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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – THE 12 CONCEPTS TWELVE CONCEPTS – RS 06307.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-the-12-concepts-twelve-concepts-rs-06307.mp3 Duration: 01:30:36
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I've been the auditor for the fellowship for many years, so I'm always grateful to be here with you people and participate with you on this very wonderful occasion. I would like to start this meeting, if we may, with a moment of silence in gratitude for all of the recoveries of alcoholics in the last 50 years. Would you join me in the serenity prayer, please? God grant you serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the urge to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Now, it is essential that we explain the tradition of anonymity, because there may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that no A.A. speaker or, indeed, any A.A. member be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings.
The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that A.A. principles come before personalities. There will be tapes of this and the other meetings available for sale later on in the convention. I'm really very surprised at the large number in attendance today. The concepts generally are not considered in A.A. to be the sexy type of a subject, even though George reminds me we have a sexy panel. But, Don, do you know anything about the microphone?
The concepts really are often described as the most confusing aspect of the A.A. fellowship's written literature. The 12 steps and the 12 traditions are fairly specific and easy for most of us to understand. The concepts are not so easily understood. And I don't think that was purposeful, but they really attempt, and it was Bill's exposition of what he was trying to explain his thinking, his reasons why he tried to do what he did in setting up what is almost a contradiction in terms. We start with the A.A. group, which is avoids governance and money. And yet, when you combine thousands upon thousands of groups, there has to be a structure so that the message can be carried. And in the concepts, Bill, both in essay form and in exposition form, goes over all of the reasons and all of the ideas that he had in trying to somewhat homogenize the thinking of the early members and the boards and the responsible people and try to come up with a structure that resisted anybody or any group or any board taking control of this most important treasure that the fellowship has. And I think that if we ever tried to put it on an organization chart at the Harvard Business School or something, we just couldn't do it. But the amazing thing is that it has worked and worked so amazingly well. Anyway, with those opening remarks, we have a very
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distinguished panel here. Michael Alexander, who I've known as man and boy for many years. We were boys once. I was eight when I met Bud. He was 32 at the time. Michael is completing his nine-year term as a non-alcoholic trustee, and he's really contributed mightily to that. We have Lenore T., who is a former delegate. And George D., who I've known for many, many years, a former conference finance committee chairman and trustee for many years. And all of the three of them, I think, have as good an understanding of the concepts and the way they have worked and the way they should work of anybody in the fellowship. So with that, I would like to introduce our first speaker, Mike Alexander.
Thank you, Bud. I'm Mike Alexander, everybody. Until April, I used to say I'm Mike Alexander, and I'm a non-alcoholic AA trustee. I now have to say in the interest of accuracy, I'm a non-alcoholic non-trustee. I stopped being a trustee in April. After nine years, actually, as Bud was saying, both he and I go back a long way in the fellowship. I've been around AA so long, I tend to forget I'm not an alcoholic. And the trouble with that is, and I can now speak freely since I'm not a trustee, all these resentments I've had over the years. Alcoholics have made a lot of fun of me over the years about my drinking. George over here says, for example, having observed me from time to time, said, you've never made a good drunk. You don't have the imagination. And when I was in Minnesota just three weeks ago, courtesy of Hugh, seated over there, and having dinner with him and five or six other alcoholics the night before a session of the assembly, I was urged to take a drink. I said, I don't want one. He said, go ahead and take a drink. You're allowed. So all right. I finally said, I will have a drink just to show you. And I ordered a Bloody Mary. They said, that's all wrong. You don't drink a Bloody Mary in the evening. And they kept looking at me, reminding me to take another drink. I was letting it go waste. I finally got even with them though. At one point, at one point when I've had enough of this, I said, the trouble with this Bloody Mary, it has too much Worcestershire sauce in it. And five voices said, you mean Tabasco, don't you? So much for my drinking, or lack of it, as the case may be. As Bud said, I too am surprised that there are so many of you here. What he didn't tell you is right this minute, the doors are being locked. You can't leave. If you made a mistake, you're here for the full session. And pay attention, you're going to be graded on what we say. There are three questions I would like to address in the course of my remarks about the concepts. And then I've been asked to give a brief summary, a very brief summary of the first four concepts. Let me go to the questions first. And the first one is, how did the concepts come to be? The second one is, what are they? And the third, what should we do with them? Now to the first, how did the concepts come to be? In simplest form, Bill Wilson wrote them. He thought he should write them. He thought he should record his experiences as a faithful and trusted servant and guardian for the many years that he served the Fellowship, up until the time that he started to write the concepts, which was around 1957 or 1958. It's interesting, I had the chance to look into some of the unpublished
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material about the concepts and how Bill wrote them. When I got curious about it, and Nell Wing, our archivist for many years, gave me some of these pieces of paper to look at, letters and memoranda, and some of the drafts. Bill first called the concepts, called them the Twelve Steps of Service. That's the way he referred to them in January of 1958. And a little bit later in that year, in May of 1958, he called them the Twelve Principles of World Service, still working at them in various drafts. And he was having difficulty, I will allude to that in just a moment. Then in July of 1959, his title for the concepts was Twelve Suggested Principles for World Service. And finally in 1960, at about the time of the conference, Bill described them as Twelve Concepts for World Service. That's the way he put them before the conference. He finished writing them in 1961, and the concepts in their present form were approved by the conference in 1962. Now Bill said, and I've just said, and Bill said it too, that he had difficulty in writing the concepts, which every time I've read it has come as a fair, if not big, surprise to me, because Bill was a very prolific writer. He was a master of the written word. He had no difficulty putting thoughts together and putting them together in a hurry. I had the privilege of seeing him and Bernard Smith over the years when they met. Again, Smith was a prolific writer and a master of the written and spoken word as Bill was. They could literally, in minutes, dictate an original draft of a memorandum or letter or some communication that they wanted to distribute in the fellowship. And when it came back typed within the hour, it virtually would go out in the original form in which they had casted.
