Tradition Four
"Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other
groups or A.A. as a whole."
AUTONOMY is a ten-dollar word. But in relation to us, it means very
simply that every A.A. group can manage its affairs exactly as it
pleases, except when A.A. as a whole is threatened. Comes now the same
question raised in Tradition One. Isn't such liberty foolishly
dangerous?
Over the years, every conceivable deviation from our Twelve Steps and
Traditions has been tried. That was sure to be, since we are so largely
a band of ego-driven individualists. Children of chaos, we have
defiantly played with every brand of fire, only to emerge unharmed and,
we think, wiser. These very deviations created a vast process of trial
and error which, under the grace of God, has brought us to where we
stand today.
When A.A.'s Traditions were first published, in 1946, we had become
sure that an A.A. group could stand almost any amount of battering. We
saw that the group, exactly like the individual, must eventually
conform to whatever tested principles would guarantee survival. We had
discovered that there was perfect safety in the process of trial and
error. So confident of this had we become that the original statement
of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence: "Any two or three
alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A.
group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation."
This meant, of course, that we had been given the courage to declare
each A.A. group an individual entity, strictly rely on its own
conscience as a guide to action. In charting this enormous expanse of
freedom, we found it necessary to post only two storm signals: A group
ought not do anything which would greatly injure A.A. as a whole, nor
ought it affiliate itself with anything or anybody else. There would be
real danger should we commence to call some groups "wet," others "dry,"
still others "Republican" or "Communist," and yet others "Catholic" or
"Protestant." The A.A. group would have to stick to its course or be
hopelessly lost. Sobriety had to be its sole objective. In all other
respects there was perfect freedom of will and action. Every group had
the right to be wrong.
When A.A. was still young, lots of eager groups were forming. In a town
we'll call Middleton, a real crackerjack had started up. The
townspeople were as hot as firecrackers about it. Stargazing, the
elders dreamed of innovations. They figured the town needed a great big
alcoholic center, a kind of pilot plant A.A. groups could duplicate
everywhere. Beginning on the ground floor there would be a club; in the
second story they would sober up drunks and hand them currency for the
back debts; the third deck would house and educational project - quite
controversial, of course. In imagination the gleaming center was to go
up several stories more, but three would do for a start. This would all
take a lot of money - other people's money. Believe it or not, wealthy
townsfolk bought the idea.
There were, though, a few conservative dissenters among the alcoholics.
the wrote the Foundation*, A.A.'s headquarters in New York, wanting to
know about this sort of streamlining. They understood that the elders,
just to nail things down good, were about to apply to the Foundation
for a charter. These few were disturbed and skeptical.
Of course, there was a promoter in the deal - a super-promoter. By his
eloquence he allayed all fears, despite advice from the Foundation that
it could issue no charter, and that ventures which mixed an A.A. group
with medication and education had come to sticky ends elsewhere. To
make things safer, the promoter organized three corporations and became
president of them all. Freshly painted, the new center shone. The
warmth of it all spread through the town. Soon things began to hum. to
insure foolproof, continuous operation, sixty-one rules and regulations
were adopted.
But alas, this bright scene was not long in darkening. confusion
replaced serenity. It was found that some drunks yearned for education,
but doubted if they were alcoholics. The personality defects of others
could be cured maybe with a loan. Some were club-minded, but it was
just a question of taking care of the lonely heart. Sometimes the
swarming applicants would go for all three floors. Some would start at
the top and come through to the bottom, becoming club members; others
started in the club, pitched a binge, were hospitalized, then graduated
to education on the third floor. It was a beehive of activity, all
right, but unlike a beehive, it was confusion compounded. An A.A.
group, as such, simply couldn't handle this sort of project. All too
late that was discovered. Then came the inevitable explosion -
something like that day the boiler burst in Wombley's Clapboard
Factory. A chill chokedamp of fear and frustration fell over the group.
When that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. The head promoter
wrote the Foundation office. He said he wished he'd paid attention to
A.A. experience. Then he did something else that was to become an A.A.
classic. It all went on a little card about golf-score size. The cover
read: "Middleton Group #1. Rule #62." Once the card was unfolded, a
single pungent sentence leaped to the eye: "Don't take yourself too
damn seriously."
Thus it was that under Tradition Four an A.A. group had exercised its
right to be wrong. Moreover, it had performed a great service for
Alcoholics Anonymous, because it had been humbly willing to apply the
lessons it learned. It had picked itself up with a laugh and gone on to
better things. Even the chief architect, standing in the ruins of his
dream, could laugh at himself - and that is the very acme of humility.
*In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., was changed to
the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the
Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
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Traditions