Step 4 and Resentments, Institutions and Community

In 12 step programs we are encouraged to do a step 4 listing all the persons, institutions, and or principles we had a grudge against. Later we look at how grudges develop because we have unrealistic expectations. These persons, institutions or principles get between us and security (and or money), our sexual desires (marriages, mistresses, lovers), our ambitions (where we want to go, who we want to be) and our personal relationships (our friendships, status etc.)
Some of the institutions are as follows:

Government - in the 12 step programs there's the recognition that commonly individuals are emotional immature, fixating in their development at a time of trauma in childhood or at a time when they turned to their addictions to deal with the anxiety that followed the trauma or stress that was occasioned with something as everyday as "growing up". So there's a tremendous amount of anti authoritarianism in the society and this shows up with anger at paying taxes, frustration with the arms of government starting with the world, federal, provincial or state and moving down to city and local strata.

 Religion - it follows if we are antiauthoritarian and verging on anarchist like most 'king babies' are would want to be 'accountable' to a God, or even a 'higher power'. We certainly don't like the idea of accountability and we certainly don't like the idea of 'spiritual laws' since we're not particularly happy with 'speed limits' on the highway that we can be fined for ignoring. We don't even like gravity and would want to fly not that we would want others to have this capacity since that would interfere with our own flights of insanity.

Education - we generally encountered rules in home and then in the first institutions of school and church. The schools were a kind of training ground for adulthood and we often didn't like to do as the teachers or principals said and we didn't like completing assignments as we were told to or when we were supposed to. We didn't like the hierarchy there and we didn't like our inadequacies being made public. It was alright when we were the A student or the winner on the sports team or the soloist in the choir but we weren't particularly happy to have no attention so often got negative attention. Later we'd blame what we'd come to know as 'defects of character' on the organizations that were supposed to be moulding our character.

Money - The institution of money and how some people had more and we had less and how families and tribes got more and others got less all upset us to no end. So often we'd focus on these 'entitlements' rather than consider our own 'benders' and 'wastes' and how we'd alienated the institutions that might help us get more money.

Work- the need to contribute to society and have a job and participate really peeves the addict who would rather be out playing hooky and pursuing pleasure so since work often delays gratefication with the primary pleasure pursuits of the addicts it's soon forgoten that work is a means to an end and increasing work becomes anathema.

 Family - this is an institution that gets a lot of flak from the addict because of the unrealistic expectations that addicts and alcoholics have placed on family members. If they can blame their parents or siblings for their losses or lack of achievements then they don't have to look at themselves and god forbid their 'addiction'. Addiction works like a virus in a computer hiding itself by every means possible and yet taking over all programs and making them work poorly, like a cancer really. Alcoholism and addiction have been called 'cancer of the brain' and the 'great chameleon' since they appears as everything but addiction. The Addict or alcoholic then ascribes the 'problems' whatever they are to 'family' or 'work' or 'school' or some individual or institution.

The Banks - we didn't like the banks if they didn't loan us money and if they loaned us money and then they wanted it back with interest. We didn't like the paying back part. Anything that interfered with our personal pleasure was something we developed a grudge against.

The Courts - we came to realize that while the government was a problem if we'd ever dealt with the courts directly they were even more of a problem because the judge might well not agree with our view on the way things happened in an event that got into his court room. We might object to only lawyers being judges, only educated people being judges, judges having so many powers, the way the courts worked, lawyers, the way lawyers were recompensed, the history of the courts, any number of aspects of the courts that we could bitch about if we somehow got an unfavourable judgement.

The Prison System -if we found ourselves in the institution of the jails we had a lot to be resentful about.

The Medical System - we could have a grudge against this. Sometimes alcoholics blame their liver failure and gut bleeds and all the other failures of the body to deal with self poisoning, on the care of the doctors, nurses and hospitals, rather than consider who caused the problem and who can stop the drinking and drugging.

The Psychiatrists and Asylum - if we found ourselves in the psychiatric system we could develop real resentments against the whole deck of cards that makes up what people insist is 'reality'.

There are the 'mind police' we have resentments against, the 'feeling police', the 'gender police', the 'sex police' and increasingly all these police and punishments of the courts and jails and psychiatrists and asylums were overlapping.

We didn't like anyone who interfered in our freedom. Society - so what it came down to was we wanted to be alone with our addiction what ever our pleasure lever was that we, (like the monkeys who have a brain operation to their pleasure centre and will spend all day pressing the lever until they die if they're not physically disconnected) didn't like anything that got between us and our 'pleasure lever'.