So Bill said he had difficulty, and it was a surprise to many of us that he should have said that, and we've wondered why. He said the difficulty arose because it was a broad subject and it was hard to organize and relate within the concepts themselves. That's what he offered as the reason for the difficulty. Over the years, I've speculated on it, and given Bill's talent, I think his real difficulty was that for once, I shouldn't say for once, but this was an instance, when Bill was trying to bring balanced judgment to the fellowship, he wanted to leave behind him a set of principles, maxims, thoughts, concepts, whatever you want to call them. He wanted to leave them behind him in a way that they would not be subject to too much disharmony or disunity or interpretation. He wasn't going to be there to defend them, he felt, and he was trying to present a balanced judgment of what he had to say. Bill started out as a lawyer, he was a tremendous salesman and a great advocate. He knew how to argue for a position, he knew how to go after it, he knew how to get it. He was a very good lawyer, but probably would have made a poor judge because he loved to argue rather than to decide, and I believe that that was the problem that he had with the concepts. It's my thought, it may be right or wrong, I don't know. Now, what are these concepts that we're talking about today?
Well, first of all, let's take a look at Bill's definition. He told us what they were in a variety of ways, we have our own ways of deciding what they are, but let's see what Bill had to say. He said they were an interpretation of AA's World Service structure, and that's in the introduction to the concepts. If you have them with you, you can see it for yourself. Also in the introduction, he said they were an evidential record of our former experience. He also said they are a system of checks and balances.
of Checks and Balances, Nine Tenths of the Material is Purely a Recording and Interpretive
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Job, this was a letter he wrote to one of his friends in April of 1961. And finally, he said at one point, this is the best estimate I can make of our future world service needs. This was in a memorandum he circulated on which a letter was based that went to the delegates in 1961 in relation to the concepts that was to be presented to the conference, I'm sorry, 1962. So that's how Bill saw the concepts.
Now how do others see them? How do the rest of us see them? He wrote them, but we have a right to see them as we like. Well, some people think of them as helpful guidelines. Others think they are a set of principles which we can use to our advantage. Still others say they're useful suggestions. Those who are cynics say they are timely warnings of disaster unless we're careful. The more confident say they're friendly assurances to us.
They're necessary encouragement for us. They're a glimpse of history in this period that Bill was talking about. They're source material for information we require. My own thoughts from time to time, they are commentaries on human behavior, particularly the behavior of humans who happen to be members of this fellowship. They are, in fact, many things to many people, but stripped of non-essentials. They are a valuable source of information and it's there for the taking.
What should we do with them? What about this information? What should we do with it? Well, we can use it. We can use it as a history. We can use it as guidelines. We can use it for inspiration. We can use it to try to resolve our problems. We can use it for the purpose of reflection. All we have to do is become a little familiar with it. Now how should we use the concepts? This is the how of it. Well, let me suggest something very simple.
Why don't we read them first? Read them and read them casually. The concepts are not something that you could pick up like a detective story and read it for three hours and enjoy every minute of it, get so wound up in it that you won't remember where you are. They're not like that at all. They're more like the Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica, I should say. Maybe a telephone directory. There's something that has useful information.
So you can't pick it up and run through it and say, yes, I've read the concepts, I'm an expert, and I'm going to tell the rest of them what to do. It doesn't work that way. They are worth reading once just casually without the idea of being rewarded instantly. Once get a flair for them and find out they're not as confusing, it is suggested, and they indeed are not. Might try reading them one at a time, the first concept or a second concept and third concept with a view of getting the essence of it.
There's no need to memorize the concepts. Yeah, the steps you memorize, the traditions you memorize, they're easy, they're punching, they're to the point, and they don't carry a lot of explanation with them to grasp the essence of it, but that's not the concepts. Don't need to memorize them. All you've got to do is remember where they are, and that's very easy because they're in the manual. It's a nice little blue book at the tail end of it, easily accessible to almost everyone in a fellowship, and indeed it's easy to carry around if you do some traveling.
Also if you read it on an airplane or a train, it produces a lot of conversations, particularly if you order a drink as you're reading through it. Sometimes they try to save you from yourself on those occasions they've heard of AA. Read them and then use them for source material that's useful information. Several years ago I was asked to produce or prepare and give a talk on the relationship of the staff workers to the General Service Board and its committees, and it was one of those periods when I was trying to get people to read the concepts and use them, and I thought I'd show them.
So I prepared a talk in the course of which I quoted almost directly, almost everything
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I said came from the concepts. I would say, well, why do we need staff workers, and I'd say, here's what the concepts say, concept 11, so on and so forth. And it was immensely rewarding to me. First of all, while people take issue with me all the time, very few people would argue with Bill Wilson's writings. Not even George and Lenore argue with me on that occasion. Incidentally, but since they speak after I do, I want two minutes for rebuttal in case I need it.
We have now a condensed version of the concept that was produced about a year ago by the Literature Committee. I was on the committee at the time. The condensed version is about 80 percent of the total of the concepts. Nothing has been eliminated except whole sentences and paragraphs. In other words, no word was changed. What we tried to do in the Literature Committee to produce the condensed version was simply to eliminate some of the more explanatory material or something that might have been set in an earlier concept and leave just the meat of the concept to make it easy, particularly in terms of reference work.
So it's available for those who want it, although the concepts themselves aren't that long. Let me go very, very quickly. Now that's the background about the concept. Very quickly to the first four concepts. This is my view. Your view may be different. Let me read the first one and then make a couple of comments about it. The first concept says, the final responsibility and the ultimate authority for AA world services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole fellowship.
Well, what does that mean? It means that the AA members and the AA groups are in charge. They're the bosses. They're the Indians, not the chiefs. The fate of the fellowship is in the AA members and in the AA groups. Conversely, the fate of the members and the groups is in the hands of the fellowship itself. So it works both ways. Under the first concept, the final responsibility and the ultimate authority belongs to the members and to the groups.
They're the ones who say what has to be done, not the trustees, not the delegates, not the staff, not the directors. It is the AA groups. Everything flows from them. It is their collective conscience that decides what's going to happen in the fellowship. And only, and only an informed membership can exercise that conscience in the best interest of the fellowship and of the individuals. Now the second concept reads as follows, and I'm not talking about headings.
