The “Zombie Bite” theory is, of course, something of a straw man; no one has fully articulated and defended it. However, some form of the model is implicit much of the discussion about the growth of the far right on YouTube.

Posted in Adolf Hitler, Alt Lite, Alt Right, Youtube | Comments Off on One man’s adventure beyond good & evil

Coffee Bean Goes Non-Kosher

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Luke Ford

Coffee Bean blogs: For the past 57 years, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® has been a kosher offering/destination for Guests in the Los Angeles area. We have long been committed to providing food and beverage offers that delight and inspire our Guests, including the Orthodox community.

In recent months we have all experienced an unprecedented global event that has impacted us in many ways. Before the crisis, we began a listening campaign to ensure we are responding to the ever-changing tastes and preferences of our Guests. As part of this process, extensive consumer research had made it clear that customers are looking for a broader array of food options. As we weighed how best to meet the needs of a majority of our Guests, we came to the decision to end our storewide kosher-only status and broaden our product offers. While this was initially scheduled to be a phased rollout, the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in increased business pressures. As a result, we will be moving to non-kosher bakery and begin serving a new array of food options Monday, June 8, 2020. We are taking this difficult step based on insights from research conducted across the entirety of our customer base and to help us remain a leading coffee and tea retailer in the face of heightened industry competition.

While our stores and bakery items will no longer be kosher certified, we will continue to offer a wide assortment of products made from kosher ingredients. Our packaged coffees, teas and powders remain certified kosher through Kosher Supervision of America (KSA) and our behind-the-bar beverages will continue to be crafted using kosher ingredients. We will also offer a variety of kosher certified Cold Case and Impulse options for our Guests.

Posted in Kashrut | Comments Off on Coffee Bean Goes Non-Kosher

Thank you for your Unorthodox story!

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Luke Ford

Chaim writes: Dear Debora Feldman, author of Unorthodox,

I am a Satmar Chasid in Williamsburg Brooklyn NY, that wants to express my thanks and appreciation on your life’s work, first in your New York Times best seller book, Unorthodox, then on your second book, Exodus, your journey back to Berlin living among the Germans that killed our ancestors. And now in a wildly popular hit show on Netflix with the same name as your first book Unorthodox.

I would never have reached out to you if not the hypocritical evil people who tried to poke holes and dismiss your story, I know your father and knew your grandfather until he passed away earlier this year. Burich Dayan Haemes on your loss, may you know of no pain no more. He was indeed a great man! May his memory be of a blessing to all of us. Umein.

I want to apologize for my English, and for my writing, as I am a Yiddish speaking Hasid who is not a writer at all, but it bothers me how hypocrites make noise against your story, so I must defend you, many people are bcc’d here on this email thanking you for all you do to the betterment of our hasidic satmar society.

Thanks for the Gun detail.

The Jewish Daily Forward had many negative reviews, but one was from a hasid named Eli Spitser who said it’s a lie, no violence occurs in our satmar hasidic society. I must say it is true indeed there was a well known case of the head of the boro park shomrim, a satmar hasid, who was arrested for dealing with guns and facilitating licenses for many hasidic carriers he plead guilty and went to jail.

Your twist of the gun is so true, for suicide and threats, if not for actual homicides. Indeed suicides are aplenty in the community but you cannot talk about it here it’s hushed. – So thanks for telling it loud and clear when we silence it!

Thanks for reviving your mother

Our dogma says that only those who practice a strict religious lifestyle are alive. Only we are happy. Only we are good. All who go Off The Derech, off the path of Torah Jewishness are dead; are ill; are evil. – Thanks for undoing this injustice done to your mom. The community tried to kill her off, the unity stole her baby from her. The community told you a lie that she threw you away. But this film portrays the truth, that your mother is shining through in such a loving sensible fashion; for the first time I see somebody who left and is so alive. Not only did she not all die but she was reborn with so much more life.

Your mother left us here in misery, yet she is so normal and sweet not only OTD but a lesbian yet she handles Moishe and Yankey so smart and enssible. 2 opposite very hard to crack characters are dealt with so much tenderness and charisma that by the end of the story they are gone and sapped of all their hateful air.

The Eiruv narrative.

The Jewish daily Forward also had another negative review, from the former Kirays Joel jealous OTD activist, Frieda Vizel, about the “eiruv’’ She claims that you lied about us because you show how Williamsburg has an eiruv, while in satmar we were opposed to it. As if Satmar does not hold from the halacha made by the Rambam that we can carry on shabbes if there are strings on polls surrounding us. In fact it is a well accepted concept in satmar, in kiryas joel and in monsey they all use it, and in williamsburg most streets have a local eiruvin. The only eiruv that is controversial is the large over the whole town that we cannot see. But the Eiruv in your story we can clearly see the string, so it’s a local kosher street eiruv that everybody uses. So Vizel clearly lied to her secular Forward editors they should issue an apology but will never do it because they are apologists to evil.

Main character Shirah Hass is the best actor to play out your story.

The Forward also published a second article from the above joules OTD activist Frieda Vizel, complaining that Shira Hass doesn’t smile enough, that we are not so serious all the time.

Now you smile enough but this show is only 4 hours of your life. To tell the story of Unorthodox which is a sad story, we need the resolve of Shira Haas to tell such an Unorthodox story as yours. You are a hero; nobody who went OTD made it so good. This requires a character made of steel! You were a teacher in Satmar. You definitely smiled as well, but teh forward is not interested in the truth. They just need the clicks.

You don’t badmouth us, your family and former hasidic friends, at all.

The mother in law, your ‘shviger’, and the aunt, your ‘mime’, are so cliched, how can the Jewish Forward claim it to be untrue? As it’s true even by them secular people. It’s only inflated by is old fashioned hasidim a million times.

Your father is way worse in real life than in the film, he is the town’s clown. You only did justice to him when he would die, he will be remembered as better than real life, thanks to you. Even your ex husband is painted in a very good light. He comes off very beautiful in the end.

The Forward printed a critic that hasidim don’t gamble thus you lied. Which is a blatant lie of the secular forward again, as one can always find hasidim in Atlantic city, yes true, it’s because we shine out at the slot machines with our awkward eyesore dress, but thinking what a tiny percentage we are to the broader populace, this means to say we are not immune to the vice of gambling. I would even argue, more so than other sins, because we are not trained in any profession to make a decent living, just hustling for a buck, like the latest other blockbuster mainstream movie from Adam Sandler. – In essence the forward just wants to silence you thanks for not obliging to their “It’s bad for the Jews’’ mantra!

Your Bobby is all our bobbies!

The grandma is so true of most of our grandmas who didn’t go to a Jewish school before the war. We all heard their dark secrets, recounted in their ancient hushed hurried tails, fast and silently, right before zeidy come home from shul, or one of the frum chnyokisha eniklech steps in., – Only we beloved smart grandkids, our bobbies trusts, thus shows us their affinity to talk out their most haunting demons from the old forgotten erased nostalgic times. Times. – that scene is so beautiful, so real and so human it brings out so many repressed warm but deeply sensitive feelings of hasidim.

Heartbreaking control throwing out of simches and cutting off kids from parents.

The scene where your aunt throws out your mother from your wedding is happening every day here by hasidim. There was a clip of the footsteps organization board member Shulem Deen, where he is breathtakingly driven out from his kid’s wedding. He is a man so he does not leave so easily he fights back, but he is no match against the gruff hasdim who ask him why do you disturb your own kid’s wedding?… As if that stranger has more feelings for deen’s child than Shulem himself…

Moshe the ‘vaad hatznies’ character is every OTD person in the beginning stages.

