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[ Link here =
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters335.html#Moritz_G ]
Date: Sun, December 9, 2012 4:53 am (Answered 17 December 2012) Dear Orange,
The oil companies would really be bankrupt if they had to pay for all of the costs of using petroleum — everything from smog damage and pollution to the effects of global warming.
..., acid rain, respiratory health and heart attacks due to smog, clean-up /
decontamination, renaturation, higher levees, ... Fat chance. Hi again, Moritz.
Still, in the long run, I think your suggestions will come to pass. Well, one can always hope, but I am an unamerican person for I am a pessimist. Unless people are hungry or are seriously suppressed, but have hope for more freedom, they tend to be conservative (literally). In the case of the DDR [East Germany] it was free travel or the right to leave. Which they found was a nice right, if you can afford to. What they bought instead was satellite TV :-( and then cars. The term 'freedom' is a subject on it's own. You are right, those two changes could change the world massively. But even with energy at it's actual long term cost, people would still drive cars and fly with planes. Costs would increase, everything would get more expensive (in the short term and visibly), but the majority would have more money as well, because there would be less unemployment (now it is masked by youth unemployment, incarceration, underemployment and statistical tricks), better wages, because of more demand and lower taxes. There would be high inflation for a while. But just because all goods would have a higher price, does not mean that life would get more expensive to the same extent. The taxes could be lower, something that I would expect Republicans to love. The lack of natural resources would become the dominant economic constraint. Human ability and education (engineering) the second. That is the way it should be, those limits I would consider natural. Interesting. The one thing there that I am sure of is lack of natural resources. Heck, we are already there. We have already run out of free land, trees, buffalo, and slaves, and are also out of copper, good iron ore (we still have low-grade iron ore), oil, and even uranium. That will certainly raise the price of everything.
Corporate welfare will end. The only question is whether the United States of America will die first, getting bled dry from propping up the corporations. Of course a nation can not die, but apparently it takes a worse financial meltdown than 2008 to force change. Unlike the USSR and DDR the USA can maintain global power and internal hope. As the last super-power there is little to no outside pressure. The democratic system and the media can maintain the hope of the american dream. Most citizens have either lost all hope, feel ashamed to organize and protest openly or think that all it takes is a better president and less government (spending). I even read that the problems are because people are not religious and moral enough anymore. I think capitalism is much more resilient than Marx and Engels believed. Just because it is inherently unstable and destructive, apparently does not mean that it will be replaced. It is not a transitional phenomena. I would not be surprised to learn that it is the final stage of any society (Think of the roman empire and it's total capitalism).
You are more optimistic than I am. I know that the land and the people will go on, but
what form of government they will have is another matter. I expect that the economic system
will continue to be some kind of capitalism and private enterprise, but the survival
of the current government is an open question. It will be especially difficult to keep
the system together after the dollar crashes, which it will do when it is no longer the
world's reserve currency.
Some people expect that the USA will fracture into two or more smaller countries.
Maybe three or four: East, Midamerica, South, and West.
It may be impossible to keep the country together when transportation breaks down and
some guys in Washington DC are trying to dictate what the people in the distant western states will do.
One sensible idea that I've heard is that western USA and western Canada will join to form
a new country. They have more in
common with each other than either do with eastern USA or Canada. Some people joke that when they drew
the line on the map dividing the USA and Canada, they got it wrong. It should have been
a vertical line through the middle of the continent.
Some western provinces of Canada have already inquired about what it would take to join the USA.
They would like to secede from the Canadian government in the East.
But the truth is, all of the western states of the USA and Canada would like to secede from the East.
It will be hard to keep them in the fold when all that Washington or Ottowa can offer the American West is
Weimar-style paper money.
Somebody to read for more ideas about that is James H. Kunstler.