There's more to it than that. Then in 1955, the AA groups confirmed the permanent charter for their general service conference. They thereby delegated to the conference complete authority for the active maintenance of our world services and thereby made the conference, accepting for any change in the Twelve Traditions or in Article 12 of the conference charter, the actual voice and the effective conscience for our whole society.
That's the second concept. What should we make of that? Well, it means simply that a million AAs or 30 or 40,000 groups can't convene to conduct business, although it seems to me there are about a million here this week. They can't get together to conduct business effectively, but their representatives can. And so they have designated representatives to carry out the business that they as a large group could not possibly begin to do.
They formed a conference. The conference is about 120 people. It is composed of trustees, directors, delegates, and staff members, each one with a single vote. It meets once a year, and it remains in continuous session through committees and otherwise during the course of the year. The conference is governed by a charter. It's a brief but a very effective instrument. We all ought to read that from time to time because it is a superb work of establishing what the rights and liabilities are or obligations of various elements in our society.
I have a personal bias in favor of the charter. I don't think we ought to tamper with it too much every now and then somebody tries to suggest that we could do a better job. My own view is, show me. Again, I can say this now that I'm not a trustee, and incidentally, Bud, let me issue my customary disclaimer. Everything that I say today is me alone, represents my views.
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They may not be attributed to anybody else, and I and only I can be blamed for them. The third concept in its heading recites, as a traditional means of creating and maintaining a clearly defined working relation between the groups, the conference, the AA General Service Board, and its several service corporations, staffs, committees, and executives, and thus ensuring their effective leadership, it is here suggested that we endow each of these elements of world service with a traditional right of decision.
Another mouthful, what does all that mean? It means that every element in AA has a right to make its own decisions. It goes a little deeper than that. Who tells these elements what to do? Well, this concept says the elements tell themselves what to do. Each delegate, each trustee, each director, each staff member, every person who is in a service of AA first looks around and says to himself or herself, I have a job to do.
How am I going to do it? I will decide how to do it, and if I decide wrong, there are lots of people who are going to correct me, and that is exactly what happens, and the right of decision prescribes it. That is what we may do and must do, make up our own minds on what our job is and go about doing it. There's enough of a remedy within the fellowship to correct any possible abuses, and we should trust our trusted servants to make their own decisions first and then carry them out as best as they can.
And now the fourth and the final concept I will be discussing recites throughout our conference structure, we ought to maintain at responsible levels a tradition of right of participation, taking care that each classification or group of our world's servants shall be allowed a voting representation in reasonable proportion to the responsibility that each must charge. What that means is if you work for AA, you have the right to vote and speak for AA and participate and deliberate and reach conclusions and do whatever else anybody in authority can do.
Bill said in his concept there are no second class workers in AA, just as there are no second class members in AA. Each one has the right to belong, to have a sense of belonging, and to participate as he or she sees fit. Apart from anything else, this right of participation assures us that we will have a broad base on which to draw for talent. We invite people to come in and participate, and when they do, we are the winners.
Those are my views of the concepts in general and the first four in particular. I thank you for letting me share them with you. You of course are entitled to your own views, but you've got to read the concepts before you have views. Thanks very much, Mike. We will at the end of the speakers have a period for question and answering, and unless George or Mike or Lenore exercise their right for a rebuttal here, we'll do it on that basis.
When Sarah asked me to moderate it, I said, my gosh, that's really asking something to moderate a panel with Michael, Alexander, Lenore, and George, but anyway, Lenore, would you… I'm an alcoholic and a member of the Joy of Living group in Hollywood, that's Florida, and my name's Lenore. Hi, everybody. Hi, Lenore. I would like to exercise my right of rebuttal right now before anybody else has a chance to say a thing.
First of all, I want to disclaim what Bud says. I don't know anything about the concepts, so I don't know what the hell I'm doing up here. The second thing is that Mike says that all he needed to do was start an argument between me and George and he could leave, and I'm not going to argue with George, not here. Now some of you are sitting close to a door where you can make a quick exit, but I assure you that my friends from Hollywood are not sitting close to a door and they would not dare leave this room.
In my home group, I'm known as the godmother, and this has nothing to do with Cinderella. I'll break both their legs. I have read these concepts many times, Mike, and the more I read them, the less I understand
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about them. And I think maybe Bill meant it to be this way, so we wouldn't fool with him and try to change him to mean something else. I'm not sure about that. He was very devious sometimes, as we all know. I am going to read and speak between my book and what I think about the next four concepts. Concept five says, throughout our world service structure, we ought to maintain at all responsible levels a traditional, yes, read the wrong one, Lenore.
Throughout our world service structure, a traditional right of appeal ought to prevail, thus assuring us that the majority, my teeth are crooked too, minority opinion will be heard and that petitions for the redress of personal grievances will be carefully considered. I believe that this concept is in its truest workable form at the conference itself. This is my feelings about it. Because those of you who have been privileged to be delegates and attend conference know that when the committee come back and say we recommend a thus and so, it is not necessarily the thing that happens. Because someone on that committee, or even on the floor that's not on the committee, who has a difference of opinion, even though he or she might be in a minority of one even, has a right to get up and say, I don't believe this is for the better decision to make for AA. I don't think this is the best thing that we should do. Let's talk about it. And that to me is really this concept in its truest and purest form. But you see, this can also happen when the trustees decide to do something and the conference says, uh-uh, we don't want it that way. And by the same token, the conference can decide they want to do something and the trustees say, hey, let's wait a while and talk about this some more, because maybe this is not for the best of AA. So this thing gives, this gives any minority opinion, be it at the group level, the district level, the area level, the regional level, the conference level, whatever, a right to say, I don't think this is for the best, let's talk about it some more. Now we do, of course, have to have some trusted servants, and I think this is where this comes in, to do the job for us.