The community controls us by abusing us with guilt that we sinned, thus we owe to the community back more than our peers; we are in the red… That is how everybody is kept in the fold, that if one strays only one inch from of the right path, he or she breaks only one of the millions of rules, that guilt is channeled by us sinners, to lash out and do something for god to get even with the creator so to speak. So as more sins we do we are more gruesome to kill maim and inflict more pain on other humans, to appease our collective god.

The scene where Mosihe jumps into the mikvah butt naked like Adam before the original sin, and screams ta’ateh, father in heaven, depicts an anguished cry of so much guilt. This is exactly how the rabbis recruit all vaad hatsnies, modesty activists, aka jihadis, to hit and beat up others, who sin much less than him or her…

Frieda Vizel’s negative motives

Even though she is OTD, she left the satmar hasidic lifestyle behind, around the same time as you. She is a well known contrarian, that has written in Tablet Jewish web-zine, that Yaffed.org makes hasidic child education neglect, only worse…

Vizel has a business of taking around tourists in hasidic williamsburg. While she cries in the Jewish Daily Forward that your Unorthodox dehumanizes hasidim. – She herself makes a living dehumanizing Hasidim. As if we are a relic in a museum. Not human beings who can speak and explain our lives, for ourselves, but must have somebody who has left us behind to speak in our name. I don’t begrudge her for it. I hope she makes lots of money. But the sheer hypocrisy here, screams to high heaven!

While she has every right to besmirch you personally; After all it’s a free country, especially now with Trump as leader of the free world, where all opinions we don’t like are automatically “fake”. But when secular people like Naomi Ziedman and the Jewish Daily Forward quote her without stating her obviously biased motives, they are wrong.

Vizel writes openly on her blog that she hates you for many decades now, that she was actively involved in helping your ex emotionally and mentaly, when you divorced. That she went to the same Sara Lawrence university, and you were both neighbors at the time. – Nobody gives this context when quoting blindly her critical tirades verbatim. That she is personally invested against everything that comes out from you, it’s modis aprendi to bad mouth you. Instead, they quote her as a truthful authority on hasidim more than you.

Thanks for your great contribution to our Yiddish heritage, language, and culture.

Unorthodox is an historic major blockbuster film, played out mostly in our Yiddish language, in a culture of a holy spiritual people, without any country, without any materialistic land. Moshe and the rabbi actors are themselves native Yiddish speakers. But even the main other actors like Shirah Haas and Yankey, learned to speak an entire new language for them, considering this is not an easy task, it’s truly amazing how close to real they speak Yiddish.

Why am I writing this?

As the editor-in -chief of the Jewish Daily Forward, Mrs, Jodi Rudoren, was asked if Hasidim watched it and what their opinion is of it. But Hasidim do not watch movies openly, due to the sexual and critical scenes. Those OTD’s who do watch movies are just jealous at the smashing success of Unorthodox, so they will only mock it, as they have no real interest that their former hasidic society should change after they already left it.

They are my motive for writing this thankful review to you, I would have never taken the effort to do it, if not for their repulsive and repugnant motives and false negative actions, only to set the record straight.

Unorthodox is indeed an honest truthful, to the minutest detailed depiction of our hasidic lives, and it only makes us behave better, seeing that the world knows our shortcomings. True, not everybody has such a mother in law, or such a father, no 2 stories of 2 humans are %100 alike, but by and large, you got it right that by us hasidim the parent who has the money, has the smarts, power and whereabouts to play it holier, and the community takes their side, to rip away the kids from the other parent. And the kid is brainwashed that the losing parent of the custody battle is a crazy OTD person that forsook their own kid.

The community will surely change for the better

That is why I want to thank you together with the producers, actors, writers , consultants, and mainly Hashem, the G-d almighty, that gave you energy, talent and stamina to pull through this effort to deliver Unorthodox to millions of people. Yes the vested powers like the daily Jewish Forward are kicking and screaming that it’s a lie, like for instance, Eli Spitser writes in the Jewish Daily Forward that we do not have sex with the night gowns and Tzitizs on, which is just a lie. Because he hates to see our vices and sins on the big screen, our dirty laundry washed for the world. But we will think twice before the next custody battle to help one parent because he or she is more connected to the powers in the community.

The Jewish Daily Forward thinks hasidim will love them if they keep on printing those lies against you. I guess they are so low they have nothing to lose, they cannot fall deeper into oblivion.

Unorthodox is better than One Of Us.

There was a heartbreaking documentary of how the hasidic community treats apart it’s outcasts, how we rip mothers from children, based on a true story of another Satmar mother, Etty Ausch who loses her 4 kids robbed from the mother, for the Jewish God, more heartbreaking than Unorthodox which only one child is kidnapped from her mom for the Jewish God. But still I would argue that Unorthodox is more powerful to captivate the minds; mainly because it is told from the innocent kid’s character, you are played by baby faced, Shirah Hass. So the viewer sees the story through a child’s mind. Not the other way around, from the mom’s perspective like the documentary One Of Us. An adult’s pain is somehow less captivating than a child’s pain. I am not a psychologist to know why, but a child is so beautiful, so innocent, so wholesome. That the viewer is more captivated by their feelings.

Posted in Hasidim | Comments Off on Thank you for your Unorthodox story!

The Road To Recovery

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Luke Ford

* With every potential sponsee, I give them a template for our work. It lists two books that I require sponsees to have available every time we meet so they should get them as e-books available on their phone. And yet 95% of potential sponsees don’t have these books when we start working together. Please pay attention. If you don’t, I’ll have to drop you. I hate to repeat myself. 

* I realize there is nothing I say or do that can’t be misinterpreted and misused.  I could recommend to someone that they go for a walk, and they might go for a walk and get mugged or break a leg. I might say you should drink a glass of water and you might drink 20 glasses of water and hurt yourself. I take no responsibility for that. I could recommend to someone that they read a book and it might trigger them into creating a disaster online. I might suggest an assignment and it might lead them to a nervous breakdown. I might say that they should become more visible and they might go out and become more visible in a disastrous way. I take no responsibility for the lives of others because I have no control over them. I do the best I can and then I turn over the results to God. Please use whatever I say in ways that benefit you and others. I take no responsibility for your life, but I am always eager for constructive feedback.

* “If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

If you are poor, it’s because you are not sufficiently loving and serving others (a useful perspective, I won’t argue for its truth, I won’t argue any of the concepts I’ve learned in program, I just try them out to see if they work for me, and if they do, I share them with others).

* Pain is the price of admission to recovery.

* “If you’ve been watching Netflix, chilling, and taking it easy during the pandemic… Don’t expect to develop magical discipline after it’s over, because you won’t. You missed the perfect opportunity to change.” (Jose Rosado)

* “The action is the success; the results are out of our hands”–Jerrold Mundis.

* “If you only do the work when it’s convenient or exciting, then you’ll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results…Professionals take action even when the mood isn’t right. They might not enjoy it, but they find a way to put the reps in.” (Atomic Habits)

* “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art)

I spoke to a guy who’s voice is always flat…he says he has no friends, no passion. He’s no longer acting out in his various addictions but he has no joy.

So instead of going over his homework, instead of going over symptoms and tools of the program, instead of working the steps and reading and discussing program literature, I asked him what would he like to be doing. And he said he’d like to be a leader in his field.

And suddenly, for just a few seconds, his voice came alive in a way I had never heard before. Within ten seconds, it had turned flat again but I had a sense of who he wanted to be.

So I asked him, what would happen if he went after that life he dreamed of?