His web site is:
http://kunstler.com/
The oil companies would freak out if they had to hire, and pay and equip, their own armies and fight their own wars to steal the oil from foreign countries, rather than having George W. and the U.S. Army go steal it for them (think Iraq). Don't say that too loud, if veterans are present, they are insulted, they are proud that they stole / defended "our way of living". I know some and they are always like: I'm no well-fare moocher I have a job and I served my country, I went to Iraq three times, you better thank me for my willingness to sacrifice for your freedom. In the US there is a disparity between the standing of politicians, the pentagon elite and soldiers. The ones ordering war are liars. The ones organizing war are either genius or responsible for failure. The ones volunteering to do the killing are heroes.
I understand. I'm a Veteran too. It really leaves a bitter taste in your mouth to know that
an entire damn war — the Vietnam War — was a big lie and it was all for nothing.
There are still many Vietnam Vets who imagine that they accomplished great things in Vietnam.
They are massively in denial. But lots more do know. More Vietnam Vets have died from
suicide after the war than were killed during the war.
And that doesn't include deaths from drugs and alcohol.
It will take a bunch more years for the Iraqi veterans to come to the same conclusion, although
many are already aware.
"trickle-down" economics idea Have you noticed, that the idea is old? It is the same logic that they used to legitimate household slaves. The household slave can be happy to live in a house, be around the worthy people and get the leftovers. When recently people were appalled to hear a republican say Afro-Americans should be happy to live in such a nice nation, they should not have been surprised, the man was fully in party line. Reaganomics are basically slavery in a modern improved form. Today the slaves don't even know that they are slaves anymore and blame themselves. One has to appreciate how ingenious the dogma is.
Yes.
As a matter of fact, one of the most insane and brain-damaged 12-Step clones to pop up lately
is
Underearners Anonymous.
No joke. Those nutcases actually practice the 12 Steps and confess that they are inferior
worthless sinful people because they don't earn enough money. Nuts.
Have a good day and a happy Thanksgiving. Ooops. Actually, do you do that in Germany? We have neither Halloween nor Thanksgiving in the sense you do. There is a religious fest called "Harvest thanks giving", but it is of little significance. Most of these fest predate Christianity and are based on seasonal fixed events, thus you can expect all north European cultures to have fest around the same dates, but with different significance. For some reason the finish of the harvest and slaughtering season as well as the Equinox have lost significance in Germany. The winter Solstice, better known as Christmas, is the only super important Holiday, when the family must gather. Moritz G.
Okay, well now I can wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Or, as an atheist friend of mine likes to say, "Happy Pagan Winter Solstice Celebration."
And have a good day too.
== Orange
[ Link here =
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters335.html#Royski_W ]
Date: Tue, December 11, 2012 2:18 am (Answered 17 December 2012) thanks for the reply orange. my youngest brother is in the army. he has been duped into believing that he is defending britain when statistically theres far more chance of being murdered by the police in this country than a so called terrorist. i've just read a book by a chap called john pilger called the new rulers of the world. it was written just before we invaded iraq and its very insightful and true i wept when it explained how using depleted uranium shells has caused a massive increase in cancer in iraq and that the then secretary of state madeleine albright was quoted as saying that half a million child deaths is acceptable. the rebellion here is growing. keep doing what you are doing friend. royski
Hello again, Royski,
Ah yes, the depleted uranium shells. I had forgotten about that. What I remembered was
the use of cluster bombs in civilian neighborhoods of Baghdad.
Cluster bombs are anti-personel weapons that are clusters of lots of little bombs, each one of
which is just the right size to blow up one person.
The problem with such bombs is that lots of the little bomblets don't explode when the
big bomb goes off. Children find bomblets laying in the streets and play with them, and bang!
Using cluster bombs on civilian populations is a war crime, but nobody has been sent to the Hague
for trial.
When asked about it, the commanding American general said that he felt that the use of such
weapons was "appropriate".
Oh well, have a Merry Christmas anyway.