Because the delegates do what the groups can't do for themselves, the trustees do what the conference members or the delegates can't do for themselves, and so we have to trust these people. But because we question them does not necessarily mean we don't trust them, we just might not agree with what they're doing. And we have a right to talk about this. And I'm very grateful, and I've used that right of appeal a few times. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But I have a right, and Mike's laughing because he's heard me do this. And once it worked, Mike, remember? The rest of the time it didn't, but that's all right, too. At least I had a right to say what I thought was for the best of the fellowship as a whole. So every member of AA has this right at whatever level, and if you have a bitch or a gripe or something that you don't like, go to your delegate and talk to him about it, and let him see or her see if it can't be discussed on the floor of the conference, if it can't be put on the discussion in some manner and brought up as a subject. There's no reason that you can't do that. As a matter of fact, you can write to the general service office. You can talk to anybody you want to. You know, as Mike says, we're not second-class members. We all have the same rights, and I like this one particularly. Six says, on behalf of AA as a whole, our general service conference has the principal responsibility for the maintenance of our world's services, and it traditionally has the final decision respecting large matters of general policy and finance. But the conference also recognizes that the chief initiative and active responsibility in most of these matters should be exercised primarily by the trustee members of the conference when they act among themselves as the general service board of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now that, too, is a mouthful. Some of my thoughts on that was that traditionally, yes, the conference does have the responsibility, but the board really has the actual responsibility for the reason, and this goes into some of the other concepts, too, that the board is in session four times a year. The conference is in session once a year. The board is also called in on
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a monthly basis on some of the committees where they have to act on something, and there's no way that some of these things can be held back and delayed until the next conference. So these two entities work so closely together, and I've seen this in action, and I've seen how well it does mesh together, and yet they are a separate entity, and each one has its own responsibility and carries it out to the best of its ability. I feel that in the same manner that we, as members of groups, trust our delegate to do the things for us that we cannot do for ourselves, so the conference members and the delegates trust the trustees.
That's why they call them trustees, I guess. I never thought about that. To do what the conference can't do for itself during the course of the year. Seven says, the conference recognizes that the charter and the bylaws of the general service boards are legal instruments, that the trustees are thereby fully empowered to manage and conduct all of the world services affairs of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is further understood that the conference charter itself is not a legal document, that it relies instead upon the force of tradition and the power of A.A. Peirce for its final effectiveness.
Bill described this as an irresistible force, meaning an immovable object. The conference has to do what the charter and bylaws say, the trustees have to do what the charter and bylaws say, but they might still have differences of opinion on what the charter and bylaws say. So here we go. And yet, somehow, and I don't know how, believe me I don't, it always works out for the best of A.A. I have seen and known some decisions that came out of the conference one year, and by the way, that action was not binding on the next one, and that's good too, because the conference can make its mistakes just like a group steering committee can make its mistakes, and we're allowed to do that. But this collision might sound pretty bad, but it's not, because they do work together in harmony most of the time.
I won't say all the time, because that's not true either. But the areas that are represented by their delegates have to rely on these delegates, and the delegates have to rely on the trustees, so each one of them has their own thing that they have to do. But they still have to work together. Now, one cannot vote the other. The trustees have a right to veto a conference action. I'm not sure that they've ever done this, I don't believe they have, and I'm not sure that we would be the same fellowship if they ever did, because I can just see a million people rising up and raising sand about, hey, they can't do that to us. I'll leave it to your discretion as to what might happen if they did, and I'm not sure myself.
Here's another heavy one that I wish Mike had done all these. H says, the trustees of the General Service Board act in two primary capacities. A, with respect to the larger matters of overall policy and finance, they are the principal planners and administrators. They and their primary committees directly manage these affairs. B, but, with respect to our separately incorporated and constantly active services, the relation of the trustees is mainly that of full stock ownership and of custodial oversight, which they exercise through their ability to elect directors of these entities. And in the entities we're talking about, AA World Service Incorporated and the Grapevine, and the trustees cannot go and personally manage all of these things that have to be done. They can't go and run the General Service Office, they can't go and run the publishing end of the arm of the fellowship, they can't go in and run the Grapevine. They have to have people do this for them so they are really, as it says, principal stockholders. And you know what a corporation does, they have a meeting and the stockholders vote and they elect an executive. Well, a trustee can't be an executive because they don't get any pay, and nobody's going to go in there and run that General Service Office without pay. So they have to elect or designate somebody to do the job for them. So this works hand in hand with a business organization
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in the same manner of a large corporation. And yet I don't know any corporation where the stockholders, and that's what we are, have as much to say about how things are done. We might have more to say than most anybody. I don't say they always do it the way we think they ought to, but we can sure say something about it. But the trustees put this thing together and then they let somebody else do the things that they can't all do individually and separately. So we have a General Service Manager of the General Service Office. We have staff members who work in the office and do these jobs that they can't do. We have somebody to manage and edit the Grapevine. And these things are all done through committees, but they are done by their own bosses, so to speak. And yet those bosses work for us, and don't you ever forget it. And thus don't ever let them forget it. Because if ever we got a hold of the purse strings and said, okay, you guys are not doing this the way we like, we're not sending you any more money, believe me, you'd see a change. Now I know Stan and Al are back there saying that I'm supposed to be talking about spirituality, but I'm talking about money right now. They threatened me at the beginning of this meeting.
Of course, they scared me to death, you know that. But we have to remember that we all run AA. Now I sometimes forget this. I sometimes think I run my group. And I run my district. And I run my area. But I'll tell you something, they let me know right quick I don't. And that's good. Not only for me, but for them too. And the same thing applies as we go to the different levels. And I won't say up to the different levels, because to me there's no up and down. It's all the same. We just have different jobs to do. But we need to trust each other. And sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. But we need to. And if we get somebody to do a job, and they don't do it, and we get together and decide they're not doing the right kind of job, we can always get rid of them. Thank you.
Lenore, that was a splendid presentation of one of the more difficult areas of the concept. I loved her remark that really doesn't understand how it works, but it sure does work. And that is really the essence of what that concept, A particularly, is all about. Our next speaker is George Dee, a former trustee and a man that I've worked a lot with over the years in AA. My name is George Dorsey, and I'm an alcoholic. I think my first awareness that there was such a thing as the concepts was about 15 years ago. I attended a kind of convention in Southern California, and Chuck C. was scheduled to be speaking at a meeting. And as I approached the meeting, droves of people were walking out. And I suppose if you heard Chuck C., it wasn't customary to have people walk out on a meeting where Chuck was speaking.