So others, humans in general were a curse to others unless they were somehow helping us, building levers and putting electrodes in our monkey brains, otherwise, be gone. So it's not surprising that so many people with addictions are in the end very unhappy unless they are actively drinking or using or have the electrodes in their brain hooked up and they're pressing that lever 24/7. Wow!

So addiction tends to break down relationships reducing their reciprocity, decreasing their depth, and increasing their shallowness. People may pull away from long term friends and claim new using friends are just the same as family and friends known for years. Suddenly the person met last week, usually a buddy who shares the addiction is as important as a person who knew the person for decades and stood by them through thick or thin.

In Jaggerts curve of the decline of alcoholism there is a movement away from others to the source of addiction, anything that takes time from being 'available' for the 'call' of the addiction or to respond to the 'craving' for alcohol gets put aside. Increasingly a person stops belonging to community, going to work, attending church, being a member of a club or organization. They become solely 'on call' to their new God, whatever is the addiction, what ever lever they've got their brain's pleasure centre electrically hooked up to. So they're distracted and not really present for anything but their addiction where they worship at the alter like the greatest zealot.

Having rejected all the community institutions as a result of addiction which ultimately aims to have them alone with their addiction when they stop their addiction it's not just stopping the drug or alcohol that is 'recovery'. In medicine setting a fracture isn't the cure if the patient stays in bed where the broken leg took them. Rehabilitation is walking again.

Rehabiliation in terms of the disease of addiction and alcoholism is termed 'recovery'. The 12 step program was developed to assist people in recovery and understanding. Hence the person who sarcastically in a meeting says "a thermometer has degrees and you know where we stick them" is likely to have left school and formal learning and avoided education and formal learning, to their own detriment, despite no longer being a drunk or a drug addict. In this regard they need to address their own unresolved anxieties with the education system and let go of the long seated resentment at perhaps leaving school or failing, or perhaps return to school to make the achievements they want in recovery. Similiarly a person who 'jokes' 'sarcastically' that they are a 'recovered catholic' might well need to look at their own leaving the church and return to change the church or start a new church, join a different church or at very least let go of the resentment against an 'institution' that has served billions. Institutions are generally simply organizations that individuals have solidified to enhance the good of some activity.

Even the military is an organization that improved on the original need of a small group to defend against another small group. If I had resentments against the military I might perhaps become involved in the peace movement. But the idea of the 'critic' and 'righteous anger' is beyond the alcoholic and addict because part of the disease of addiction and alcoholism was the mental process whereby we became the most adept 'critics'.

Dr. Paul O. a famous writer in recovery said he could find fault with a blank wall and if you didn't see the problem that made the problem even worse.

Today whenever I hear others or find myself 'criticizing' an institution I ask what would I replace it with and how much time am I willing to put into this alternative. If I'm not going to run for government and sit in parliament and listen to old fat cats belly ache and complain and argue, then maybe I should just accept that politics is never about the best but rather the picking of the least bad. In the case of the alcoholic or addict I have to stop thinking with the 'idealism' of a child and 'participate' to see how getting anything done in this world is like herding cats.

Institutions have developed often over hundreds to thousands of years to deal with the the principal problem of the alcoholism or addict, talking alot but not getting anything done, criticizing a lot but creating little. Recovery is about creativity. It's said that a 'meeting' of a 12 step group only needs a 'coffee pot and a resentment'. A person in addiction will leave the meeting and go off alone to be available for the call of their addiction whereas a person in recovery might well leave a meeting and go off and set up another meeting more to their liking. The world is such that if I don't like a school I can create my own, and the same goes with churches, laws and governments, if I wish to invest the time and energy that those whose names are associated with the major institutions did.

Personally I'm more often than not thankful that others will take on the leadership and invest the time and energy that makes for the olympic champions of society no different that those olympic champion athletes. I also know that recovery means I'll participate in community and contribute creatively. As Dr. Phillip Ney, a spiritual psychiatrist liked to day, the world doesn't need another bitter critic especially if they're an old man or old woman.