== Orange
Date: Tue, December 11, 2012 6:22 pm (Answered 17 December 2012) Hi, Interesting, well-documented site. I too encountered many of the bait-and-switch tactics described, which is one of the reasons I am no longer in AA/NA. However, there is one egregious bait-and-switch tactic in regard to treatment centers not covered on the list. I did the typical 28-day detox and rehab at a treatment center that had a specialized unit for young adults. About two-thirds of the way through the stay, my counselor recommended a 90-day "aftercare program." (Everyone receives the same recommendation, and it's the facility's extended care unit. $Ka-ching!) The "recommendation," like the "suggestions" of the Twelve Steps, was not a recommendation at all — the counselor had convinced my parents and psychiatrist beforehand that I absolutely needed the 90-day program (they are the "experts in addiction," after all) and then conference-called them in when I was to make my "decision." It was more or less a second intervention, with the same terms: Go to treatment or get out of the house. So into the 90-day program I went, and, deja vu all over again, about two-thirds of the way through I learned that it wasn't really a 90-day program, but "Stage I" of a year-long program and another intervention-style meeting with my parents ensued. So much for that informed consent stuff. However, I had already discovered firsthand that AA, as you describe, is not a "quit drinking" program but a "get religion" program. Fortunately, I managed to convince my parents to let me go back to college and to secular recovery programs instead and I haven't looked back. Bait-and-switch: 30 days becomes 90, then a year, and then a lifetime, as they are training you to become a lifetime AA member. Just another way the AA/treatment industry is coercive in nature, and this type is particularly abhorrent as it targets vulnerable and financially dependent young adults and adolescents. Ben K.
Hello Ben,
Thank you for the letter and the story. I'm glad to hear that you are doing well,
and escaped from the trap. Yes, that is despicable. It also sounds criminal.
I would send that story to your state Attorney General for fraud investigation.
Not only are they doing a bait-and-switch trick — first 28 days will do it, then, no, you need 90 days,
then no, 1 year, then more, your life — but they are also passing off a cult
religion as "therapy" or "treatment", which is pure quackery, and fraud.
They are guilty of false advertising too. They did not advertise a hocus-pocus religious
program before they took your parents' money, did they?
Which leads to the question of just what did they promise?
I notice that treatment centers and "treatment programs" are great with the vague generalities
about "helping clients",
but if you ask for a contract up front that declares specifically what the treatment will be,
and what the results will be,
there is no such contract, and the promises are all just fluffy-sounding euphemisms.
The only really iron-clad solid promise
that I ever heard of
in one of those contracts is that
you (or your parents) must pay the full price for the "treatment", even
if you drop out of the program immediately. You must pay in full.
That's the big promise.
I'm adding your story to
the list of A.A. horror stories.
What I'm curious about is how they sized up your parents' bank account.
Or maybe they just try that "additional treatment" scam on everybody, and see which
parents can afford it.
You see, that is actually a very old scam, and it isn't restricted to just drug and alcohol
rehab. It's common in all kinds of children's psychiatric facilities, or "rehab facilities",
or "behavioral problem programs".
"Youth treatment facilities" of all kinds find that the richer the parents, the
more the child is in need of many months or years of expensive treatment. The poor people's
children, on the other hand, are quickly declared cured, as soon as the health insurance runs out,
and they are discharged even if they are very sick and suicidal.
We talked about that before,
here
and
here.
Have a good day and a Merry Christmas now.
== Orange
Date: Tue, December 11, 2012 5:59 pm (Answered 17 December 2012) http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/../../dr-peter-ferentzy/it-is-unfortunate-that-ox_b_2263862.html
Peter Ferentzy, PhD
Hi again, Peter,
Yes, the lengths to which the killjoys go to keep people from getting painkillers
that work are insane.
And I use that "killjoy" word very deliberately. I can't help but notice that there are some
fanatical Puritans who just get enormously bent out of shape when they hear that somebody is
getting high on pain pills, and they just have to go mess with their lives and make them miserable.
Sickos.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Date: Sat, December 22, 2012 4:09 pm
Killjoys and sickos — I like the way you think.