And I walked in, and people were saying, as they were leaving, they were saying, what is Chuck talking about? What's the matter with him? And so forth and so on. And I walked in, and Chuck was talking on the concepts. Man, I had a terrible time. From that, I got some comfort from that. At this moment, there was another story that I don't know whether it's true or not, but shortly after the concepts were published, Ann McFarlane, who was a long-time staff member, walked into Bill's office and said, Bill, I've had an invitation to speak in West Virginia or someplace, and they want me to speak on the concepts.
What am I going to do? And Bill looked at her and said, well, Annie, I don't know. I'm sure glad they asked you instead of me. I have an additional problem. Either I didn't get the proper instructions, or I got them so long ago, I forgot them. into three sections, so I was just going to sort of roam around over all twelve, not cover
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specifically the last four, although I'll try to do so. It seems to me that the only effective way to, the only effective means of communication in Alcoholics Anonymous is sharing, not teaching. And I have never been a very good teacher, but I'll share on anything with anybody, even the concepts, which is quite a challenge. And I also think that perhaps one way to learn the concepts is sort of by what we call the casebook method.
Mike is a lawyer, I had quite a lot of law school until it began to interfere with my drinking. Elected by members of the General Service Conference, that is, eleven of the twenty-one trustees are directly elected by the General Service Conference. And yet, in the concepts, Bill really warns against the sort of thing going on. Now he lived to see the day when the conference was electing trustees, and as far as I know, he was entirely comfortable with it.
A second and perhaps even more glaring example is in the eleventh concept, Bill hurries on at some length about the role of women versus men in the General Service Office, and refers the fact that it's a man's world, and it's because it's a business world, and men are better men than women, and that the staff members should always be women, because women can relate better to the fellowship than men can, you know.
It's really, I'm not into these things, but I suppose that some of my lady friends would consider it blatantly sexist language. And I think that if Bill were alive today, he'd put his feet back, put his feet up on the table like he used to do, and throw his head back and laugh like the devil at that language, because he would have changed just as the world has changed, and the fellowship has changed.
And it's terribly unfair to Bill to hold him to everything, the specific details that he says. Now, it isn't unfair, and I don't think Bill would change, and I would certainly not change anything with regard to what I feel are some very broad spiritual principles that come through in the concepts. First of all, Mike mentioned that the ultimate authority is with the groups, because the ultimate authority is not with you and I as individual members, or not with our individual home groups.
It is with the loving God, which he may express himself through our individual and group consciences. And it's that authority that we must always recognize, and we will always recognize, and that will come from this mass of members and mass of groups, 40,000 registered groups. We really have no way of counting the number of members we have, the 40,000 that are here working this process of Alcoholics Anonymous, seeking guidance from a loving God, as we understand, and both individually and collectively.
To me, the group conscience is simply something that we achieve by doing together what we do in the third and the eleventh step individually. In the third and the eleventh step, I seek for knowledge of God's will for me individually as to how he wants me to run my life. And in seeking our group conscience, I think we have to work together, seeking for knowledge of God's will for us in the only business that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous, which is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers, which is why we get into things like ultimate authority versus delegated authority, and what is a trusted servant, and what is a group conscience.
A group conscience is not simply counting, asking, throwing out a question, asking everybody to vote on it, and counting noses. That's simply a poll. A group conscience is something that results after discussion, and perhaps prayer, and listening to each other, a process where nobody tries to win, where everybody is consciously trying to seek a result that will reflect God's will for us in our business of carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
A second spiritual principle is this idea of delegation, which Mike has already covered. And what is a trusted servant? A trusted servant isn't someone who we trust to do exactly what we tell him when, or her,
[00:50:05]
when they go somewhere else. A group elects a GSR as their representative to an area assembly, but that GSR is not bound to vote exactly the way his or her group feels. This happened, in my experience, as a GSR, and I've seen it happen in our area assemblies. This is the casebook method. A number of years ago, there was a suggestion that we bring out a how-to guide to work the 12 steps, since Hazleton and others had how-to guides for that purpose.
That was discussed very widely in our very, very active area of service in Northern California. It was discussed at the group level, and it was discussed at district meetings. I saw many GSRs discuss this at the district level, and they'd come out of their groups with the idea, let's do it, it sounds great, let's do it. Then they came to our general service assembly and listened to others, and heard people get up and talk about their concerns about doing it, and they changed their minds.
They were free to change their minds. They voted then that it was not a good idea. During the period that I was delegate, there was a very, very serious proposal that we bring out the big book in a paperback edition, and there was a financial study done as to the feasibility of bringing out a paperback, and it was determined that it would be financially feasible to do so. This was discussed very widely in my area, and in my attempt to be a conscientious delegate, I listened to GSRs at all levels.
I came to the conference well-informed of their point of view. We discussed it for a good three-quarters of an hour at our area assembly before I went to the conference, and we took a vote at our area assembly. I think the vote was something like 75 to 80 percent. We were very close to substantial unanimity in favor of bringing out a paperback edition of the big book. Then I went to the general service conference and listened to delegates from other parts of the country, and found that their people were very concerned, particularly in parts of the South and the Midwest.
They felt that it would be a terrible mistake to do this, and they would be terribly offended and terribly upset. When it came time to vote, I voted against it, because I simply felt that our people thought it sounds like a good idea. I can put it in my suitcase instead of carrying around that big heavy thing when I travel. I can take it into a jail or something like that. In the face of this emotional and very strong opposition to the idea from so much of the country, it just seemed to me that it would be divisive to do so, and that the time was not now.
Perhaps it would come at a later time. So I voted against the conscience of my own area. I immediately went home, told the people in my area exactly what had transpired and why I had done as I had done, and I was not criticized at all. A third spiritual concept, I think, is the right of participation. I think that really goes to the nature of our organization, that we do not recognize a human authority, that no human power can relieve our alcoholism, that we are all peers, that we are all equal, that we all have an equal say about what goes on in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I happen to be very active in corporate life. I'm president of a couple of companies and have served on boards, and this is quite different. The authority must be different in Alcoholics Anonymous than it is in private or even other non-profit corporations, simply because of our nature. The people attending the conference, the trustees, the staff members, the delegates, the members of the corporate boards, all have particular jobs and particular responsibilities, but they are all alcoholics, except for the non-alcoholics like Mike, and they come to care just as deeply about what's going on as most of us do.
