Chapter 59

Your faculty of judgment has not been sufficiently exercised if you think you must give up all pretentions to knowledge without understanding that this distinguishing feature in our human nature is undoubtedly of great utility. I have noticed that in recovery, opposition to the value of our knowledge seems to circulate with almost universal indulgence, and any challenge to this seems to be on the order of blasphemy and absurdity. Continual, insufficient use of correct judgment is properly that which is commonly called stupidity, and for such a failing, I know of no remedy with dignity that is not utterly wonting. Here again, we find philosophy is called upon to apply all of its intensity and penetration as an element of necessity.

If we are making progress we will be able, with very little trouble, to use knowledge to lead us to truth, both good and bad. It is a requirement that we understand the difference between good and bad –without attaching irrational or imaginary constraints to the validity of this recognition, as this is a quick measure of our mental health capacities. Truth is either good or bad, there is little gray area; and the way in which we adjust ourselves to its implications is of extreme importance.

I will concede that truth sometimes presents itself to us in ways that allows us to turn around our thinking without any necessity of understanding the connections between cause and effect. But this does not rule out the value of understanding how cause and effect works. If we sought to free ourselves from the consequences of cause and effect without extracting the function of cause, a pure form of sensibility might appear to us. We might find that the truth behind the cause that led to the effect could teach us a valuable lesson.

When facing truth, if we do not wish to return to the state of utter ignorance from which we started, we must not afterwards complain of the obscurity or the obstacles in our path along the way to discovering it. My personal rule of thumb is this: Always endeavor to enlarge your sphere of understanding by using governing determinant rules that demand proof from either experience or from reason without betraying to a lamentable degree the effort that this exercise requires. And do not confuse difficulty with complication.

Chapter 54

In AA meetings, you will occasionally encounter self-appointed “AA Police” who, in a seeming desperate desire to inflate their own self-importance in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its natural function, will try to regulate discussion topics, attitudes of attendees, types of words used, use of spiritual terms, nonuse of spiritual terms, and promote endless discussions of pure AA history ad-nauseam. Unfortunately, these types somehow think airing their own lengthy opinions is in some way helping others achieve sobriety; when in actuality, it is isolating certain addicts, pushing them away, and making them feel unwelcome. When you go to an AA meeting with a troubled heard, if you don’t share, you’re not there. Everyone should feel free to briefly discuss whatever is on their mind; with of course, a primary focus on what can be done to resist their alcoholic tendencies and obsessions.

It is important to remember this: Never promote the program ahead of the person. If anyone has a problem with the way in which people share their experience, strength, hope, and troubles, it is sometimes best to remain silent and resist prideful, intimidating remarks that could discourage them from sharing openly what is on their heart. You never know when someone is teetering on the edge of disaster, and maybe if they just come in the room and spill what is on their mind without fear of censorship, they might feel a little better and make it through another day clean and sober.

In many cases it is better to listen to another alcoholic or addict rather than listen to yourself speak to them. This is called working a program of selflessness, which is a reversal of our natural inclinations. And as usual, we come up against something which is simple but not easy. Everyone has a tendency to be right in their own eyes; and even if you ARE right, it takes more strength to listen to someone else with love, gentleness, kindness, meekness, and care.

Chapter 52

Formal deductive reasoning is analytic by nature. Though complex, it contains no new information, it simply rearranges what we already know; which is to say the conclusions implicitly follow necessarily from the premises. In some instances a simple analysis is not objectively valid and for that reason it cannot imitate superior logic. Thus we find ourselves involved in a difficulty which did not originally present itself within our normally recognized sphere of validity.

We are not barred from appealing to ultimate truth. It remains doubtful whether my project of thought has in every respect gone beyond the former conditions of normal sensibilities that correspond to the collective unity of thought shared by most people. I recognize that we do of course make use of a great number of empirical impressions without any use of deduction, with actions simply being a dissent from experience.

I find an extended range of practical application with the functions and orders of those mental powers which help differentiate the question of right from the question of fact, which is directly contemporaneous with the certainty we associate with formal logic. It is to me then, understanding, judgment, and reasoning that is entirely consistent without being derived from experience. If we are in possession of disagreeing conceptions that are not objectively valid and thus do not belong to the logic of truth, this should be of such a nature as a simple phenomena that would be without significance or be rejected as only a change in quantity, not in quality.

Chapter 51

If you want to develop sustainable movement in your life, you are obligated to apply an arduous determination of the mind. This movement must be perceptually specified without resistive hostility to foreign impressions that might enable you to hope for greater success. You should, however, carefully and inexorably apply yourself solely to the pursuit of truth that cannot easily exchange its proper function from the laws of correct thinking that govern it.

I have learned that if you are too easily seduced into confessing your own ignorance before going through a true exercise of a methodical elucidation, you may sell yourself short and unknowingly enter a mock contest in which no victor is ever crowned with permanent possession. If you combine the elements of all your knowledge without yielding to spontaneity in the production of conceptions, you can enjoy nothing but the purest form of thought.