Peter Ferentzy, PhD
[ Link here =
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters335.html#Michael_W ]
Date: Tue, December 11, 2012 7:58 pm (Answered 18 December 2012) Wow. I am so glad I have what I have and believe what I believe. You are welcome to yours. There is something missing in your explanations. You hate AA, God, and just plain do not believe in anything else but mans own greatness. You are well schooled and highly intellectual. However you were not there when I needed someone. AA was there and as long as I live I will stand up for AA because it saved my life. I will be there for someone who is broken and needs love and hope. and yes I am in the medical field. I am a Registered Nurse and a Certified Case Manager with over 25 years in the medical field. Nothin I can say to you will change your opinions. But I will no longer sit back and be quiet while people like yourself deride the very thing that saved my life and my friends life. I won't stand for it. I will shout the blessings of recovery, AA, God until the day I die....
Sent from my iPhone
Hello again, Michael,
When you say that you are happy with your beliefs, that is no different from someone
who says, "Well, I'm happy with my faith in Santa Claus. I know that he brings
me goodies. I don't care what anybody else says. I will oppose those who dare to
criticize Santa." That is no basis for "treating a disease".
No, I do not "hate God". It's funny how the A.A. true believers just can't stand the idea
that other people have different theological ideas than them
— maybe even really intelligent and valid ideas. Maybe mature ideas, rather than
Santa Claus spirituality.
For some odd reason, the A.A. true believers just have to declare that the critics are all
atheists who hate God. Not so. Read the file on
The Heresy of the Twelve Steps if you want
to know what I believe.
It's nice that somebody held your hand when you felt bad. That does not make A.A. a valid method
of treating alcohol abuse or alcohol addiction. It's still quackery.
The fact that you are a registered nurse who sells quackery makes matters worse.
With your education and training, you should know something about how to test medications
and treatment methods to
see how well they work. And you know that you should reject the ones that don't work, or do harm.
You don't treat fevers with bleeding, or mental illnesses with the snake pit, do you?
So why are you using the practices of an old pro-Nazi cult religion from the nineteen-thirties
to treat "alcoholism"?
By the way, being a registered nurse does not make you a psychiatrist who is qualified to treat
the people
whom you described in your last letter
as
"people who have severe psychological illnesses".
But that's what you are trying to do: cure mental illness with cult religion.
You said in your last letter that you foisted the 12-Step cure on them, and when it didn't work,
you blamed their mental illness. That is quackery.
A.A. did not save your life. You saved your own life. You chose to quit drinking, and then you did it.
Nobody did it for you. Nobody else holds your hand every Saturday night and keeps you from drinking.
You keep yourself sober.
It's really all your will power and your self-reliance.
You do the work, and then you mistakenly give the credit to somebody else.
The fact remains that most people who come to A.A. do not make that choice in A.A., or because of
A.A. They walk out, appalled by the cult religion insanity.
They may later recover someplace else, some other way, but they don't recover in A.A.
Since you are a nurse, you can certainly read a few doctors' reports on how A.A. doesn't work:
The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment.
Speaking of which,
I asked you in the last letter
about the A.A. success rate.
I notice that you did not answer that question. Instead, you just accused me of hating God.
So I'll ask again: What is the actual A.A. success rate in
sobering up alcoholics? Without any excuses or any lying with qualifiers, what
is the A.A. success rate in sobering up alcoholics?
HINT: the answers are here
and
here
and
here.
What would you think of a doctor who insisted on only
prescribing a medicine that had worse than a 95% failure rate?
Have a good day and a Merry Christmas now.
== Orange
[The next letter from Michael_W is here.]
[ Link here =
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters335.html#Meatbag ]
Date: Sat, December 15, 2012 5:02 am (Answered 19 December 2012) (I think you might have gotten part of this email from me, already, but Claws is misbehaving today. Hopefully, this is the whole thing.)
Hi again, Meatbag,
Nope, got nothing before. Claws sabotaged it, so it's good that you resent it.