I have this tremendous personal stake in what happens in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't see how we could have a structure that would preclude the people who are involved in specific responsibilities from participating in the decisions that have to be made.
[00:55:01]
Just relating my own experience, many of you have been delegates, and I assume that a number of you are interested in becoming delegates, and maybe some of you past delegates are interested in becoming trustees. We have an institution at the General Service Conference known as the Delegates Only Meeting. Since we are in the league that we are in, there is always some paranoia over these things, and there are some delegates who like to bring up, at that meeting, matters directly affecting the conference as a whole.
I was not comfortable doing that, and I didn't feel it was right, because we would be talking about things affecting the conference with other members of the conference, that is, the trustees and the staff members not being present. We would sit in the Delegates Meeting wondering what the trustees were doing in their meeting and what they were talking about. Well, later on, I became a trustee, and we sat in our little Trustees Only Dinner wondering what the delegates were up to.
But once I got the hang of this thing and the feeling of what the concepts meant and how it ought to be, I was really quite comfortable as a delegate saying anything to a staff member or to a trustee that I would say to another delegate. And by the time I became a trustee, I was equally comfortable saying anything to a delegate that I would say to another trustee or to a staff member. I think our process requires an openness.
This participation requires an openness and that we should avoid secrecy in closed meetings. Everyone has a right to know just about everything that is going on. The only possible exception that I can think of with respect to the board and the office are very sensitive personnel matters. Other than that, I really don't know any reason for any other secrecy in the conduct of our service affairs. Another spiritual principle is this right of decision, which I guess I've already talked about.
That's part of the right of participation. When I first became active in service, I was surprised and a little upset that conference members were allowed to vote as a part of the conference. After all, they were paid employees and it would be very unusual to have in a corporate structure to have paid employees having a vote in some kind of a process equivalent to a board. For the reasons I've mentioned before, this really pretty much has to be.
The idea that if you give someone responsibility in Alcoholics Anonymous, you should give them authority with which to carry out that responsibility to me is another spiritual principle. It goes to how we are, the ability and the willingness and the necessity to trust each other as alcoholics. If we can't do that, our whole recovery process in the end isn't going to work. This is simply, in a sense, bringing this recovery process.
It's also good business. I'm trying at times and in limited ways to apply the 12 concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous to my business. Check with me and I'll let you know how it works. It works later on. Certainly, I have been a strong advocate for years in my company of this concept that if you give somebody a job to do, you've got to give them the authority to carry out that job. As Mike said, well, how much authority should that be?
You've got to leave it up to the person, the group, the board, the committee to decide how much authority they have, how much they should exercise without consulting someone else. The board should make the decision whether they should take an issue to the conference. The committee should make the decision whether they take a particular issue to the board. The staff should make a decision as to whether they should take a question to the board or to the committee or to the conference.
This works. It really works. There have been times, and I'll give you another example, a casebook example. A number of years ago, for whatever reason, the General Service Office and the AAWS board presumably decided that they would act as a distribution source for Act as a distribution source for the Harper and Row book, Bill Dubbio. That decision was made in the utmost good faith and in the interest of making the book readily available to members of the Fellowship,
[01:00:05]
feeling that there was, and obviously there was, a great deal of interest in the Fellowship and in this book. Delegates and others became aware that this was done and they weren't happy with the decision and they took it to the conference and without being vindictive or punitive or questioning anybody's motives, they just asked the office to cease and desist from that practice. I suppose that at this point I should talk about the last four concepts a little bit since I have, as I said, roamed around.
The ninth has to do with personal leadership. Well, I suppose that in some sort of way I have played a leadership role in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not sure how I've done it. I'm trying now to use the feelings and techniques that I've used for whatever kind of a leader I was in AA and bring those kind of qualities to how I lead a company. But I think, first of all, in my case it required an ability and a willingness to listen.
I am not a particularly creative person. The ideas that I have had and that I have advocated and moved on and maybe been a cutting edge on, either as a delegate or as a trustee, were not really my ideas. I picked them up from other people and ran with them. And I tried to have a sense of what the groups want. I'm particularly sensitive to the people who are concerned about what goes on at the level of the conference and the board and the office.
And they drive me crazy, but I do my best to listen to them and hear what they're saying. Other than that, it requires an ability to make some decisions and it requires an ability to communicate, to be as honest as possible. And I have always tried to be as honest as possible as I could and bring the same honesty that I try to bring to recovery into my approach to AA service. The tenth concept I've already discussed, the service of authority should equal service responsibility.
The eleventh concept, here is where Bill really goes into a lot of detail and it's very fascinating. Most of the structure that he describes in the eleventh concept with respect to the various responsibilities of the General Service Board, the AA World Service Board, the Grapevine Board and their committees are still true. Some things have changed. We now have male staff members. Now, I'm going to conclude by talking about what I think is unquestionably the most important of all of the concepts.
In fact, I think it's wonderful that we're having a concepts workshop here, but I wish we would have a workshop on the warranties. And for those of you who are involved in service, I think that the warranties should be the first thing that are handed to someone that's new in service. You should ask them to read and study the warranties before they even read the service manual or any other pamphlet because the warranties really are our Bill of Rights, the Fellowship's Bill of Rights with respect to the structure.
It really does carry the principles of recovery into our activities in service. It cautions us, first of all, against the conference, and this applies as far as I'm concerned to any AA entity, including an AA group, becoming the seat of perilous wealth and power. And why does it do that? Because money has gotten a great deal of us in trouble through the years, and in my case, the desire for power has been even worse.
Money and power are things that cause trouble for alcoholics. And to bring this thought into our service activities, to warn us against the accumulation of wealth and power, is simply recognizing our nature as alcoholics. Secondly, and this is just as important, and this is reflected in a number of the concepts, that no conference member should ever be placed in a position of unqualified authority over any other conference member, no part of the conference.