He listed various excuses and I stopped him and said: “Write about how these fears of living the life you want have served you, kept you safe, kept you secure, kept you in your comfort zone. Then write about how these fears have hurt you. Get a sense of
the gigantic loss you’ve experienced because you’ve been hostage to these fears and not living the life of your dreams. Then write about all the ways you would benefit from being in the opposite of these fears — instead approaching life with love, generosity, God-seeking…and see that beautiful neighborhood. Now think about what books you need to read, podcasts you need to listen to, what you need to do to live the life of your dreams…and every morning, pray the seventh step prayer, “My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. Please remove from me every defect of character including my fear of living life to the full (put your fears in your own words)…Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your will.”

And when you hit the blahs during the day, say the prayer again, and report back to me what you find out from doing this work.

So I never listened to his homework that day, I never went over the formal recovery program with him (he has been through the steps several times before), I just cut to the chase of what is blocking him from living large.

If there’s anything here that speaks to you, lets talk about it.

* My seventh grade teacher wanted to unleash my abilities so she cast me in the lead role in the school play. I’m a natural performer but back then I wasn’t willing to be positively visible, so I didn’t put any energy into my performance and instead settled for a non-speaking part.  Anything great takes energy, and that comes from passion and connection to a power greater than yourself.

* I don’t know what podcasts/speakers/courses/books/music/groups you need to make your life come alive, but find them. I’ve been listening lately to Radio Gamechangers, a podcast about Australian radio, because I have a background in radio and I am from Australia. Listening to this makes me come alive. And I heard on the show that you can always tell by listening to a radio station if the people there are happy. It’s true. You can tell a great deal about a person by hearing their voice. Many people enter program with a soft tentative quiet flat voice and then when they come alive, their voice transmits that quality. We need to tune in to radio station KGOD and then transmit that power through our lives. We are all radio stations transmitting 24/7. People who transmit at a high level will not associate with people who transmit at a low level. To climb into the winners circle, we need to transform and this will then come through our voice. All our communication problems get solved when we become passionate about what we say and do.

* This program is about transformation more than information. If you shared the info of 12-step programs with most normies, they would not find it impressive. If you just read the Big Book, you won’t be changed. After a few years of therapy, I had lots of therapy speak but little transformation. Transformation happens when we realize the inadequacy of our own way of doing things and yearn for a power greater than ourselves… Jot down some thoughts on information vs transformation. I read hundreds of self help books prior to entering 12 step work. I had a decade of therapy. I made a dramatic conversion to a new religion. None of these things transformed me. I’ve always had a fear of women that I surmounted by taking certain steps in my teens and twenties and then I went over the top to catch up on what I had missed, but that underlying fear remained and hobbled me prior to 12 steps (beginning in 2011). If you have fear, panic, anger and resentment with technology, you can take a class and learn information that might address your immediate problems, but the underlying anxiety remains. Transformation begins when we decide that continuing on as we are is intolerable. The pain of not changing outweighs the pain of changing.

* Write a few pages about your best qualities.

* “To tackle [overeating], we must understand why, then take steps to break the cycle of anxiety, shame and sadness that characterizes the disorder. One way to do that [is] self-compassion.”

* Recovery from under-earning or porning or debting or drinking takes time, just like recovery from a physical wound.

* Anxiety thrives in future thinking. The place we can make a difference is now.

* When you feel positively energized, write down what positive thing you are thinking about. Compile a list of positive things you think about that fill you with positive energy. That’s your power source for transformation.

* Most people get fired for personality conflicts, aka they are not likable. Google “likability” and practice what you learn. People who take themselves too seriously are not likable. Funny people are likable, ill-tempered people are not. Display empathy to those around you by noticing their state: You look like are having a hard day, you look like you are killing it today, you look like you would prefer to be anywhere but here, you look relieved, you look excited, you look bored, you look scared….

* The only thing I feel qualified to give you is my experience with this work. I am not the most compassionate loving supportive sponsor. If you call me looking for support, you’re calling the wrong dude. I won’t spent time with you commiserating about how your car died, your computer won’t work and your hamster passed on. I’ve been called brusque. Following the cue of HerbK, I do not get invested in my sponsees. This work is confrontational, but I am not directive (I won’t be telling you what to do, I don’t give orders and I don’t have requirements except that you do the work).

We do our addictions because we like the effect of them, just as the alcoholic drinks because he likes the effect of alcohol. (Big Book, page XVIII)

* Addicts often have trouble making decisions. Here are some tips that have helped me:

* Act as if everyone knows everything. Stop trying to hide stuff. Stop trying to get away with stuff. Act as if, speak as if, your actions and words were going to be accurately reported on the front page of the newspaper. Conduct your life as if it were being recorded and highlights would be shown on the evening news. Conduct your schedule as if it were going to be published on the front page of the newspaper. Make decisions that will make your life more integrated (whole) as opposed to fragmented. Make decisions that will work across your life. Make decisions that you can talk about with people rather than hiding from people. Make decisions that develop your relationship with God, with others and with your best self. Make decisions out of your character assets of generosity, faith-seeking, selfless, honesty and consideration rather than out of your character defects of selfishness, self-seeking, dishonesty, inconsideration and fear. Your intuition is a text message from God. If you are not sure about something, ask God to increase or decrease your desire to do something and then listen. If you think about doing something and it makes your muscles tight, your back hurt, your stomach contract, it might not be a good idea. Warren Buffet says that when thinking about a stock makes his back hurt, he sells it.

* Become an inspiration junkie. Develop a playlist of music that inspires you. Have a playlist of talks that inspire you. You’ll need inspiration to transform your life.

* Don’t make it hard for people to give you money or to be nice to you. I emailed a book to an acquaintance the other day and he came back with emails asking for it to be in a different format, and when I told him to Google the free app that would open the book, he responded by telling me how much of a bother it was. Don’t ask people to do things for you that you can do for yourself, such as finding the free app that opens an attachment (from someone you trust). Nobody healthy likes to have needy people in his life. I had one friend who only wanted to earn money through Bible-based counseling. Don’t get such ridiculous tunnel-vision. If people give you something nice, don’t respond by demeaning them, harassing them, mocking them, complaining to them, bothering them. Be gracious and say thank you. “Rarely, if ever, does an empathic statement start with ‘At least.’ . . . What makes something better is connection.”

* As you recover and build good habits, particularly early in the day, you will have fewer decisions to make. Good choices often preclude bad choices and even thinking about making bad choices. Also, as one recovers, one gets more clarity on oneself, on one’s relative importance in various interactions through the day (for example, as an employee, you take direction from those above you, in other interactions you will make peace with taking direction and giving direction), and on the nature of one’s addictions, one’s level of powerlessness, the nature of one’s wrongs, and with this clarity will come strength and power and passion and direction, which will make decision-making easier.

* Write about areas of your life where you make fast effective decisions and areas of your life where you have not consistently made good decisions.

* Reduce your time, propinquity, frequency and intensity of your interactions with people who are perpetually aggrieved.

Ways for measuring your level of recovery:

* Do you bring people up or down? If you choose to stay in your job, it is your responsibility to lift people up by being positive, punctual, and professional as well as friendly, and enthusiastic.