I went to my sister's graduation yesterday. We're all glad she finally graduated, but the speeches left a lot to be desired. Yes, we all know the economy sucks, but you really don't need to remind us of that. Oh, and we got AA propaganda, too. First, let me point out this was the graduation ceremony for UGA's college of agriculture. Nothing to do with alcohol or counseling at all. They awarded some medallion of honor to this husband-and-wife team, who donated land and money to the college, especially when the college faced budget cuts. They let this husband-and-wife team speak at the ceremony. And that's when it started. The husband spoke first. He talked about making money as an investment banker, and about his passion for agriculture and hiking. Standard inspirational speech stuff. He talked a bit about AA and how it helped him (what? you don't think picking up new hobbies helped, dude?). A bit annoying, but not too bad. Then, the wife spoke. Suddenly, we were in an AA meeting. And we couldn't leave, because we were all here to either graduate or watch our family members graduate. She mentioned that NPR said something about college students liking to drink and used that to segue into some propaganda. It was the standard AA propaganda about how alcoholics have a disease, and how AA helps. But that was all she talked about. Nothing about agriculture or anything. Just AA, AA, AA to a captive audience. First of all, I would think most graduates would have grown out of getting smashed every weekend. It's quite possible to like drinking and not have a problem. And I personally find this "alcoholism is a disease!" nonsense irritating for one reason. You can not have that first drink. I can't do anything to prevent myself from having delusions, other than taking my meds and hoping they don't stop working. Yes, there often is an underlying mental illness, but drinking is a behavior. Just like cutting is a behavior (I knew quite a few cutters in the mental hospital). And AA isn't gonna do shit for mental illness. All AA does is distort your thinking further. Even my sister, who generally buys into AA propaganda, was annoyed. (To be fair, this was the first time she had any exposure to AA's nuttiness.) She found the speech inappropriate for a college graduation. Yes, really inappropriate. But that is a standard cult characteristic. The true believers just can't stop proselytizing and recruiting for their favorite cult religion. It's like an obsession. "Attraction, not promotion" like hell. As for your letter, I did do a bit of searching about turning the touchpad off in Linux. I found something for Ubuntu users through a search engine (not really relevant for somebody using a slackware derivative), and some KDE utility in the repositories. I'm not sure if I hate the touchpad enough to install a bunch of KDE dependencies. Right now, my laptop is at 933 MHz and 310 MB with Icecat and Claws Mail open. And I think Icecat is having a memory leak (no surprise, since Icecat is a rebranded Firefox with a couple of extra security features). Memory leak aside, I rather like things that way. Yes, I've been having problems with that memory leak too. Big problems. My system would seize up and become glacially slow, and I would find that the 1.5 GB of swap space was exhausted. So I created a second 1.5 GB swap space in a file. And over the course of several days it will fill up both. And unfortunately, just killing and restarting Firefox won't get the memory back. I have to reboot the machine to clear the swap spaces. That is inconvenient when I'm in the middle of doing things, and I have to suddenly stop and close all files, and save all work to avoid losing anything, while the machine takes forever to do even that simple task because it's out of swap space and thrashing... Pain. Although turning the touchpad off would make things slightly easier when Titania takes an interest in my laptop. She's quite good at operating it for a cat. She can type, use the touchpad, and turn the laptop off. I think cats are the only form of malware that runs just as well on Linux as it does on Windows. Except for stuff that runs under WINE. Compatibility with Windows programs means compatibility with malware, too. Now that I think about it, that function was on one of the function keys. On an Acer laptop, it was "Function—F7". That is, hold down the "Fn" key and hit F7. That would toggle the touchpad on and off. (That is with Ubuntu, which knew about those special function keys and programmed things correctly.) But that machine deteriorated to unusability, just slowly stopped working, part by part, so I got a Compal laptop (used, Goodwill, broken screen that I replaced), and it doesn't have the same functions on the function keys. Fn—F7 is "speaker volume down" on this machine. There is no toggle for the touchpad. So I seem to be stuck with a touchpad because I don't know how to turn it off. As for the ermine, I'm sorry to hear that. I can certainly understand the temptation to get rid of it, but predators need to eat, too. And unfortunately, they can't be picky enough to eat only the mean and ugly prey. The more ruthless a predator is, the better it survives. All true, but it's still very tempting to ask the ermine if it wouldn't like to be immortalized as a fur coat for a queen. At least my own pet predator seems to have slowed down in her old age. She still gets kills, but not as often as she used to. That, and she has a colony of younger feral cats to compete with, who do not have the option of eating from a food bowl when they get no kills. (There were feral cats at the farm, but they were more spread out. Here, the feral cats came from an abandoned hoarder house.) Quite a few feral cats have been popping in the back yard, since my mom has been feeding the birds that are still here for the winter.
