Your post is entirely irrelevant to the discussion.
On the contrary, it is at the very heart of the discussion. The whole thing turns on this business about a "power greater than one's
self" and whether that necessarily implies something supernatural. It seems to me that the logical first step toward answering that is to inquire as to just how great a
self is. "The sum of things that are your body" strikes me as rather weak, but at least pointed in the right direction.
Most of the actual decisions we take we do so consciously.
The first obvious counterexample that comes to my mind is the experience refered to as "falling in love". Implicit in the use of that metaphor is that it refers to something that just sort of
happens to you (or doesn't) regardless of whether you choose it; in fact, it strongly implies that you may be
powerless to resist it.
doesn't change the fact that, in the end, it is the person who quits drinking, not the group that makes him do it.
I don't disagree with that as far as it goes, but I don't think it goes far enough; you are overlooking the extent to which it is possible that it can be a bit of both. Other people DO make us do things, and to deny that is to deny one of the most fundamental aspects of our nature as social animals.
The ability to win and maintain the approval of others was as vital to the survival (and reproductive success) of our protohuman ancestors as is an eagle's ability to fly, and we inherited our equipment from them. Consider: The olympic athlete sets a world record before a wildly cheering crowd of thousands. The energy of that crowd, and his awareness of them, has an effect on his ability to perform -- but it's not a supernatural effect; it's a
physiological effect. Perhaps the basis of that physiology can be more clearly appreciated using football as the example, where the tradition originally featured male athletes performing their feats of physical prowess before scantily-clad female cheerleaders, the implication clearly being that these were prizes for the winners. Successful memes are those which touch on something primal.
I submit that regular participation in discussions on this forum can serve a similar role. We challenge others, and allow them to challenge us. It's like the critical thinking olympics; knowing that we're performing before a crowd inspires us to make our best effort (ideally, anyway), and doing that makes us stronger. When we win those struggles, it
feels good -- and part of the
reason that it feels good is that there are some cognitive submodules telling us that if we get good enough at this sort of thing we will be rewarded with respect, perhaps so much that we will be exempted from the obligation to hunt, or fight, and possibly even with enough to give us privileged access to the most desireable mating partners. (One of the limitations of cognitive submodules is that they don't realize that they're no longer on the African savannah, and can't always see the big picture).
Attending AA can do the same thing for a person seeking sobriety that joining a gym can do for a person seeking better physical fitness, or that joining JREF can do for a person seeking to become a better critical thinker. Deliberately placing yourself in a setting where others will push you to excel -- to put forth a level of effort you might find unattainable when you are
by yourself -- might even be thought of as a matter of tapping into a power greater than yourself.
)
).