[01:05:02]
And I think this is true in all of our structure. I think this applies to our group life and to our area life just as much as it does to our conference life. This is where we get the system of checks and balances. And why do we have to do this? It's simply because of our nature. We don't tolerate human authority very easily, particularly in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. We're not a fellowship that readily cultivates gurus or spiritual leaders, although some of us take a crack at it off and on.
I come from an area where they just laugh at me and say, well, leave him alone. George is trying to be a guru again, but leave him alone. He'll get over it. And through the years, you know, there are times, I suppose, when we've had runaway conferences that tried to dictate to the board and the staff. There have been other times when maybe the staff became very efficient and maybe a little too efficient and tried to do a little too much in the face of incompetent delegates and incompetent trustees, which they most certainly have been.
The staff working very well has gotten maybe a little too authoritative. And there have been times when the board has closed in on itself perhaps a bit and has run a little bit too far. But these things don't last. They're swings. And in the end, these checks and balances level out so that no part of the structure and no individual in the structure is in a position of unqualified authority over any other.
The decisions are made by discussion, vote, and wherever possible, unanimity. And as I said before, this is reflected in all of the concepts so that we can try collectively to seek knowledge for God's will for us as a fellowship in the only business that we have, which is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. The warranties also tell us that we should never take punitive action and that our action should never be an incitement to public controversy.
Well, obviously, our traditions have maintained this principle of keeping AA out of public controversy so that we are free to carry our very simple spiritual message. And that warranty assures that we do nothing in our service life that will give rise to public controversy. With respect to punitive action, I will be very honest. There were times when I thought I was taking a hell of a beating. And there were times in my service life when I felt vindictive, perhaps, and certainly felt that others should be punished for doing some things that I didn't care for.
But this isn't going to work in this deal, you know. We have all been punished enough before we got here. John Barleycorn is our disciplinarian. We've taken our beatings. It's like recovery. We don't punish each other in recovery. We are patient, tolerant, sympathetic, and as Cecil Korogel says, tender with each other in recovery. And I feel that the warranties say we have to bring the same attitude towards each other when we deal with each other in service.
And that's not always easy. I think a number of you have attended a lot of service meetings of various types, and they can get pretty wild and pretty hectic. If we just have this ground, if we can put our feet on this principle, then we've got to treat each other the same way in service as we do in recovery. Lastly, that we never have a government, and it will always be democratic in thought and principle.
Well, I have enormous faith that Alcoholics Anonymous is going to continue to work, that we have a great future. I think that we have a service structure that is serving us well. We have a conference, and we have a board and a general office staff that is serving us very well. Bill has left us a great legacy in the concepts, particularly the spiritual principles and the concepts to guide us. But in the end, it's going to be up to you and the people at this conference and the people in your home group.
There's got to be and will be, I have utter faith that there will be continuing renewal, constant renewal in Alcoholics Anonymous, new people coming in, working with each other to recover, bringing these same basic spiritual principles to working together to protect and carry this great fellowship forward. Thank you. Thanks very much, George. We've been very privileged here, I think, to hear the discussion of the concepts by three speakers who have had a considerable amount of experience in the service of the fellowship.
[01:10:09]
And the approach, as we've said at the beginning, to the concepts is somewhat of an individual one. And George emphasized the right of participation so that while you have been very patient and listening, I'd welcome, and I'm sure the speakers would, any questions that might have occurred to you during the talks. No, I'm not. Yes. Yes. The questions were how and why does a non-alcoholic get involved in the work of the fellowship?
The other, the second question was how does, the third question was how does the literature go, what process does the literature go through to become conference approved? And the second. What are the concepts that you take? Oh, that's, there's, concepts are going to be restated in their original form. Well, in answer to the first question, how does a non-alcoholic become involved in the fellowship of AA, I guess you're just not lucky, that's all.
That's not true. I was only teasing you. I got involved by a very simple device. I'm a lawyer, as George said. I joined Bernard Smith's law firm in the 1950s. Bernard Smith was then very much involved with Bill Wilson in writing the conference structure, the bylaws, the two of them worked together. I was drawn in to do some of the pedestrian work that was going on at the time and got interested in the fellowship because it made me respond or it was responsive to many of my needs.
As Bernard Smith used to say, and I repeat, alcoholics do not have a monopoly on the world's problems. Non-alcoholics also have problems and the principles by which this fellowship operates are transferable to the concerns of non-alcoholics as well. I've gotten as much or more than many alcoholics have gotten out of this and I'm sure I've gotten tremendously more than I've ever put into it. That's the answer to the first question.
Are we restoring the concepts to their original condition? The answer to that is yes, and I don't mean to make the question sound like a bad one. What has happened is the concepts have always been the same, but over the years when changes have occurred in facts, for example, the concepts talk about five standing committees. We now have 11, and so where it said five standing committees, we put in brackets and said 11.
We talked about female office workers being staff members and not males. Well, that has changed not only because men have become understanding of women, but the law says so. You can't discriminate against women. So those changes have been made and a few of the people around the conference and among the trustees thought it would be nice to have the original version intact and show what changes there were in some other way so that anyone wishing to read the concepts could get the flavor of them individually and initially.
And the third question was? On the literature. How does literature become approved? It's a fairly lengthy and comprehensive process. In the first instance, something comes to the attention of the literature committee of the trustees in terms of what literature we should have, what publication we should have. If that meets with approval, then ultimately it goes to a conference. Then ultimately it goes to a conference literature committee.
Then the conference literature committee and the trustee literature committee combine. If everything is now full speed ahead, someone is assigned to, a staff writer or someone else assigned,
[01:15:02]
to write the publication that has not already been written. It is reviewed sometimes in several different versions or drafts, I should say. And ultimately it goes to the conference, and the conference is asked specifically to approve this literature for publication, and it gets conference approved stamp of approval on it. That's the way it works. Thank you. I beg your pardon? It could take a minimum of one year.