Generalization, Discrimination and Discernment

There is always just me and the other.  I can call the other 'God' or I can call the other "it'.  When I'm afraid I tend to think of the other as "it' whereas when I'm filled with love I think of the other as God.
To discriminate against certain people I must consider them in a group rather than as an individual.  So I might think "Jews are bad".  Hitler thought that.  It would be convenient if the world was just black and white.  Jay Lifton described the black and white world of war politics.  Us and them.  But reality isn't like that.  I know really great Jews and only a couple of really bad Jews. One of my favourite and closest mentors was Dr. Jack Hildes.  He sits right next to Dr. Carl Ridd in my heirarchy of most influential humans on my life.
The Klu Klux Klan said blacks are bad.  My childhood doctor was a black man. He was good.  My Chicago friends are black and they're good. I know one incredible asshole who is black but he's probably the 'exception that proves the world".
I've Indians in my family and we grew up together summers hunting,fishing, hiking and doing stupid boy things.  Like competing pissing off docks and seeing who could fart loudest. They're great guys.   But I've heard people say Indians are bad.They're wrong.
They are as wrong as the people who say whites are bad.I'm white and on my worst day I've only been half bad though others say I exaggerate.  Mostly like most people I'm doing my best to be good.
Psychopaths aren't inherrently 'bad'. They just lack compassion, are so afraid they don't know the depth of their cowardice and can think of no one else but themselves because of their poverty and isolation of spirit.  Because of this they do bad things.
Sociopaths are groups that are at variance with the larger group and generally don't feel that the laws apply to them but are happy to be 'takers' and break the rules.  They're not bad.  They're more often sad.  Like racoons in the chicken coup. If you're raising chickens and have taken it upon yourself to provide and protect chickens and their chicks then you simply have to keep out the racoons or kill the ones that get in.  It's not so much 'good or bad' but just business.  Darwin had something to say about this but one does all they can to avoid killing because its wasteful unless of course you like eating racoon.  Personally I prefer chicken.
Alot of people are fooled into believing that individuals in groups are bad because they perceive the group to be bad. Hence we have the term 'banksters' which I use to refer to bad 'bankers'.  But my banker, Lloyd, was a great man.  He helped me immensely when I needed help.  Nigel Ferguson wrote about money and banks and did a fine job of dispelling the ignorance that so quickly falls prey to paranoia.  There's a lot of paranoia being parlayed about as reasonable these days.
I like to lump beaurocrats into a group and blame the problems of Canada for instance on too much dead weight in administration. I like to knock administrators too.  I do this and should be more ashamed of myself for it.  I'm actually an administrator in my own company and frankly I'm not very good at it. So here I am questioning those well above my pay grade when I haven't got my own affairs well in order.  My brother is an administrator and I highly admire his organization and ability to 'account' for his finances in a way I never had. He was the kid with the piggy bank growing up.  Later he'd have a filing cabinet in his bed room.  He counted his pennies and the dollars took care of themselves.  I'm still struggling to balance my cheque book.  I know too that those who are most critical of the money managers and administrators and bankers probably themselves are least competent with managing their own affairs.  I know alot of great 'spenders' who think everyone else should 'give' to them.
We tend to blame others.  We tend to externalize problems.
I like to blame lawyers alot too.  The trouble is I've got a whole collection of lawyers as friends. I went to school with some really great girls who became lawyers. These girls were the best thing next to home made pie. Really good people and they worked their lives as lawyers. So how can lawyers be bad.  Obviously some can but not all.
I know a judge today that couldn't find his ass with both hands. He's as stupid as the stupidist person I have ever met. He has no respect for money and was either intentionally or unintentionally acting utterly naive about corruption. He was so stupid I was left with the impression he just had to be utterly corrupt because I couldn't imagine a judge as stupid as he was.  He was an exception to prove the rule too. I've lunched with judges and known judges personally I would have trusted my dog with.  I don't trust my dog with just anyone and these men and women were the finest sort of people I could hope to meet snywhere.    And one bad judge doesn't spoil the barrel.
I've met three prime ministers, have a friend who is a congressman, know a few senators and several more politicians personally. They are all individually extraordinary and wonderful people.  No doubt they have their moments. As kids they probably competed in fart contests too.
I even know a good feminist and I think all feminists lack a sense of humor, take themselves too seriously, externalize all their problems , do more harm than good, are very angry and self centered.  The trouble is my feminist friend is a relative saint and her work for international women is as admirable as my other friend who works with a spy agency trying to keep terrorists from blowing up innocent people taking a bus to work.
I don't like communists either except that my communist friend is one of the funniest brightest most loving persons in the world. They are as troubling to me as my radical right wing friend who goes off the deep end when they get in the same room with the commie, the two of them almost at each others throats unable to speak or act civilly if the topic of politcs comes up.  Leave that out of the equation and the two are the best neighbours I know.
Generalizations are a way the mind tries to reduce the complexity of the world down to sound bites and bits that the little human mind can handle. The littler the mind the littler the bite sizes.  Discrimination depends on ignorance.  It depends on generalization.  It's driven by fear.
Discernment is the operation of love which says that I don't want a 3 year old driving the car but I can have Johnny who is 14 driving the tractor because Johnny is mature for his age and the rule about what age a person should drive is a generalization.  In a public space I will agree to such generalizations but in a private space I will use discernment to arrive at the judgements I need to make mostly about individuals, not groups.
I like to think Discernment is God centred too.  And by the way people who don't love dogs should be lined up and shot with toy water guns and beat with wet noodles till they see the truth.