* How do you feel about your imperfections and your bad choices? If you are not at ease with yourself, other people won’t be at ease with you either. If you don’t like you, others won’t like you either. If you don’t comfortable with you, others won’t feel comfortable with you. With recovery, comes acceptance of self and of others. Without acceptance of one’s fallibility and the fallibility of others, there’s no recovery. When you can share calmly with safe people about the worst choices you have made without needing to beat yourself down for them, and without your voice wavering or thinning or cracking, and without your face and body twitching, you have achieved a high level of recovery. Any time your voice cracks or you panic when talking about something, that means you haven’t processed it yet. If you wonder if you have gotten over something in your past, talk about it, and your voice quality will indicate where you are at. I think I can usually tell someone’s level of recovery by their voice. People with recovery have self-acceptance, they’re at peace with their fallibility and their inability to control others, and so they sound clear and calm. Their voice also indicates that they have an over-arching purpose to their lives, that they live for things higher than the satisfaction of their instincts.

* How much do you obsess over how other people view you, particularly after you say or do something benign but then you involuntarily worry about how others think of you (used to happen to me all the time)? If you are aligned with God and your purpose in life, this drops away. I’m amazed how little I worry anymore about how others think of me. My mind is much less filled with useless chatter these days, instead I’m thinking about moving ahead with my goals. When you live your life with positive over-arching purpose, people will respond to you (charisma) positively. Underearners are often stuck in reacting to people and circumstance.

* How do you speak to yourself? For years, the most common thing I said to myself was “You stupid f*****!” In recovery, as we practice self-acceptance, we begin to speak to ourselves more calmly and kindly (and as a result, we speak to others with more acceptance and kindness). I begin my day by asking God to help me treat myself with love acceptance and then I ask God to help me treat others with love and acceptance.

* How much turbulence you can handle without lashing at yourself or others?

* There should be over-arching purpose to your life and to your choices during the day. In 12-step, we have the mentality that we are here to help other people and to connect to God and to our best selves (because this approach removes us from our previous self-destructive habits). That’s our purpose. You might do things to take care of yourself such as eating, sleeping, working out, you might do things to improve yourself such as prayer, meditation, 12 step work and meetings, reading, listening to lectures, you do other things to earn money, you do other things for fun, and you do other things to explore your vision. So when you time track, you can also add the purpose of the activity such as self-care, earning, fun, service, etc. Don’t call someone just because you’re mad, have a purpose before you launch into a conversation or an action choice. You are the message. All of you combines to say something to those who meet you. As you recover, your life will cohere and its different parts will propel you towards your vision of blessing others.

* Write a page about the effects of your addiction that you like — perhaps staying small, staying childish, reliant on others, living in a fantasy because it is more fun than a reality, a virtuous feeling that you above the carnal concerns of most people, allows you to feel super spiritual, its a great big exciting adventure to live on the edge, because you’ll get a novel out of it, fearful that if you get bigger you’ll get hurt, if you get bigger, someone will just take it away and you won’t be able to handle the pain, its easier than growing and challenging yourself, it is familiar, it is normal, it is true, life is hard and under-earning is the nature of the universe, to fight global warming, to hurt people who care about you, poverty is all you deserve, it is easier to reduce your wants than to increase your income, it is too painfully humbling to seek out a psychic change.

* Write about ten things that are true about you that most people in your life do not know. Write about 10 things you know that most people don’t.

* What does winning at life look like? What are some benchmarks you can use to mark your progress?

* If it is hard for you to be kind to yourself, to be gentle with yourself, to be a good friend to yourself, if you consistently speak to yourself in a demeaning manner you would never employ with a friend, write  a description. Why is it hard for you to be kind to yourself? Why do you need to be hard on yourself? How’s that working out?

* Write about what you are good at, what you are not good at, and what you are doing now that you wished you did not do.

* Make three phone calls a day to people to inquire about how they got into the program, which of the 12 symptoms speak to them, how is their recovery coming along, and possibly share about your own journey to and through addiction. Make friends in the program. Stay in the middle of the herd. Go to fellowship with people after meetings.

Freedom from addiction requires a psychic change, a complete re-ordering of our mental, physical and emotional landscape. This is hard work. If you like me are an under-earner, then your life is at risk, so don’t dawdle, dive into this work like a starving rotweiler jumps for food. I don’t want sponsees who aren’t willing to do at least five hours of work a week. I was so grateful when I was given the assignments below by my sponsors that I dove into them and got them done quickly because I wanted recovery. There’s no recovery, in my view, without a lot of writing. I don’t want anything from my sponsees other than that they do the work I assign. If you do the work, if you don’t lie to me, I’ll keep dishing it out. If I tell you to write on something and you tell me you did it and then over the phone I can hear that you did not do it, that you are only ad-libbing, then we are done. If you tell me you’ve completed the step one work sheet and it turns out you only did the first page, we’re done. OTOH, if you exaggerate or even lie about other things such as how much you have worked the tools, I don’t care. That’s between you and God. For addicts like me, however, to lie is to die.

My goal is to help people connect with a power greater than themselves, which some of us call God. I would like you to become a vessel for God and to bring God into all you do (prior to surrendering to 12 Step beginning in 2011, I would have found this thinking stupid). As a by product of this journey, you develop a clearer understanding of yourself and your relative importance in your various interactions. If you are a painter, you will set aside time to pain. If you are a writer, you will write. If you are a leader, you will lead. If your volunteer job calls for you to wear a white shirt, you will wear a white shirt even if you think the rule is stupid and you know better than everyone else. Humiliation comes from ignoring reality, from not being right sized. Humility means living in reality and having an accurate sense of one’s own importance. If you are going through life without much humiliation, you probably have an accurate understanding of reality. If your life has constant humiliation, you likely have a distorted sense of reality. From a 12 Step perspective, we are neither better than or less than anyone else in our ultimate value (though we may be faster, funnier, more erudite, more skilled in auto mechanics or raising children or using Excel than the norm), so we can let go of the compare and despair dynamic.

Some say you have the life you have created. That perspective is useful. When absorbed and processed inside, that insight often leads to transformation. It doesn’t matter if it is true. You can go far in your recovery without believing anything. I urge you however to try on a new pair of glasses. You benefit by looking at your life today as 100% the product of your choices so far (not necessary to believe it, just try out the perspective to see if you gain anything by it). It’s useful to inquire if your troubles are of your own making, if your resentments, fears, secrets, guilt and shame come from your own distorted thinking. You don’t have to beat yourself down for things you’ve done in the past. You didn’t choose to be an under-earner. You did the best you could every time given the tools that you had at the time. You were trying to meet your needs the best way you knew how. You can stop thinking of yourself as a horrible person who does not deserve prosperity. Through working the steps, you will get a clear understanding of the harms you’ve done others and how you make amends so that you will feel clean.

There are many other perspectives in recovery that I won’t urge you to believe, but I will encourage you to try them on to see if they work for you. The stuff I heard in my yoga classes frequently made no sense to me but I got benefit from being there (along with some permanent injuries and expensive physical therapy bills). So take what benefits you in the program and discard the rest. I injured myself permanently (stretched tendons that won’t return to normal) in yoga by trying to keep up with everyone else in the class. Don’t injure yourself in recovery by using the program to beat yourself (or anyone else) down. Every group has psychopaths, keep your distance from those who will use you. Everybody has flaws, don’t ask more from people then they are able to give you. Good people make you feel good, bad people make you feel bad. Choose good people.

* You can tell if you have processed something if you can talk about it without physiological reactions such as stuttering, voice cracking, flushing, etc. If you can’t talk about something without getting triggered, you haven’t processed it. If you can’t talk about your urges without getting triggered, you haven’t fully recovered. If you still have “triggers”, you haven’t processed and come to terms with you. The intensity of your triggers is inverse to your level of recovery. Triggers are signs you need to work your program. In blunter terms, triggers are bullshit. Step work reduces our unnecessary sensitivities. It make us more resilient.