Bummer. Now there is a very good argument for eliminating feral cats.
Here in Oregon they call such things "invasive species", and try to get rid
of them because they do a lot of harm to the balance of nature.
Speaking of back yards, my back yard is loaded with little birds. I got a bunch of used bird feeders
from Goodwill — you know, those vertical plastic tubes with holes in the
side — and filled them with birdseed and hung them from the front porch and trees in
the back yard, and it didn't take the birds very long to discover them.
It's winter now, and all of the other seeds have been found and eaten, and the bugs are gone,
and the weeds are dead,
so there just isn't much for a little bird to eat. Tough times. When they discover my
feeders full of seeds, they not only stuff themselves every day, they also tell all of
their friends, who tell their other friends, who tell...,
and now I have flocks of little birds in my back yard pretty much all of the time.
After I typed those words, I went to the window and looked out, and sure enough, there are a
bunch of little birds braving the wind and getting seeds out of the feeders. The weather is
semi-stormy, rainy, cold, windy, at 10:30 AM, and the wind is blowing the feeders around,
and they are swinging in the wind. Nevertheless,
the birds manage to land on the little perch bars of the feeders and grab a mouthful of seeds.
It's a good thing that I bought two big bags of birdseed at the farm supply store, because those
birds are eating a lot. Hungry little turkeys.
Cat chat aside, my 21st birthday is coming up. I plan to ask my psychiatrist if it's okay for me to drink. If the answer is no, that's the end of that. If it's okay, I'll have my bartender sister help me pick drinks I might like. If there's a problem, I believe I'm capable of not having another drink. If I need somebody to fix my head so that I can quit, I know people who can do that. And they have more qualifications to check people's brains than drug/alcohol "counselors". That sounds reasonable. Happy birthday. Incidentally, I've heard marriage counselors are just as bad as drug/alcohol counselors. So I guess the lesson is to stay away from the therapists who claim to specialize in certain situations. The therapists that know shit talk about approaches like CBT/REBT/Gestalt/Psychodynamic/etc.
Yes. Like how does someone become an "expert" on marital difficulties and resolving them?
It's so easy for someone to take a few community college courses and then
hang out a shingle and claim that he is a qualified "counselor",
but how do you get the wisdom, really? Six marriages and divorces? That gives
experience in not working it right, but little knowledge about how to make it work.
One marriage that lasted forever? That gives no experience in breakups.
So how do you become an "expert"?
And of course we encounter the same lack of expertise in drug and alcohol counselors.
Being an addict does not automatically make someone an expert on recovery.
Of course my so-called "counselor" was a world-class loser,
what with parroting cult slogans all day long,
and then snorting cocaine and looking at child porn on his computer and
then raping his
step-children.
Some counselor. What a great life coach. And to think that they actually paid
him to be a counselor. Your tax dollars at work.
I feel like what I would want in a counselor is an ancient wise man or woman who knows it all (and who
hasn't grown senile). But those things are as rare as can be.
Oh well, have a good day now, and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
== Orange
[The next letter from Meatbag is here.]
Date: Tue, December 18, 2012 12:49 pm (Answered 19 December 2012) I came across your page about cults. I am wondering if you are bias to any one cult? Had you had any experience with any? Legit question. Regards, Carol
Hello Carol,
Thanks for the question. Yes, legit.
I can happily re-use Archie Bunker's famous line about "Heck, I ain't prejudiced.
I hate everybody equally, regardless of race, creed, sex, color, religion, or
country of national origin."