Sometimes it could take eight or nine years, and sometimes it goes for a long time and nothing happens. It gets discarded. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yes. The question is for those of you who may not have heard, how is it that sometimes we have literature which is not conference approved? For example, some things that Hazelden publishes and which are used among the groups but don't have conference approved literature on them.
Well, first of all, this fellowship has nothing to do with approving or disapproving what Hazelden publishes or anybody else publishes. We have only our own concerns. We are not in a position of approving or disapproving the publications of others. It's not our function. We couldn't do it even if we wanted to. Yes, Hazelden literature and any other literature is used concurrently with what is our approved literature.
When we talk about approved, we're not really acting as censors or trying to bring only certain things to the attention of our groups or denying certain other things. What we are saying is, in giving the stamp of approval, is that in simplest form, it's consistent with the purposes for which this fellowship exists and the message it wishes to carry. And we think, on the whole, it will be more of a benefit than a detriment.
And that's all we're doing in that literature. There's no effort at censorship. But we can read any literature we want to among the groups, whether it's conference approved or not. Thank you. The gentleman way back there. No, wait. Blue shirt. You know. George, did you look? I believe the question was, because alcoholics tend to avoid responsibility, which we've found from time to time, should someone acknowledge a home group before given a position of responsibility?
A vote. In a group? Well, this would be up to that particular group. Every group is free to do it the way they want to. They can have a business meeting of a steering committee and take a vote there. They can ask that members of the group only vote, or they can ask for a group conscience of everyone present. I don't believe that this is something that GSO has or should, or the conference even has or should introduce guidelines.
These are the kinds of questions, in my opinion, we've got to have faith that AA members at the grassroots level can solve for themselves, rather than looking to some presumed higher authority, such as the conference or the board or me or Mike, to answer for them. I think that I personally have enough faith in the AA instincts of the people in the groups to believe that they can solve these things for themselves.
With respect to responsibility, I've had a lot of people who've given, I don't know how many times people have come to me and said, 15 people volunteered and nobody's doing anything.
[01:20:03]
I said, well, you know, if you need a job done, if you need five people, ask 15, and you'll lose five right off, and five will flitter away, but you're probably going to wind up with five really good ones. And it's just the name of the game. You can learn to live with that. People who are very responsible have a great deal of problem with that. Since I have a pretty good streak of irresponsibility at times, I can go along with it in other AA efforts.
Thank you. We've got time for one more question. Yes, sir. I'm Ray Donovan. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Ray. My question deals with the false concept and punitive action. Was a request by an area committee for a resignation of a general service officer really considered punitive action? And if so, would it be a violation of that concept? Mike, I'm going to give the… The resignation of a general service officer, I thought you said.
Do you mean officer or… Yeah, like a delegate or a government delegate or a secretary or a secretary of office. Yeah. Well, I don't think the request would be punitive, but if it were carried out, it might be. I don't see… This is almost in the area of each element taking its own decisions and really taking their own inventory and doing what they have to do. I think if such a request were put forward, someone could take a decision, and if it seemed appropriate to carry out that decision, then there wouldn't be anything punitive about it, except that it sounds punitive.
If you're asking someone to resign from some office, whatever it is, it suggests that that person is not discharging the responsibilities of that office in keeping with what the requester's image of it was. Yeah, but as a matter of fact, you're saying that there's no punitive action to be taken? Yeah. The warranties say that none of the actions should ever be punitive, and it speaks, I think, of the conference, but it really is true throughout the fellowship that George was saying.
What you're describing could conceivably be punitive. I'm saying it need not be. We'd have to go into more of the facts and circumstances to make that assessment. Certainly if it is punitive, it should not be done. I believe that that does take up the time allotted to us. I'm sure other panel members and myself would be glad to answer any further questions after the meeting if you'd like to come up.
And I'd… Thank you. We'll begin with the Lord's Prayer, please. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
God is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen. Well. I tell you. I'm going to be the first class A trustee who becomes the class B trustee. I think this is on tape already. Well, this is being taped. No, the answer is Anybody. We can use if we want to use comic books to make a discussion and it helps our group. So let's use comic books. What's the difference in the nation as long as it works?
Yeah, I don't The groups are autonomous. Nobody really should prescribe
[01:25:01]
not PSO, not the conference. Nobody else should prescribe for a group what the group should do and how it's supposed to carry the message. That's a group decision. And the notion that some race, white, general service for anybody is going to make this decision effectively is just a notion. It ain't real life. Oh, OK. What am I saying? You said I owe you something. OK. Thank you, Josh. Oh, I'm glad you were here.
Where are you going? Oh, I would like my family. Hey, how are you? Thank you. OK. No, I didn't. Why didn't you say, hey, what are you doing up there, old girl? Good to see you. Hi, Ann. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I try to keep it as light as possible because it gets pretty heavy sometimes, let me tell you. I get into it and I think, oh, God, what am I talking about? About this message. Thank you.
Good to see you, darling. How are you? Yeah, well, you're looking great, man. Yeah, good. I'm glad everybody got something out of it. I love you. Well, that's good because really, it is, it is… I'm not going to jump down there because I'm not going to break a leg. Well, you got first things first, you know, I mean, there's certain things you have to do. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah, I think the point, too, is conference approval is not meant to be exclusionary.
I mean, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean that you can't read or shouldn't read anything else. I know, and that's a good point. It's something I think that the general service office has to publicize a little bit more. I mean, sure, they're interested in our own literature, obviously, because that meets the needs. There are other literature which is equally good, but you can't approve it because of some things that it might be controversial.
No, I mean, it's not to say that it doesn't have a lot of good in it or it can't be good. Hi, Jack. That is the 12th concept, really, is the warranties that the service function really has with the fellowship. The purpose of it, I think George's point, it can be a whole section in itself. Hi, Tom. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, sure, that's a good one. Burr Smith was, he was one of the old-timers, one of the early A.A. members, yeah.
[01:30:04]
No, no, his son, his son was a little bit of a streetman, maybe about that time. No, no, well, John Muir from my office was a great guy, yeah. And Richard Colley went with Al-Anon. I got a lot of alumni in the fellowship, or the post-fellowship. Thank you.