* Be of service in the program and don’t stand off to the side thinking you are terminally unique. People like me get crazy ideas in their head that they only see are crazy when they talk about them with others. My mind is a dangerous neighborhood I don’t like to enter alone.

* Become attuned to the choices you make that create sustained healthy good feelings and choices you make that create sustained sick bad feelings. Layer good )choice on top of good choice, particularly at the beginning of the day…and allow the momentum to rock you towards the life you want, and then chill out at the end of the day feeling good. You deserve it.

* If someone gives you accurate criticism and that feels bad, you should have enough maturity to quickly see that feedback as a gift and then you’ll feel good. If you are beating yourself up over things you’ve done in the past, remember you did the best you could at the time with what you had to meet your needs and you can let go of self-abuse. There’s no longer a need to regret the past. Given who you were at the time, you could not have acted differently (that’s my attitude, and with it I have dropped regret, I am not arguing that this attitude is true, just that it is useful).

* What percentage of the time over the past year has it served you to get angry? For me, less than 10% of the time.

* Our addiction is not our problem. Our behavior is not our problem. Our problems are not our problem. Our problem is a lack of power. Where do we get power? From God. When we connect to the power of God, our lives transform.

I try to help people connect to God…and then their problems largely disappear. Without recovery, self-will and selfishness run riot and we try to do things on our own power and that doesn’t work. When I only do the sponsor assignments that make sense to me, I only get limited recovery. Deep recovery comes from doing the assignments I don’t want to do and that don’t make sense to me. If the assignment made sense, we would not need to do it.

The building manager came over one day. He was irate with the way one guy in the complex kept his bathroom and he wanted to text me pictures of it, he wanted me to look at it, and I kept saying I don’t want to get involved. It’s also possible that not everything I was doing was ideal. So I kept telling him I’m not a practical person but if you give me instructions, I’ll carry them out. and I thought, what if I texted my sponsees pictures of the grubbiest parts of my life. Are you willing to share the grubbiest parts of your life with someone you respect? And then do the work to get clean?

I have some cleaning and organizing to do. I need to shine a light on some dirty parts of my apartment…and that’s a metaphor for recovery that works for me… If you do the work, in my experience, your problems largely go away on their own. I don’t find that we figure things out… or solve our problems by working on them directly. Our problems are stimuli to work the program. When we say, my problem is X, we’re usually missing the mark. Think about all the people who tell you, “My problem is X” and you think, you are missing the mark.

* Addicts tend to be low in conscientiousness (low impulse control, weak commitment, low diligence) and agreeableness (empathy) and high in neuroticism (love to dwell on negative feelings, anti-social, withdrawn). These personality traits can be shifted over time. The more socially effective personality will have openness, some extraversion, a lot of conscientiousness and agreeableness and little neuroticism (The General Factor of Personality (GFP) as social effectiveness: Review of the literature).

* Do you have any limiting beliefs? Write them out. Describe how they serve you, how they hurt you, and how your life would be improved by adopting more prosperous God-centered beliefs.

* To overcome idea deflection, try out some of the best ideas you receive.

If you do the assignments here, you will have a spiritual experience that helps you to connect to God and to prosperity.

You may feel pulled in a million directions. My dad taught me to seize the moment of excited interest to investigate something…so if you feel driven to understand something or learn about something, if you can, put aside everything else, and choose that moment to do it until you are slaked… Eg, you decide you want to write a book about yoga and 12 step work, so then when that feeling is strong, you go research on what has previously been published on that… You decide you want to start a yoga with goats studio, you google if that is available in your area. You decide you want to devote your life to fighting for justice, so then you google what kind of education you need for that, or what kinds of jobs are available, or what does it take to start your own non-profit and operate it successfully.

I will often get an urge to learn about something, and then I immediately Google topic, read, watch youtube videos on topic, download books on topic and dive in when I am excited… I get more done when I am passionate. Our problem is lack of power. Passion is power.

* The word “sponsor” does not occur in the Big Book. The word first became used in AA life for those who’d bring drunks to a sanitarium and assumed responsibility for their bill and then for their life. That’s not my understanding for us. I see a sponsor as a step guide so I take no responsibility for your life and your bills and your relationships and I don’t give advice. My opinion can kill you, but the Big Book can save you. We won’t be talking much about your problems.

I’ve had many sponsors and they sometimes gave me idiotic assignments but I found I got great spiritual benefit from learning to follow directions that I hated, and I learned to apply that willingness to take direction to my paid work and to my volunteer work and I was blessed with peace of mind and flexibility as a result and a more accurate understanding of myself. I also learned to not get involved with people who wouldn’t take my direction when I was a leader.

I sometimes hated my sponsors but I never lacked respect for them. If you don’t respect your sponsor, you should get another sponsor. On the other hand, if they anger you at times, that’s ok. You don’t need to like your sponsor. You don’t need to be friends with your sponsor and you don’t need to look forward to your calls with him.

Don’t steal from your employer, not even pens or clips. When I started a job, I gave my employer $20 so if I ever needed an envelope or a pen etc, I was still in the black with him. I’ve periodically topped that up so I feel free to use his printer, postage etc so long as I stay in the black (with his blessing).

I find that my need for excitement and distraction is in inverse proportion to my happiness (which correlates with my competence at meeting the challenges life gives me) and nothing has helped my competence at meeting the challenges life gives me like working the program.

The Big Book says: “Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.” Unnecessary fear leads to poverty.

AA talks about a physical allergy and an obsession of the mind. Perhaps the physical allergy in process addictions is the biochemical rush we get from participating in our own destruction.

* Write me an essay on why you want to work the 12 steps in the program (more than a page) and why now. Journal about the areas in your life where you are not being honest with yourself and others.

As you do this work, write honestly. You don’t need to reveal it all to me, if there are things you’d rather discuss with someone else, do that. Your sponsor does not get an all access pass to your life. Also, you can feel free to tell me, after you have done an assignment, that you got no benefit from it. That may help me become a better sponsor.

* Tell people if you have no experience with something and that they should ask others for help. Part of recovery is admitting you don’t know something.

* Write about examples of this addiction you see around you. Perhaps,

* I see people who only want to make money one particular way…
* They have to follow their passion and don’t want a day job.
* They’re not good at working for other people, or an office job, or a corporate job…

* Write a history of your addiction using the 12 symptoms as a prism (minimum 5 pages). I shared my essay on this with about a dozen friends and I encourage you to share your writings and insights and revelations from doing this work with people who are safe. Our shared vulnerability is key to our recovery.

* Write about the opposite of the symptoms so you can see some benchmarks as you progress in the program.

* Write about people, places, things, entertainments that take you away from the presence of God and write about people, places, things and entertainments that bring you closer to God.

* Write about how this applies to you.

* Time record in a gentle curious way. Most of my sponsees find it useful to record the first 12 hours of their weekdays and then take the weekends off. Gently implement all 12 tools… Don’t force yourself to work the tools, force yourself to work the steps and learn the traditions and then your willingness to use the tools will emerge out of that recovery.

* If you are up for it, track every dollar you earn and every dollar you earn. This is a Debtors Anonymous tool. I regard DA and UA as different sides of the same coin. If you have a problem with debting and spending, enter Debtors Anonymous and get the Jerrold Mundis book on debting. If you have problems with people, get into Al Anon. Put first in your life the 12 Step program that primarily addresses whichever addiction will kill you first.

* I look for ways to understand and approach life that make me happy and prosperous, that enable me to get along with other people, and to have a sense of ease with myself, with others, with the universe and with God.