All kidding aside, I'm opposed to all cults pretty much equally. They are all
harmful, and dishonest and deceitful, and waste people's time and money, and worse,
lead people away from spirituality and enlightenment. Cults hold out the promise of a better life,
with wisdom and spirituality, and maybe even a ticket to Heaven, and they deliver just the opposite.
Some are worse than others, but they are all bad.
(And that isn't even counting the mass suicides, which are actually a very rare phenomenon.)
I don't think it makes a lot of difference whether people waste years of their lives in the Moonies
or Scientology or Alcoholics Anonymous.
It's still a waste, and leaves people feeling inadequate and stupid and used, and
misinformed and misled and abused. And often bitter and angry. That sure ain't Heaven.
Yes, I have had a bunch of experience with cults, but fortunately never joined one. I just hung
out on the periphery of several, without committing my soul, so to speak.
I was a child of the 'sixties, which was a time when new cults were popping up like mushrooms.
There were a whole bunch of phony gurus who came over here from the East to help themselves
to the American kids' money, and also a bunch
of American cockroaches who came out of the woodwork and set up cults.
Because I was very interested in spiritual things and higher consciousness, I checked out, and
hung out with, a bunch of them, including Scientology, Jesus Freaks, Sufis,
Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, and Yogi Bhajan's 3HO.
And I studied even more of them, all that I could. I'd buy their books and learn what I could.
That included Carlos Castaneda and The Teachings of Don Juan, and
"Werner Erhard's" est and the Rajneeshis, and
more than I can remember.
And then I'd learn more from members of the various groups, religions, and cults, who were more
than happy to tell me about their great new thing.
I'm lucky in never having quite joined and sold my soul. It's just that I'm not much of a joiner.
When I would hear something that rubbed me the wrong way, I'd just sort of wander on down the
road and go check out somebody else. That saved me a lot of grief, although I didn't know it
at the time. At that time I thought they were just a bunch of nice people with strange "other"
religions.
It took more than 20 years before all of the stories about the nightmares in
those cults started coming out, and drop-outs told me
about their experiences inside of those cults.
Now I'm happy to say that it isn't all negative. There are still a few genuine teachers around who
didn't ever betray the trust, and who have remained good people through it all.
I particularly like Baba Ram Dass (the former Prof. Richard Alpert of Harvard University),
and his teacher Neem Karoli Baba.
And I like Pir Villayat Khan of the Sufis.
And the other Sufis like Pir's father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and Sufi Sam.
And of course the Dalai Lama.
And although I don't know a lot about him, I never heard a bad word about Lama Govinda.
Thank God for a few jewels.
Have a good day now, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
== Orange
According to some people, the Mayan calendar ends tomorrow, and so does the world.
It's the end of time.
I don't think so. The true story is very simple: A thousand years ago, a Mayan was busy
chiseling and carving a big calendar in stone, working on days and months and years
that will happen a thousand years in the
future, when he suddenly yelled, "Dammit, my fingers hurt!
I'm tired of this. Why am I wasting my time carving a calendar a thousand years
in the future? I quit!" And he threw down his hammer and chisel and walked away, and never
worked on the calendar again. The day he had been chiseling into the stone when he quit?
You guessed it, Dec. 21, 2012.
== DELewes, Washington Post, 2012.12.13 2:30PM PST
Well darn, the world didn't end after all.
So, MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY. And have a happy New Year.
I was just thinking back on that Mayan End of Time thing, and I recalled the TV news programs
that showed crowds of people gathering at Mayan shrines to pray. There were quite a bunch of them,
all very concerned about the end of the Mayan calendar.
Now that the world didn't end, they can all claim that their prayers really worked, and saved the world,
and kept Time from coming to an end.
It's a perfect example of our inability to prove a negative: Can you prove that their praying didn't work,
and didn't really save the world? Nope.
It's the same problem as proving that people going to A.A. meetings and praying doesn't make people
quit drinking. You know it's ridiculous and a bunch of hogwash, but you can't logically prove that Joe Blow
wasn't saved by praying and doing the 12 Steps.