The Ascent of Money

The Ascent of Money, A Financial History of the World, by Niall Ferguson, Penguin Books, 2008 is a truly fascinating  read that turns the intrigue of history into a fast paced thriller.  It really is a who dunnit detective novel for the 2007 recession as well and answer the question why governments want us to buy houses and the Chinese in contrast to the South Americans insisted you build factories in their country rather than loan them the money to do it themselves.
Niall Ferguson could well be a Hollywood script writer the way this supposedl y 'dry' subject reads.  I'm 340 pages into it with the remaining 23 pages to read.  The last chapter is called the "Descent of Money".  I'm not sure I'm ready to read that yet. I'm going to savour it as I've raced through other sections of this extraordinary plot of economics and politics.
I have learned about the family wealth of brother Rothschild and Baring, the building of companies and interest, the insurance and sharing of risk, banks and their growth and diversificaton. I've learned of war and Bretton Woods, the depression and more recently the recessions.  At times it really does seem that the world banks, money and stocks and funds are just different black jack tables in the casino of the world.  Yet here and there I understand the concepts of leverage and wealth creation by careful management.  In the recent recessions millions were lost in days and though there were bail outs the very wealthy took huge cuts themselves.(See my own sad song written for those poor souls, called "I'm a millionaire but I used to be a billionaire' after the Economist disclosed dozens of billionaires were demoted in the financial crisis that put others out of houses into tents).  I learned too that in most of the US you may lose your house but they can't get any of your other assets so buying a house with zero down makes for sweet cheap rent for years until the interest rises and the smart tenant (or money) moves on. Then there's Soros and Buffet and now China and the Cninese American "Chimerica'.

Niall Ferguson is Professor of History at Harvard and Fellow at Oxford and Fellow at Stanford.  Most of all he's a brilliant story teller.  And the Ascent of Money is a tremendous story.  So where is the Hollywood movie with Brad Pitt and Jack Nicholson and Charley Chan.  It's clear from reading it today that in China with it's 350,000 new millionaires there would be such a movie made immediately or at very least an HBO special like the Tudors or Borgias.  Americans are still reading the sports pages while the Chinese have long realized the real 'contest' is in the business section.  Beijing is winning the war in the marketplace and China is now the bank of America.

How to explain 2007, the beginning of the worst financial crisis since the depression of the 30's.  Here are answers.  Here is what is beyond partisan politics. Here is meaning of life in the world of 'banksterism' .  It's not about white hat cowboys and black hat cowboys.  Both Clinton  and Bush declared that their bankers had misinformed them.  In the world of economics with avarice and insurance in competition and tsunamis and Russian government crashes there are butterfly wings all over  globalization.  The arrogance of the nobel prize winning Black-Scholes model and the whimsy of the Quantum Fund begin to make sense when hedge funds and derivatives are explained. It's really more fashion than anything else and the Devil Wears Prada. I had to read that derivative part again and again hardly believing such silliness in asset management could exist as such a disconnect from reality.  This is the financial world of 'deconstructionism'.  This is Humpty Dumpty in Los Vegas.  It's entertainment at the highest level as well.

Thanks to Niall Ferguson I can understand the 'sound bites' and propaganda, conspiracy theories and fear mongering that the media has thrown out.  There's method in the madness but even that's a bit neurotic.. Investments really do go up on sunny days.  And yes, I will be able to manage my own paltry sums of cash better  thanks to Niall Ferguson.  This is essential reading at it's finest.