* I like the idea that everybody and every thing should be appreciated in its own genre, in its own context (historicism). I don’t despise a baseball player for not being as smart as a physicist and I do not deride a painter for not being able to throw a football 70 yards. I believe that people do the best they can with what they have and that everybody does what he thinks is right.

* I try to stay aware that I usually do not see the world as it is, but as I am.

* I try not to give my opinions undue weight, because every time I share a heavy one, I then feel compelled to defend it, and then I often dig myself into a hole.

* I don’t know of any moral teaching more valuable than that one should act as if what you are doing and saying will be reported accurately on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow. I guess that’s my principle moral code.

* I think the more integrated your life, the better. The fewer secrets the better. The more honesty the better. I like to ask myself regularly — what am I hiding that should be shared with others? What am I ashamed about? Who do I resent? What am I lying about? What relationships and situations am I in that weigh me down? Do I have unnecessary possessions and tensions? And then I clean house and help others.

* I’ve been on a phone meeting a day since June of 2015. That works for me, particularly first thing in the morning.

* Keep a journal and give each day a score on a 1-10 (10 is best) and list reasons why you gave that day that score. After a week, you may notice any patterns. Perhaps 30 more minutes of sleep significantly helps your score, or an hour more of socializing or an hour more to yourself…

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Read it (particularly the first five chapters) and see where its description of the problem of alcoholism applies to your addiction and then write about that, look at the Big Book’s description of the solution and write about how that might apply to you. Look for where the Big Book speaks to you and write about that. Why does it speak to you? Feel free to apply this same method to the 12 and 12.

One way to measure your recovery is your ability to feel serene over things you cannot control (such as traffic, weather, other people, politics, banks, etc) and the amount of courage you have to do the things you need to do.

* Write at least a page about your experience with prosperity aka good things coming easily.

* Write at least a page about your experience with disappointment. When people and things disappointed me, I got into victimhood mentality. I would think, Why do people always let me down? That created a sick bio-chemical high. People won’t always put you as high in their priorities as you expect. You’ll likely call this betrayal.

* Step two assignment. Write about your concept of God and what He wants for your life and prosperity and then write about your behavior in light of that. Does it match up?

When you do your 4th step, take your top 10 resentments against people and write about those interactions from the other party’s point of view (and assume that everyone acts in a way they understand as right and good).

* Call at least five people you respect and ask them their experience, strength and hope with regard to step one, step two, step three, etc, as we go through the steps.

* I asked a mentor about resentments against ideas and institutions and he said: If someone resents a person, it is keeping them from getting something they feel they need. If you keep going back to someone who hurts you, that is on you… Maybe you are afraid of responsibility. If you think the Man, the system, is doing something to you, you are not going to get out of your situation because you are not seeing your part, your responsibility…

My mentor had a resent against Group X because a member of that group failed to repay a big loan and he had to see his responsibility in making an ill advised loan to a criminal to try to buy something from this person…

Once you recognize that ways of thinking are not healthy, you ask God to release you…

Addiction is cunning baffling and powerful… We want to become vessels for God and when we do that, we get out of our own way…

* Regarding resentments against ideas/institutions, we can’t take responsibility for things that are not our responsibility. An addict fails to accept life on life’s terms. If you became an activist and slowly work at it, you’d only be able to move the needle a little bit at best. It’s not accepting how things are. What’s underlying that is in my experience is something about themselves that they are not willing to face, something that happened to them that they are replaying in their minds that triggered them, some CEO who screwed them or those they love over… Explore things in this realm. It’s a mine field. Find out when that resentment started, that might reveal something. There are always people involved in resentment against ideas/institutions. It is coming back to those people and accepting reality. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Resentment is based on recreating history and resenting that we can’t accept things the way
they are. Accepting reality is hard. It is not your fault, but you have to accept what happened, accept reality, accept your ability to influence the world is small, you can’t make reality different and make it go away, but you can recognize the people to avoid, and you can choose to forgive people for being sick…

Here are questions to ask yourself each day:

1. Was I resentful?
2. Was I dishonest?
3. Did I promptly admit when I was wrong today?
4. Do I owe an apology?
5. Did I do or say something today out of fear?
6. Have I kept something to myself which should be discussed with
another person at once?
7. Did I think today of what I could do for others?
8. Was I kind and loving towards all?
9. Did I reach out to someone in recovery today to see how they were doing?
10. Did I take the time to connect with my higher power through prayer
or meditation today?

* When did I feel that I was a conduit for spirit?
* When did I hear God’s voice the most clearly today?
* When did I feel that I was a conduit for God?
* When was I of service?
* Did I spend time in nature and what came to me during that time?
* When did I hold still and clear my mind to receive?
* When I was responsive instead of reactive and how can I build on that?
* When was I humble and how can I build on that?
* What was I grateful for today?
* How was I proud of myself?
* When was I most at peace with myself and others?
* When did I feel most spiritually connected?
* What spiritual practices nurtured me the most?
* What goals would I like to implement to be more spiritually healthy?
* What steps do I need to take to make my goals a reality?
* Did my beliefs change today and how?

Debting is F*** you. Underearning is F*** me.

I love cold showers because you never take out of a cold shower the same thinking you had upon entering the shower. So too with program. It is a sobering cold shower of reality and it will change the way you think and act.

https://twitter.com/neilstrauss
https://twitter.com/joserosado

Neil: “We think we want more followers, wealth, fame, social acceptance, sex, or luxuries when what we actually just need is more self-esteem. Ironically, doing this inside work will help the outside abundance come. And ironically, you won’t even need it when it does.”

When I’m driving, I usually listen to 12 step talks or live phone meetings or recorded books.

Principles for each step:

1 = surrender (admittance)
2 = belief
3 = commitment
4 = honesty
5 = truth
6 = willingness
7 = humility & change
8 = Reflection
9 = amendment
10 = vigilance over your own conduct, unclogging the pipe to God
throughout the day
11 = attunement to God
12 = service to others

Look for ways to live these principles in all aspects of your life in a way that serves you and those around you. For example, what are some things you could admit that would serve you. Where would you benefit from surrendering? Where would belief serve you? What commitments would benefit you? Where do you need more honesty and truth? Where do you need willingness? How about humility & change? Could you benefit from reflection and a desire to make amends?

Try incorporating and living the principles that accompany the 12 Steps.

There are many different approaches to the 12 principles that accompany the 12 steps, but living by these principles is a source of dignity and power:

HONESTY – Fairness and straight forwardness of conduct: adherence to the facts.
HOPE – To expect with desire; something on which hopes are centered.
FAITH – Complete confidence; belief and trust.
COURAGE – Firmness  of  mind  and  will  in  the  face  of  extreme
difficulty;  mental  or  moral  strength  to withstand fear.
INTEGRITY – The quality or state of being complete or undivided; soundness.
WILLINGNESS – Prompt to act or respond; accepted and done of choice or
without reluctance.
HUMILITY – Not proud or haughty; not arrogant or assertive; a clear
and concise understanding of what we are, followed by a sincere desire
to become what we can be.
LOVE – Unselfish concern that freely accepts another in loyalty and
seeks his good to hold dear.
DISCIPLINE – Training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental
faculties or moral character; to bring under control; to train or
develop by instruction.
PATIENCE/PERSEVERANCE – Steadfast despite opposition or adversity;
able or willing to bear; to persist in an understanding in spite of
counter influences.
AWARENESS – Alive and alert; vigilance in observing.
SERVICE – A  helpful  act;  contribution  to  the  welfare  of
others;  useful  labor  that  does  not  produce  a tangible
commodity.

A good list here of 12 step prayers.