It's also the same logic as this old joke:
A.A. and The Twelve Steps keep people from drinking just like how the torn pages keep away the elephants. The thing that really keeps the elephants away from the USA is the Atlantic Ocean, of course. And the thing that really keeps A.A. members from drinking is their desire to live a better life.
Date: Tue, December 18, 2012 11:48 pm (Answered 26 December 2012) Hello again. On page 32 of the Big Book (3rd edition) Bill Wilson describes the man of 30 who showed definite signs of alcoholism. This man we are told gave up drinking for 25 years before doing what he had always intended to do ... that is to start drinking again. Do we have any more information about this man? Do we know his name? Where did he live? How did Bill know about him? How did this alcoholic stop drinking without the help of AA and the 12 steps? Bill may have realised there was a problem with this story as he did not describe him as sober but as bone dry and no doubt the steppers will say he was a dry drunk but how do they explain someone remaining sober for 25 years without the 12 steps? and Bill described him as "happy". This guy did not relapse in the AA sense, he did what he was always going to do. He did't stop working a programme — he never had a programme. The steppers will say he was not a "real"alcoholic but Bill Wilson had no doubt. I am in my 19th year of sobriety and I know many people who have been sober in AA for over 25 years BUT I also know that the vast majority of AA members have within 0 — 2 or 3 years sobriety and that most new people leave after a few meetings. I expect that some of those who leave and are never seen again do what the man of 30 did — get sober without AA. I am now in my 2nd year without meetings after spending far too much time in dingy church halls. I think the moral of the story is that if you want to stop drinking you can and if you want to drink you probably will. Take care Hugh G.
Hello Hugh,
Thanks for the letter. You bring up some interesting points, and I couldn't agree more.
And congratulations on your sobriety and your freedom from the cult.
I find it funny that you mention that the guy didn't "relapse" because he did what he always
intended to do: drink some more.
Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, I ran into this goofy definition of relapse
in some pro-A.A. propaganda
years ago:
I had to ask then, "Is it not a relapse if you really did intend to party your brains out?"
Incidentally, I also have 12 years sober now, without any A.A.,
and disgruntled A.A. members also routinely tell me that
I wasn't a "real alcoholic",
and that's why I was able to quit without A.A.
Well, life sure would have been easier if I had not been "a real alcoholic".
Those extreme stories, like sober for 25 years before "relapsing", really stretch the A.A. dogma
to absurd lengths. Obvious questions occur to me like, "Okay, why don't you stay sober for 25
years now, and then you can have a big Christmas and New Years blow-out and party for a week,
and then you will remain sober for another 25 years, and then you can have another
big Christmas blow-out, and then you will remain sober for another 25 years..."
Actually, that sounds like a pretty healthy and successful lifestyle.
Only drunk once every 25 years? I'd hardly call that a problem with "alcoholism".
But of course Bill Wilson wanted to make the story into a scary horror story:
"The Big Bad Booze Bogeyman will get you, even after 25 years, unless you
join my cult and do my Steps."
Oh well, have a good day now, and a happy holiday season.
== Orange
Date: Fri, December 21, 2012 12:46 pm (Answered 26 December 2012) My higher power is jesus Christ The higher power was an awakening That was in 1990 I haven't bothered with the lifestyle Surrounded with drinking since then I tried formal religions which talked of love Of Christ I didn't stay as it was talk no action You should spend your time on more Productive matters Go and look how young people are owned by satan when they drink or Use drugs Terry R. Perth WAustralia
Hello Terry,
Thanks for the letter. I think that telling the truth to people is something productive.
I also notice how people who join a cult are often selling their soul to the Devil.
(Look here).
Have a good day now, and a happy holiday season.
== Orange
Date: Sat, December 22, 2012 1:11 pm (Answered 26 December 2012) Just curious. If u r and care to visit............ Thanks,
Carlos G.
Hello Carlos,
Thanks for the invite.
Yes, still sober, after all these years. Now it's up to 12 years, no alcohol, no drugs, not even a cigarette.
How sweet it is.
Have a good day now, and a happy holiday season.
== Orange
Last updated 26 January 2013. |
