On reading Chapters 8 and 9 of the Big Book, I used to say: ‘It’s problematic’, ‘I feel uncomfortable’, ‘I have a problem with the language.’
Why was this the case? I noted that the social structures described were different from those of our times and concluded they were thus to be decried.
It is true that the social structures described were different: the roles of the two sexes are delineated in line with the customs of the times. Furthermore, the book assumed that the alcoholic was the man, although this was not because, a priori, alcoholics were necessarily men, but because the vast majority of AA members of the time were men (there was only one woman member, and her status as sober was not long-established when the book was written), and in writing about their experience they were necessarily writing about the experience of men.
I was making a number of mistakes, however, in my approach to the chapters:
- I was adopting the role of moral arbiter and prefacing my reading of the book with a sort of moral screening, which had two purposes. Firstly, to applaud or condemn the book. Secondly, to proceed to accepting and implementing its ideas only if the book was to be applauded.
- I had an irrational fear that, if the book were read out and used in AA, today, it would somehow propagate its different social values within contemporary AA to people’s detriment.
- In truth, I am not a moral arbiter, I am not qualified to be one, and there is no good purpose in prefacing my reading with moral arbitration.
- If a particular idea appears repugnant, then I need not adopt it. A careful reading of the chapters, however, reveals that the vast majority of the content is directly applicable today without the slightest adaptation.
- My real job is to understand the text from the point of view of those who wrote it, not from the presentist view of today’s beliefs: only then could I hope to benefit.
- The book itself indicates that the alcoholic could be a woman and thus expands the scope.
- The book itself suggests that it is not just wives to whom the ideas apply but any person bound by ties of blood or affection to an alcoholic. In other words, although the wife is discussed, the ideas can be applied by unsophisticated analogy.
- The writers were writing not for us but for their contemporaries: it would be narcissistic to retrospectively insist that a past author predict my existence and write for me (out of all possible future readers over time and place and across all possible ideologies) and to anticipate and fall in line with my values and expectations.