This is what I use every morning: “God, please help me to treat myself with love and compassion. Please help me to treat others with love and compassion. I can’t, you can, I’ll let you (first 3 steps). My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good & bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character, including X,Which stands in the way of my usefulness to you & my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here to do your bidding.”

When I run into turbulence during the day, I repeat: I can’t, you can, I’ll let you (first 3 steps).

When you work the 12 steps, you will get clear and then you can work on your goals and the actions required to achieve them.

Underearning equals hiding. The opposite is positive visibility, aka souls coming out of hiding. I had a sponsor who would keep urging me to get bigger.

Take all your expenses per month and figure out what you need to earn per hour (assuming 40 hours a week) to pay them. Then double that number and don’t take any new work less than that number… Once you commit to that, that’s your prosperity sobriety date. So lets say your expenses are $50k a year, that means you would not take new work that paid you less than $50 an hour.

Your annual expenses will roughly equate to the minimum amount per hour you can accept prosperously. $60k annual expenses means no new work earning less than $60 an hour (unless the work is super fun and you are doing it as a hobby, as a B job).

It’s a delusion to pursue an A job or career that is not prosperous according to that calculation. Instead, if you want, you can do that dream/goal/fun thing on the side…as your B job…or as a hobby but you are not looking to it to pay your bills.

Be of service at meetings, such as reading or keeping time… Pick up a couple of pieces of trash every day so you have more reasons to feel good about yourself.

Prosperity comes from our relationships with others. Al Anon is the best program for learning to get along with others. If getting along with others becomes the number one problem in your life, I recommended making Al Anon your number one program until it is no longer your number one problem. There are lots of recovery resources on youtube and elsewhere online.

Get clarity about who drains you and who energizes you and try to minimize interactions with those who drain you. When certain people share on meetings, I stop listening because I don’t want to be infected by their craziness… Don’t let people infect you with their craziness. If you take an outreach call, don’t let strangers talk about their problems for more than 2 minutes, switch the focus to the solution or get off the call (obviously does not  apply to friends). I had a friend who frequently wanted to talk to me about his dark thoughts and after many times I had to stop it and say I only want to hear positive news, the solution… Be ruthless in protecting yourself. About 4% of the population are psychopaths, when you encounter them, flee.

If people make you feel unsafe physically or emotionally, flee from them… If your job makes you feel unsafe, look for another job.

* Some people set aside time to have a weekly date with God. For some, it means a walk in nature. For others, it means yoga
class or a visit to a house or worship. For others, going to a store and just having a sensory experience, trying out perfumes, noting different aromas… For others, it means setting aside time to listen to sacred music or even watching certain movies/tv shows that are uplifting…

* Would it serve you to set aside days/times to do what you want and not allow obligations to others to weigh you down?

* Are there ways you can be nice to yourself that are healthy? Are there ways you can pamper yourself without harming yourself and others? For example, I only work a job 30 hours a week so I have another 30 hours a week to do vision…and have healthy fun such as reading, conversations, writing, and I see all the movies I want… Would it help you to make a list of ways you can be really nice and good and nurturing to yourself? Perhaps make that a title in your gmail draft folder and just add to it as the days go by… For example, I use a Gmail draft to list movies or tv shows or books i want…or another draft folder to list things I want to explore.

* As you work steps four and five, take the ten interactions in your past over which you have the most intense resentment, and write about those incidents from the perspective of those who you feel harmed you. Write purely from their point of view. Do not write, “I think Joe was probably thinking…” Do not write, “My sister was probably feeling…” No, write solely from the first person and write about specific incidents. And use the perspective that people do and say what they think is right and good at the time. So describe how their behavior and words flowed out of a perspective that what they were doing seemed right at the time. At the end of all your 4th and 5th step work, you should have virtually no resentment. If you still have ongoing resentment over the past operating in your life, then Google for fourth step worksheets from any 12-step program and work every one until your resentment over the past has disappeared. I don’t care about resentments you have towards public figures you’ve never met and ideas, if you need help with this, then use these processes to work them through. Also, I don’t care about resentments you have towards yourself and I don’t care about you feeling the need to make amends to yourself. You should be last on your amends list and you may want to work that through with someone else. No sponsor will meet your every need. My own recovery is uneven and imperfect and depends upon the daily maintenance of my spiritual condition.

Below I’m just cutting and pasting from my emails to my sponsor:

* You talked about humility being a state of knowing nothing… I periodically put myself into such a state, and when I do, I notice my breathing always frees up, my brow and jaw free up, my neck and back unlock, I move more easily and I am happier… Being in a state of awareness rather than a state of judgment conveys these physiological benefits… By contrast when I am most strongly in my beliefs and judgments about the world, I have increased body tension and less awareness…

* Rather than follow your passion, find out what you are good at, and then passionately follow that.

* When one is in a state of knowing nothing, one is always at peace and happy, because when we know nothing, we also have no fears and no resentments, because fears and resentments are based on beliefs, and when we know nothing, we are free and at ease…

* “As adults, we recreate situations that our nervous system is used to from childhood. So if you continually find yourself in situations of stress, anxiety, unhappiness, intensity, etc, the problem isn’t the specific circumstances, it’s the unconscious drive toward the familiar.”

Practices for humility: * Follow directions * Accept responsibility and commitments * Habits * Relationships (you can relate to people without some degree of humility)

* Your Uber passenger rating likely reflects your humility.

Assignment: “Research humility in 12 step teachings… What is it like to have humility? Write a page essay on what I learned about humility… what does humility look like and feel like in your body.”

I went to the Big Book and found 24 references to “humili”.

* Belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements.

* But they had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty, in the sense we find it necessary, until they told someone else all their life story.

* They meant patience, tolerance, and humility, and above all, the belief that a Power greater than myself could help.

* Many times in the intervening years I have thanked God for that man, a man who had the courage to admit failure, a man who had the humility to confess that all the hard-won learning of his profession could not turn up the answer.

* I followed that suggestion and began to listen. Slowly but surely, some wisdom and humility began to creep in. I became more teachable. I found God working all around me where previously I was sure I had been alone. When I opened my eyes enough to see the miracle, I found that it was right in front of my face. I was growing in God’s love.

*  I needed to be forced into acceptance and humility.

* Oh, and one more thing they told me: Humility is the key.

* 12.—And finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It
reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities; that we are actually to practice a genuine humility. This to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of Him who presides over us all.

If you are interacting with people many hours a day and few if anyone deliberately hurts you, you are most likely living in reality and have an accurate sense of your own importance, otherwise you would be provoking people into more retaliation. People don’t like people who have an exaggerated sense of their own importance. So while it may sound absurd to some that I can state that I feel good that I have increasingly been able by the grace of God to live in reality and to live with humility the past few years, I will still humbly share this with you because whatever success I have attained in this program in living in reality is more God’s success than mine.

I found 53 references to humility in the 12 and 12.

You wanted to know what humility felt like in the body. I was taught in 12 Step seminars that “humility” does not mean thinking ill of oneself, or poorly of oneself, rather, it means living in reality. So feeling humility in the body means feeling reality in your body. It means if you are standing up, that you have a sense of the power of gravity. You notice where you are holding unnecessary tension. You notice how the thoughts you have translate into additional body tension. You notice the interplay of your thoughts and emotions with how your body feels. You understand that you can have thoughts and feelings that provoke a tightening and pulling down of your musculature that may be beyond your ability to control in the moment.

So what does humility look like and feel like in the body? Well, one way to approach this question is to discuss what does lack of humility look like and feel like in the body? Lack of humility means a lack of appreciation of reality and hence patterns of unnecessary muscle tension and compression. All beliefs are just unnecessary muscle tension, I once learned. When I simply stand in reality without trying to impose my standards on the world, my will on the world, I stand freely and at ease in my body.

So feeling humility in the body does not relate to whether one’s chin is up or down, shoulders up or back, rather it relates to a feeling of ease with oneself, with others and with God. One does not feel at ease when arrogant or when suffering from distorted thinking. One is more likely to feel at ease when one has an accurate sense of oneself in relation to others and to God.

Page 58: “Another great dividend we may expect from confiding our defects to another human being is humility—a word often misunderstood. To those who have made progress in A.A., it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. Therefore, our first practical move toward humility must consist of recognizing our deficiencies. No defect can be corrected unless we clearly see what it is. But we shall have to do more than see. The objective look at ourselves we achieved in Step Four was, after all, only a look. All of us saw, for example,
that we lacked honesty and tolerance, that we were beset at times by attacks of selfpity or delusions of personal grandeur. But while this was a humiliating experience, it didn’t necessarily mean that we had yet acquired much actual humility. Though now recognized, our defects were still there. Something had to be done about them. And we soon found that we could not wish or will them away by ourselves.”

I like this definition: Humility means “a clear recognition of what and who we really are.”

Page 72: “That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God’s will, was missing. For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about humility. It was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive defeats and humiliations, and the final crushing of our self sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as something more than a condition of groveling despair.”

* Re Dignity: Definition: the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.

Treating other people with dignity, honor and respect tends to create a reciprocal cycle.

Living a life of service to others tends to develop a feeling of respect from others and from oneself.

Not having choice feels undignified. By working the 12 Steps, I was restored to a sense of choice and freedom and with that comes dignity.

Acting out compulsively is undignified. When you can’t pay your bills, pull your weight, step up to your responsibilities, you feel undignified. I felt in the grip of something I could not name. I knew that no matter how enthusiastically I followed some new self-help program that it would not work for me, that I would find ways to under-perform, that I could not help it. I saw more clearly my sex and love problems, they were more obvious, but my under-earning was more mysterious until I entered program and things became clear. Clarity leads to dignity. Lack of clarity predisposes me to a lack of dignity.

I could find no mentions of “dignity” in either the Big Book or the 12 and 12. So I searched for synonyms of “dignity” and chose “respect” which did not show up in the 12 and 12 but there are 19 uses in the Big Book.

* “Most of us sense that real tolerance of other people’s shortcomings and viewpoints and a respect for their opinions are attitudes which make us more useful to others. Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.”

* “It may seem incredible that these men are to become happy, respected, and useful once more. How can they rise out of such misery, bad repute and hopelessness?”

* “He never drank again. He too, has become a respected and useful member of his community. He has helped other men recover, and is a power in the church from which he was long absent.”

* “It is a most wonderful blessing to be relieved of the terrible curse with which I was afflicted. My health is good and I have regained my self-respect and the respect of my colleagues. My home life is ideal and my business is as good as can be expected in these uncertain times.”

So one way I understand “dignity” is that it is what naturally occurs in the absence of active addiction.

According to SLAA: “Sobriety: Initially, a state of abstinence from addictive bottom-line behaviors; often accompanied by the return of sanity, choice, and personal dignity that comes from abstaining from bottom-line behaviors.”

From the SLAA newcomer packet: “Many of the lessons have been humbling, and I have not always lived through the pain of living and
dealing with life’s problems with either courage or acceptance. But I have lived through them sexually sober. I’ve learned to live in partnership with God, to practice humility in the Fellowship of SLAA, to embrace dignity of self and the value of wholeness and honesty in human relationships. I have learned to love solitude, and to value companionship. I have learned to be watchful for the subtle addictive patterns that I can slip into so easily. I have come to feel part of the Fellowship, part of humanity, part of the world, part of God.”

Here are synonyms for dignity:

decency
decorum
grace
grandeur
greatness
honor
morality
poise
prestige
quality
respectability
self-respect
stature
status
virtue

* You asked me to visualize the day ahead, particularly any challenges that might come up.

The biggest challenge I have is lack of energy. So I am always looking for things to add energy. You asked me to visualize how I would deal with problems and challenges that might come up. My biggest problem and challenge is energy. So I am visualizing having energy and power. The most important part of my life now is my Youtube show and the relationships that develop from it. The key ingredient for me to do a good show is to have energy and power.

You asked me to write a page about living with dignity and power. I wasn’t particularly interested in further research on body language, I’ve done that in the past for many hours… I am more interested in body language, so to speak, from the inside out rather than the outside in. So instead I researched the Big Book’s teachings on power, a power not of this world.

I take steps 1, 2, 3 every morning on my knees. Step two in particular speaks about power: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

I find power from the 3rd step prayer: “God, I offer myself to Thee — to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!”

I searched the Big Book for examples of the word “power” and these ones particularly spoke to me:

* I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help…

* Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power?

Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.

* We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than
ourselves, we commenced to get results

* This Power has in each case accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. As a celebrated American statesman put it, “Let’s look at the record.”

Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them.

* This man recounts that he tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love. He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator.

Thus was our friend’s cornerstone fixed in place. No later vicissitude has shaken it.

* As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.

Posted in Addiction, Personal | Comments Off on The Road To Recovery

Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought by David Myers

Posted on May 13, 2020 by Luke Ford

I mentioned the book last night on my show but perhaps my choice of music for the segment was not the most artful.

According to Princeton University Press:

Nineteenth-century European thought, especially in Germany, was increasingly dominated by a new historicist impulse to situate every event, person, or text in its particular context. At odds with the transcendent claims of philosophy and — more significantly — theology, historicism came to be attacked by its critics for reducing human experience to a series of disconnected moments, each of which was the product of decidedly mundane, rather than sacred, origins. By the late nineteenth century and into the Weimar period, historicism was seen by many as a grinding force that corroded social values and was emblematic of modern society’s gravest ills. Resisting History examines the backlash against historicism, focusing on four major Jewish thinkers. David Myers situates these thinkers in proximity to leading Protestant thinkers of the time, but argues that German Jews and Christians shared a complex cultural and discursive world best understood in terms of exchange and adaptation rather than influence.

After examining the growing dominance of the new historicist thinking in the nineteenth century, the book analyzes the critical responses of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Isaac Breuer. For this fascinating and diverse quartet of thinkers, historicism posed a stark challenge to the ongoing vitality of Judaism in the modern world. And yet, as they set out to dilute or eliminate its destructive tendencies, these thinkers often made recourse to the very tools and methods of historicism. In doing so, they demonstrated the utter inescapability of historicism in modern culture, whether approached from a Christian or Jewish perspective.

Alan: “The idea that you can present the philosophical and theological objections to historicism by the four german-jewish scholars who Myers chose to examine, while enjoying a raucous hoe-down, may prove a tad optimistic Luke …. maybe you should run the idea past your sponsor first.”

LF: “I am glad you are there!”

Alan: “No worries mate …. a bit of banjo and fiddle to accompany Myers insights into jewish intellectual history …. it’s a mistake anyone could make.”

LF: “What would be the correct royalty free music to use as a bed for discussion of historicism?”

Alan: “There isn’t one Luke …. possibly in a sensitive, creative pair of hands, a bit of suitably esoteric german classical music of the period, could be woven into the narrative ….. to help illustrate why Myers places Rosenzweig into the context of “theological anti-historicism” as opposed to the “philosophical anti-historicism” of Heidegger …. but given your efforts to date I don’t hold out much hope.”

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